Yes, absolutely, that is why I started this ironic thread.
I grew up during the Great Depression, served in WWII and the Korean war, struggled mightily for years to reach economic stability. For years all we could afford was camping trips on vacations, and I have yet to have the means to afford a cruise. Thus it is difficult for me to understand all the blather about this.
Yes it was in inconvenience for the passengers, and most took it in stride, but the whiners just did not break my heart somehow. I can make a long list of much worse things that have happened to me in my 83 years on the planet,
It was covered pretty extensively in Northern California, and none of it made it sound like something worse than Somalia, nor did I hear a lot of whining. I did read about hour long lines to get any food, and that the passengers (who are usually not the youngest sort) having to walk up 8 flights of stairs to get to the food. They also had to carry up people in wheel chairs.
They were lucky it wasn’t very hot. Unless you have a balcony, the ventilation in a cabin is not so good. I have no doubt the LA TV stations made it seem worse, but they make a one room house fire seem like the biggest inferno since Dresden. Here the story was the crew doing the best they could and the people bearing up the best they could.
I think that Carnival did a great job with their offer, but still it wasn’t an optimal situation. Getting a free cruise to make up for a sucky one doesn’t make the sucky one any less sucky.
I was on a cruise a few years ago, and I’m imagining what it would have been like without electricity. Our room was on the lowest deck, and didn’t have a window. It was impossible to distinguish night from day when we were in it, and I found that to be disturbing enough. I didn’t realize how much I rely on windows until then. To have to stay in it with no lights would have been a drag. To have to walk up 6 flights of steps – in the dark – to get to an open deck would have been a drag. If there was emergency lighting that would have made it better, but I’m not sure there was any. Someone in the article mentioned having to read by flashlight.
Yeah, stuck on a cruise ship, boo hoo. But I’d much rather stay home than deal with that.
Look, if I’m on a cruise ship and it turns into “four days floating around at sea with no power and limited food,” and then a news reporter sticks a microphone into my face and asks me what I think, I’m not going to think, “Well, gee, my experience certainly wasn’t worse than that of a starving person in Haiti, so I should probably not complain about this at all.” I’m going to tell the reporter the truth, which is that it sucked. Situations are allowed to suck even if there are worse situations elsewhere in the world.
Also, I can’t afford a cruise either, but if I could, and paid all of the money for a fun cruise vacation, and then wound up bailing out my toilet with a cup, I think I’d be rather irked. Yeah, hurr hurr it’s just like camping, but you didn’t pay cruise ship prices and anticipate an ocean cruise when you packed up your tent, did you?
We go camping all the time. When we go camping, that’s what I’m in the mood for and am prepared for. When it gets bad (like days of torrential rain, for example) we get to leave! If our food supply got trashed, we can leave!
These folks were trapped in really a crappy situation, that was not their own decision, that they couldn’t leave from. It sucks and I feel bad for them.
Hey, I feel badly for them, too. I just don’t think it was as horrific as some news reporters are making it out to be.
But, then again, everything is overly dramatic these days. Each local news program starts out with a “Breaking Story!” – and these stories range from the mundane to the truly mundane.
Do you think it deserves to lead every single news bulletin for three days straight (which it did here in SD), with extensive coverage of the towing, the arrival, the disembarking, and multiple interviews?
This is about the coverage, not really about the people themselves. The media has a fucked up set of priorities, and this is just the latest manifestation. Just like earlier this year, when a Chilean earthquake that killed over 500 people got about a three minutes of attention, and a Chilean mine collapse where 33 people were rescued attracted thousands of international reporters and created hundreds of hours of coverage.
I will grant you that that sort of saturation-level news coverage would get really old. This thread is actually the first I’d heard about this whole thing. But still, direct your ire towards the news organizations, not the passengers. It’s really not that outrageous to complain about not having hot food or working toilets on what was supposed to be your cruise vacation.
I’m glad that it got news coverage, but I seemed to miss the media frenzy. I saw a maybe two minute story about it on the news last night, a couple of hours after I heard about it from a friend.
You mean they give us the stories that they think will make them the most money. I know the media hasn’t asked me what I want but they always try to blame me (as a member of the public) whenever anyone questions their motives and/or skill.
When i said “this is about the coverage,” i was talking about my own take on the issue, not about what random other people might care about. Plenty of people in this thread have made very clear that the coverage is precisely what they’re talking about.
WTF ever. You quoted my comment, which had nothing to do with your thoughts on the news coverage. I never voiced an opinion one way or another about the level of news coverage.
This is why I’ll always save an extra year for that cabin with a balcony. Both cruises I’ve been on were booked with the least expensive balcony cabin we could find, but worth every single hard-saved penny. I probably won’t afford any more cruises anyway, but if I decide I must go on another one, there’s not a chance I’ll be in a room without outside access!
For all of those with interior or lower-deck rooms, I can understand how crappy a time they must have had. A total, life-changing disaster? Of course not, but really, really, crappy, and fodder for many a story for many a year to come!