Saturday Oct. 5, 2019 Carnival Journeys 24 day Cruise L.A. -Singapore

Leaving my husband at home alone once again and that’s what he wanted to do. I will be cruising alone in an ocean view cabin that I had to pay double for. But dems da breaks; he’s not into cruising having worked most of his life on ships and doesn’t care to step on one again. Actually he had also said he doesn’t want to fly anywhere again so I guess it’s a combination of both. However, he also did say he might be up for an Alaska cruise “sometime” and so would i. If it happens it’ll be my 6th  Alaska cruise and yes, it’s a fav and always a treat to experience Alaska again.  Alaska gets in your blood and it grows on you and there’s no such thing as going too often because it’s always different. For me, seeing the effects of global warming in Alaska is truly disastrous and I’ve seen it happening right before my eyes. It makes me so sad, but I’m compelled to witness it. I hope somehow this can be stopped and fixed or soon there’ll be nothing left.

But first the Splendor! This ship of 113,300 tonnage sailed on her maiden voyage in 2008. She has capacity for more passengers than what she looks like in pics. There’s nothing like seeing your cruise ship for the first time in person and maybe she’ll look bigger when I see her. I love big ships but it’s ironic because as I’m getting older and can’t walk far anymore now is the time I’m choosing to cruise on the big ships when I should be doing the opposite.

One of Splendors special attributes is a retractable dome cover over the pool deck. I’ve only ever cruised on one other that had this and that was a HAL ship to Alaska. Passengers can swim whether it’s balmy or not and at night by the pool there’s the Dive In movies under the stars every night.

Splendor has 13 decks and with about 4000 passengers there’s lots of quiet spaces and no feeling of being crowded. But, from what I’ve read her decor is quite overwhelming with outlandish designs and huge chandeliers, bright pink moldings and couches and has been called The Pink Ship.  I like pink. I think. Time will tell,lol, she sounds like a character I might like.

I will have a friend onboard the Splendor; Annie from Las Vegas who was my cabin mate last year and she is sharing her cabin with another friend this time. I expect to meet lots of new friends on this cruise and judging from the Facebook group page they’re a real fun bunch arriving from all over the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan and beyond. I’ve joined the groups to play cribbage and other card games as well as games such as Yahtzee, Monopoly as well as others like LRC and I’m curious to learn some new ones like Euchre which I googled and it sounds quite difficult. I’ll participate in the  scavenger hunt, slot tournaments and looking for and finding rubber ducks, I’ll sit in the mornings with the ladies doing their knitting and crochet and although I’m pretty rusty with the hook I think it’ll all come back to me.  I even have some patterns picked out that I found for free on the internet. The big difference about this and I’m not sure yet if I’ll tell the others that my patterns are for dishrags or to tell them the truth. Would you believe I got the bright idea to crochet items that would work for me like stencils for my Gelli printing. I think it’ll sound bizarre especially for those who haven’t heard of it and of course they don’t need to know the truth and because it sounds a little nutty maybe i should just keep my mouth shut.

I know everyone onboard is going to be excited to be the first passengers on Carnivals longest cruise so far. Who knew that 24 days could or would be their longest? So many ships do dbl, triple and beyond that these days but those are what’s called btb  which is back to back cruises. My cruise last year was a btb which meant a lot of passengers boarded in Vancouver and departed in Japan a couple weeks later but I stayed onboard and cruised along with a couple hundred btb’ers and all the new passengers that got on in Japan to the final port of Singapore where she went into dry dock. I have only a tiny worry and that is that this ship is on its way to dry dock so maybe not exactly in tip top shape. She is a fairly old gal from 2008 and has had a slightly scary past and who knows what might happen to a ship on any journey. The excitement grows and I’m prepared come hell or high water.

Splendor won the Cruisers Choice Award for best shore excursions 2019. I’ve chosen just one excursion with Carnival and two others with outside companies and that was before I knew this fact. My cabin is an ocean view port side on deck one and fairly close to the water but close to midship which will be nice. This will be my first solo cruise. Not used to travelling  alone so hoping I can handle it. I am still at home writing this, passing time until I head for the airport at 4a.m. for my 7a.m. flight to LA. If all goes according to Hoyle I’ll be in LA shortly after 10a.m and I’ll get my luggage and find the shuttle to get to the port which is about an hours drive from the airport. My designated boarding time is from 12:30 -1:30pm. Nicely arranged by Carnival Cruiselines, thank you very much!

Well, it wasn’t quite that easy.The flight was ok except that i was cold and shivering for most of it and I was afraid I would fall or get pneumonia again or something because my feet were numb but I didn’t. Landing, getting my luggage and finding my transfer bus went smoothly. Boarding the ship was horrible. Excuses were that this being a “Journeys” cruise made for a lot of different rules too lengthy to get in to here. But the facts were that it must have been the worst embarkation in the history of cruising in this world. I arrived at the port before noon and wasn’t able to get onboard until almost 4 p.m. That was just plain crazy and very tiresome for me. Apparently there were over a thousand passengers in the “elite” category and that slowed everything to a crawl getting them onboard first. Then the employees who handle the handicapped passengers were given new rules they had to follow although most of the rules were really obviously stupid. They had to work at a snails pace and by the time it was my turn the whole thing became ridiculous with a lot of angry passengers. Now onboard there’s been a million apologies given but somehow no reasons or excuses for the whole incident. Like me, I’m sure most people will forgive and forget the whole thing as we all get into our cruising mode. I do feel a little bitter; I was one of many who had to spend way too much time standing which is hard for me to do especially when it could have been easily avoided with simple little changes. 

Right now it’s only 8pm and I’m in my cabin in my pj’s already. It all just took the joy and excitement right out of me. Oh well, tomorrow’s a new day and I’ll  get over it and start meeting people and enjoying this beautiful Splendor ship.