Hoop Snake

Sunday, 21 December 2008 – Boulder, CO

Just as the hoop snake completes its circle, the Ouroboros eats its own tail to roll along, and as the luxury small ship cruise lines ruin their businesses by copying each others’ poor policy decisions, my 20,000+ mile kind of circle was completed early this morning. The virtual end of the full seven days at sea from the Marquises Islands (minus the 1½ hours lost due to time zone changes) was ended the morning a day before arrival in LA by the coast of Baja California showing up on the Mariner’s guest GPS display. I kind of will miss the system’s quirky locking up for one or two minutes out of every three, making my compulsive monitoring of my calculated 17.32 knots required to arrive on time a bit more difficult. We were still far out of sea, with a day to go 100 miles or so west of the shark infested 200 miles SW of San Diego Isla de Guadalupe, but it was still nice to see something on the display other than a blue rectangle with a usually locked but should be pulsating circle to indicate our position. Saturday morning’s view from the Christmas Tree decorated Observation Lounge of oil platforms and porpoises indicated that the LA coast couldn’t be far. Actually it wasn’t. An elderly gentleman asked me at coffee what the island we were passing was. I told him it was Catalina Island and that we therefore must be 26 miles across the sea. He said, “Huh?” Another early morning coffee drinker helped the other gentleman out by shouting one word very loudly. The word was, “Wrigley”. That clarified the situation, by gum. At long last we entered the break water that allows access to the San Pedro Harbor, went under the Long Beach Bridge to turn around, and then dock in the same berth that Silver Shadow sailed from in September. With that I completed my 56 days of luxury cruise sailing this Fall. The Los Angeles cruise terminal was empty the day we sailed so long ago, but this arrival was packed with two other considerably larger cruise ships including the Tahitian Princess, so named because it is larger than Tahiti. This ship has a crew pool plus two Jacuzzis. Honest. You can see it in from out at sea in the picture above, the ship if not the hot tubs.

We docked about 10:30 am, a half hour late (not due to the sick propulsion motor because we spent the time turning around to the left under the bridge) but because that’s what we did. No reason to rush. A matter of fact, it took an hour for the gangway to be attached by a guy on the pier using a fork lift truck as hundreds of porters and dozens of US Immigration officials stood around looking bored, and then another hour and a half as the passenger luggage was unloaded between unions disputes and passengers fainting from lack of food or water in all the lounges we were obliged to wait in as the cabins were reconfigured for the new embarking guests. I suggested to the Assistant Cruise Director, a lovely South African woman, that perhaps some water bottles might be made available as no attendants were anywhere—they were moving luggage—and she said (really), “Your cruise is over, sir, so we stopped all service FOR YOU folks.” Fortunately, Ray appeared to break up the fist fight that was about to ensue. I guess I was worried about missing my 2:32 pm flight since it was now after noon and we--the "black tag" group with the early transfer to LAX--still were not be allowed to disembark. ICE was characteristically silly, welcoming some of us back warmly to the USA but delaying stamping passports by asking others various questions about their lives to root out those bent on mayhem who would cleverly take a Regent Cruise for 19 days from New Zealand as a means of getting into the US, perhaps smuggling plastique in their cummerbunds.

The planned 2 hour mid afternoon non-stop flight back to Denver was perhaps the selling point or at least one of the primary reasons I booked this cruise after all those overnight 14 hour flights with connections in LA or Washington DC. The thought of a quick flight home from only 1 hour time zone difference was just too good to pass up (along with the discounted fare, small single supplement, and a chance to try out a different product that I had such connections to). My 2:32 pm two hour flight scheduled to arrive in Denver before 6 pm finally actually shut the doors at 8:15 pm LA time, 6 hours late! This considerable delay was due to a pilot who said he wanted to “make those xxxxx mechanics finally do their job” which they didn’t do, and then a change of planes which United Airlines did do, but not quickly. Then Denver airport being closed down from an additional hour due to a PLANE CRASH which added more delays. The friendly staff at the Red Carpet Club at LAX volunteered to a delayed passenger, “There are no seats available to Denver, sir, until the 4^th of January. Would you like a vacation in LA?” But with the help of a friend who picked me up at the airport I arrived home at 1:15 am this morning from yesterday morning’s arrival in LA. So much for basing a cruise on simple travel home from the ship.

Indulge me with one more comment on my comments about Regent’s Mariner versus Silversea’s Silver Shadow. They both provide similar value in the very high end of cruising—think Hyatt Regency (get it?) versus Ritz Carlton* or either on a good/bad day. Mariner is a nicer, newer ship, with very similar guest accommodations, but Silversea’s ships provide a higher level of consistent service. Food is comparable as is entertainment and other facilities. Both lines provide “all inclusive” products, that is with open seating in the restaurants, no tipping, and free wine and spirits throughout the ship. If you haven’t tried these experiences, as an over trained pool attendant said to a woman on the last cruise as he handed her a small paper napkin, “Enjoy”.

*Regent Seven Seas Cruise Lines started as the single ship Seven Seas Cruises owned by the massive K-Line shipping company of Japan. The ship was the 170 guest (later increased to 180 guest) Song of Flower, a ship that meant a lot to me as most of you know. Radisson Hotels, which is owned by the Carlton Travel Group, took over Song of Flower and added the twin hulled Radisson Diamond and then built the somewhat bigger Navigator and then the 700 guest Mariner and Voyager plus operates for one more year the Paul Gauguin, the ship I visited in Bora Bora. Flower was sold more than a half dozen years ago to a French company who renamed it M.S. Le Diamant, and the Radisson Diamond was sold to the Chinese company, Star, that now uses it as a gambling ship moored in Hong Kong Harbour. The pool is used to collect garbage I was told. Carlson renamed Radisson Seven Seas Cruise Line to Regent Seven Seas Cruise Line a year or two ago when they realized that Radisson had become a lower level brand of theirs and Regent was one of their top brands. Carlson just sold Regent cruise business to the privately owned Apollo Group which runs Oceania Cruises, a pretty good but definitely more mass market product. Silversea remains privately owned. All the guests and many of the professional staff on both my recent cruises are most worried about the stability of the luxury cruise industry because of, 1) the world wide economy is tanking (in the words of Joe Biden this weekend), 2) the private owners can pull the plug or change the product without notice or explanation, even on a whim, 3) these lines have very few ships each—usually no more than 4 or so small vessels but a huge cash flow with such high almost 1:1 crew to passenger ratios, and 4) the lines' names (Silversea, Seven Seas, Seaborne, and Sea Dream) all start with the letter “S”, just like mattress brands. Now you know.