Posted on 07/21/2021 8:45:31 AM PDT by Capt. Tom
I’m on the first big cruise ship to sail to Alaska in nearly 2 years.
As I look around, I count just two other passengers on the ground level of the room. A few more are in the balcony spaces above. Nearly all the clusters of chairs that fill the Centrum are unoccupied.
Last night, as I was dining at the ship’s Italian eatery, Giovanni’s Table, I noticed at one point that the entire staff was attending just to my table and one other table that was occupied.
A Royal Caribbean executive this week told me that there are about 630 passengers on board for this sailing. This for a ship that can hold up to 2,476 passengers when full to the brim.
For starters, passengers must wear masks for now in the interior spaces of the ship. And some areas of the ship — the casino, for instance, and the pub — are off-limits to passengers who aren’t vaccinated for COVID-19.
In addition, travel parties with unvaccinated passengers are not allowed to leave the ship in ports unless they purchase a local tour through Royal Caribbean.
Passengers who aren’t vaccinated are required to take a PCR test for COVID-19 when checking in at the terminal and an antigen test for COVID-19 onboard the ship near the end of the voyage.
Passengers under the age of 2 are exempt from the testing requirements.
Despite the new mask-wearing rule on the ship and other COVID-19-related changes, the basic cruise experience feels relatively normal. As noted above, the most noticeable difference right now with the cruise experience on Serenade of the Seas as compared to pre-COVID times is that the ship is unusually empty.
In addition, the Windjammer restaurant is closed at dinnertime.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
You said in Post #63 that people have successfully sued after getting hit by foul balls. Can you cite even a single successful lawsuit?
With so many cruisers getting their bookings canceled in recent months, I have to believe many are taking the wait and see attitude. As desperate as I am to sail on a cruise ship, I booked the cruise not in July or August, but in September.
If in months of August-September there are no incidents of serious covid infections, my guess is bookings will jump up quickly.
The cruise companies are not in a position to dictate rules. They must appease the CDC or else get banned for a long enough time to go bankrupt.
yup
back to normal
/sarc
Going on such a lightly attended cruise is a stroke of genius.
Most of the Cruise ship writers IMHO have to pull back some of their punches. (Biting the hand that feeds you is not always a good practice)-Tom
From the article’s URL:
Editor’s note: TPG’s Gene Sloan is sailing on Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas as a guest of the line. The opinions expressed below are entirely his and weren’t subject to review by the cruise line.
“The opinions expressed below are entirely his and weren’t subject to review by the cruise line.”
In today’s world, that is NEVER the case.
I just started another thread on Florida and the CDC going to Court to battle things out.-Tom
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3978039/posts
You know what, I stand corrected. That’s what I get for assuming.
In this litigation happy environment could’ve sworn someone at some time he’d sucsesfully sued MLB for injury but apparently not.
However, in light of all the injuries it looks like someone’s gonna be sucsesful pretty soon.
Do the vaccines create a plastic air-tight bubble around the vaccinated person? If not it is low level common sense that nearby virus load will be inhaled by the vaccinated person. If the load is big enough, they could test positive.
Only difference between vaccinated and non-vaccinated is....
the vaccinated person’s immune system is already familiar with the protein signatures of the vaccine, and therefor much less likely to mount a over-the-top response of white corpuscles attacking the virus in lungs and that has resulted in permanent destruction of lung tissue. In addition, the vaccinated person has very good chance of anti-bodies present to fight the virus and reduce chance of death.
A mild exposure to the virus with minor symptoms acts similar to vaccine. Which is why shutdown of healthy people makes no sense.
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