Embarkation Day, And we are off, well hold on, not so fast. There were 8 cruise ships in Port today, which means port traffic both with the emptying and refilling ships with passengers but also with stores and luggage. The traffic delayed our 10:30 hotel shuttle to a 11:30 departure, which meant that the hotel was bulging with passengers waiting for the 11 and 11:30 shuttles (even some for the noon shuttle because of the 11:00 check out). The shuttle organizing at the Quality Inn (Stirling) was exceptional. This could have got out of hand really quick but they are definitely seasoned to this weekend high volume situation. The driver backs up and gets the luggage trailer set up while the hotel organizer starts calling out ship and passenger names by the ship they are dropping off last to first. He displayed calmed forcefulness as he had the luggage dropped off at the trailer and then had the passengers loaded into the van. Nice job.
Kudos goes to the Van driver as he knew a back door entry into the port as he told us that the port main entrance was al backed up coming and going, we were at our ship in about 15 minutes, again great job.
At the checkin is where things came to a grinding halt. We snaked through the first line in about 30 minutes only to be presented with multi snake line taking about an hour and a half before getting on the ship. The hold up… well when getting to the checkin desk they asked for our New Zealand Visa, not the Australian, Sri Lanka or any other but the NZ one? This had every guest think about where it was and then dig it out. Now, through the first checkin point they said we needed our passports, Yellow Fever card and boarding pass, nothing about the Visa - hey, this would have helped. We boarded the ship at about 1:30pm with hardly a whisper of fanfare. No President, Mariner VP, no one, this I found pretty sad, I always thought the World Cruise was the flagship event and that the brass thought this was important to attend but no, not today. Either that or the many guests stuck in the line weren’t worth waiting for. I know that I did not see any evidence that they were there. Again Sad HAL.
So of course we missed the Mariner Lunch, this stopped at 1:00 because most of the wait staff were summoned to the Lido deck for the champagne and wine cocktail 45 minute party. That said, lunch in the Lido was excellent, salmon was fantastic and moist all to swallowed down by my three or four glasses of champagne (hey, they were small glasses, lol). It was great wandering around the lido pool stopping every 10 yards or so greeting someone we knew from a prior cruise and or FB friend. Quick unpack of the suitcases we brought on board but no sign of our shipped luggage? Hmm. 3:45 for our lifeboat drill and there is Joanne Gardiner checking us in on boat 12, awesome. Looking around I notice that this is one full ship.
4:30 and the sail away cocktail party begins. Now here is where the World Grand Voyage really felt like it had taken off. HAL supplied the drinks and pretty much as many as one could consume over the next couple of hours. This was about as far as HAL went as its seemed like the guests were the real spark to this kickoff, I am not even sure the Cruise Director was present, never met him before and no kickoff speech was made (at least one that I recall). It was very nice to see this gathering of old friends getting reacquainted in what looked like large clumps of people exchanging their hellos. For us this worked out great as we moved around visiting many of the people were knew in the various groups - so great to see. So if this was the intention of HAL then great it seemed to have all worked out, this is the first time we were present on the commencement of a World Cruise. We headed back to our room at the close of the party and al our luggage had arrived, yeah. I will say that it was not easy to find places for the overpacked bags we brought, it was tight but it all worked - getting the empty bags under the bed was another story (well not entirely empty as we have temporarily kept our cold weather clothes in them).
Dinner was great at our reserved table, thank you Philip. No show tonight as the ship was pretty quite with the first night jet lagged guests, so back to the room for a bit more organizing,
lights out by about 11:00am.
Bon voyage
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