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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6 Bright and early Sunday morning we were off again. The plan: pick up our rental car from the airport and drive the 228 miles to Miami. An average velocity of 55 mph should get us there in 4 hours without stops, so say, 5 hours. We need to be on the ship no later than 4 p.m. 8 a.m. I finish checking out and we hop on the return-loop of the airport shuttle we bought on Day One. He drops us in walking distance (calculated for folks without five days worth of park-touring blisters) from the Dollar rental counter. We trudge up, flop our torsos on the counter, and Lisa gives the counter lady her name. As the lady starts punching things in, Lisa says, cool and subtle girl that she is, "Hey, are there any upgrades for honeymooners?"
Oh yeah. And not just any PT Cruiser, mind you. But a PT Cruiser convertible. Vroom! After ten minutes of fiddling with every button and toggle, getting the seats just so and some deep examination of the map (no where-the-hell-are-we Amazing Race moments for us), we got underway. Sometimes I forget what driving a vehicle with actual oomph is like. Driving in Florida is relatively good. We took the Florida Turnpike the entire way, and it's littered with rest stops and reasonably good signage. Of course there were toll booths, and we ended up shelling out about $20+ US in tolls.
But we loved it. Miami is very confusing, with the turnpike winding around through a million side streets and access ways. I had some panic moments, but we found our way to the airport unscathed. We had been told that if we brought the car in with the tank empty, they would charge us $35 for the fill, so we went looking for a gas station. The car return area of the Miami airport is a neighborhood of its own, with dozens of different companies with their lots and offices. We followed the signs dutifully, looking to pin down the Dollar return facility while hopefully finding a gas station en route. No luck. Apparently the neighborhood is designed to have no gas stations, encouraging the return of cars with lucrative empty tanks. We began circling outwards, finally finding a run-down looking gas station a half-mile away. We gassed up, and I went to pay the bill. My credit card was refused. Panic. The biggest portion of our vacation budget was allocated to the first week, as eating nearly all our meals in Disney parks was likely to be expensive. So we had about $330 left in Canadian (about $260 or so US). Or we should have. I went back to the car and got out the cell phone (which we brought with us for roadside emergencies JUST LIKE THIS). I called our bank and got her to check our balance. $22 was all that remained. Something like $15 US, depending on the conversion. Heart pounding (did someone steal our number? We had had a couple shift taxi rides...) I asked her to begin checking back through the charges. I said the most recent big transaction should be Dollar (from when we rented the car) for about 80 or so... (rental plus insurance) "I have a charge from Dollar, but not in the amount you said." How much? "It's for $313." That's about $250 US. Dollar charged us $250. I thank the lady and hang up. In total, the cash we had physically on us amounted to $12. With $15 on the Visa and $12 cash, I was able to pay our $27 gas bill exactly. Some days I really know that Someone is looking out for us up there. We had just enough money to get on the ship, where we could survive the rest of the trip with no money whatsoever if we had to. We drove back to Dollar and dropped off the car. Inside the check-out building, I confronted the clerks on the $250 issue. Apparently the deal is that they always charge a $250 deposit that is refunded to the card after the car is returned and paid for. Right now? I asked. No, they said. The paperwork gets sent to the head office and they handle the refund there. Which (depending on the person I spoke to) could take anywhere up to seven days. You know what? I understand the policy. The current distrust level in the States means they are stricter in terms of rentals. But no one told us in advance. From the lady who initially took the car reservation back in December, to the lady who gave us the shiny, shiny PT Cruiser, no one mentioned this deposit. Every piece of documentation we received fails to mention it, with the exception of the invoice we got at the time of pickup, where it is in small print on the bottom of page two. Fuck. Dollar has a free shuttle service to the Carnival docks, so we hopped on board. Nothing else we could do. Hopefully we'd get the refund in the next day or two, so we could buy some souvenirs off-ship, but if not, we'd get by until Thursday, when Lisa was to get paid. Gradually we were able to cheer ourselves up as we shuttled off to the ships. Hey, we're going on a cruise! We skimmed through downtown Miami, to the vast docks on the southeast side. There was our ship! Each cruise line has an airport-like boarding facility, with drop-offs for luggage and then long lines for check in. Carnival had advised us to fill out our 'online boarding pass' in advance to speed up the checkout, which makes me wonder how long we would have had to wait if we hadn't. As it was, we waited in line (getting to know Chris and Nikki, our new Midwest ship buddies) over a half-hour just to check in, then another 15 minutes to go through security, and then another fifteen minutes to get our 'Sign & Sail' card. Ah, the Sail & Sign card. As the girl at the check-in desk described to us, it was a combination of room key, shipboard ID and credit card. We could use it to purchase goods and services on board, and it would all get charged to our credit card at the end of the trip. I'm going to fall back into rant mode for a moment, so the rest of the vacation stuff will be relatively rant-free. At check-in, we verified the fact that no charges would be applied to our credit card until after the trip. This was correct, as far as it goes. This raised our hopes, since, by the time we'd actually eb charged, we'd have the money. One way or another. She neglected to mention that on a daily basis, the ship checks your account balance and put a 'hold' for that amount on your credit card. If you have insufficient funds for the hold, your Sail & Sign card will be deactivated until you pay a cash deposit or your available credit is fixed. Okay. A) What is with the US and its attitude of NON-FUCKING-DISCLOSURE? Why couldn't the check-in lady mention this fact, since we were obviously concerned about charges being made on our credit card? Again, I understand the policy, but why not TELL ME ABOUT IT? And B) this would be fine if we hadn't already been SCREWED by the rental company! We discovered the cut-off on the second day when they slipped a note under our door. We went straight to the Purser's office to discuss the matter, but while they were good enough to give us a couple free ship-to-shore calls (wherein I called Dollar, found out that it could take a week for the refund and was transferred to the helpful credit department where an answering machine asked me to leave a contact number where they could call me back. Call me BACK? I'm on a GODDAMN CRUISE SHIP!), they were not entirely sympathetic to our pleas of 'we get paid on Thursday'. (As an aside, the refund was not processed until after we had been home for a week.) Ah well. The purser did give us some free drink coupons, since we could now not even afford drinks on board ship. Okay, back to having fun. Finally we boarded the ship on the Promenade Deck (The Promenade! That satisfied both the Love Boat and Deep Space Nine fans inside me). We gawked at the Seven Seas bar for a little while (all decked out in green lights and gold metal at the bottom of an atrium that stretched upwards four decks with a huge bank of glass elevators) then made our way to our berth on deck 8 - the Verandah Deck.
But who cares! You're on a cruise ship! And we had a balcony. Never, never get a room on a cruise ship without outside access. Even rooms with windows don't stand up to a balcony. You get a little seasick? Sea air fixes you right up!
That night we dined in the Pacific Dining Room, our assigned evening dinning area. You could come any time (as long as it was 5:45 pm) and sit anywhere you liked (as long as it was table 553). But the restrictions didn't matter, as the food was amazing. We had the same waiter and waiter's assistant every night, so we became quite familiar with them. They learned we liked extra warm bread, so always came by with a little more. They learned what we liked to drink, so were able to choose appropriate wine selections (we hadn't had our credit cut by this point, so could order a bottle). Lovely people.
Behind us was the singles table, where a dozen of the folks who came alone on the cruise were stuck. We felt a little embarrassed for them, being stuck at the loser table. But at least one of them was absolutely determined to not let it spoil his fun, and we saw him everywhere, enjoying everything. Good for him. After dinner, we trooped around the ship. We toured every deck, from bow to stern. We stuck our head in every bar (about as wide a range of styles as was possible), checked every pool and pinpointed every ice cream dispenser. We even discovered the quietly signed topless sunbathing deck. While we never saw anyone actually sunbathing topless the rest of the trip, we noticed a lot of men spent their time up there. Finally, we collapsed in our stateroom, filled out our breakfast order and stuck it on the doorknob (deciding to sleep in rather than brave the breakfast buffet lines) and turned the light out. Sleeping on a ship is...interesting. Some nights the rocking motion didn't bother me a bit - in fact, sometimes it rocked me to sleep. Other nights, especially once we turned north to come home, were not so good. I only needed Gravol one night.
Oooh. DJ Kevin. A DJ whose attention span is too short to allow an entire song to be played to the end, and who ensconces himself behind a glass wall so he doesn't have to take requests (prompting us to give him the slogan, 'Do not speak to DJ Kevin'. As in, 'Dance Mania with DJ Kevin! (Do not talk to DJ Kevin)). Also: the Club Arctic? Such a meat market. You wouldn't think to find a meat market on a cruise ship where most people brought their own partner, but there you go. We did poke out head into the other clubs. The huge and semi-theatre style Adriatic Lounge had a small group of people rockin' the karaoke. The Irish Sea Bar was closed and it's piano silent (we never saw it actually open the whole trip). The Black & Red Seas (a trippy place done in all blood red and black) had an awful live band and a couple drunks grooving on the dance floor. The Caspian Bar and the Aegean Bar were just bars with a bunch of guys on stools. At least the Trident Bar had TVs with Popular Sports being shown. And the Seven Seas always had someone on piano or a three-piece combo going on. That day we also sat in on our first Shore Excursion Briefing, where Julie, Your Cruise Director (actually, his name was Dana, but I couldn't resist referring to him as Julie the whole time) would give some useful information on where we were docking, and run through the various shore excursions available, for those people who didn't book them in advance like we did. Of course, they had cancelled the 'Pirates of the Caribbean Lobster Cruise' we were booked on, so we were looking for other options. A nice day.
We found out that it was not a requirement of the stewards' jobs to do this. They had started doing it unasked and it became a big thing. They even sell a book on how to do it yourself at home. Next week! Cozumel! Extreme heat! Dolphins! |
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from 8-Track Mind Tracked on June 9, 2005 09:48 AM |
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