Where Are We Now?: Oasis Of The Seas

Showing posts with label Oasis Of The Seas. Show all posts

Monday, 6 November 2017

Back on dry land

So that was it, my first ever cruise. Seven days, three stops and over 2500 nautical miles travelled (or 3000 miles by very clever car). In maritime adventure terms, though, this was a mere Sunday afternoon drive. However, being my maiden voyage I had a limited idea of what a "voyage" would actually be like (my scope of knowledge being limited to cross-Channel school trips by car ferry, Sir Walter Raleigh's discovery of the potato, the Royal Navy travelling for several weeks to deal with the Argies in the South Atlantic, and Captain Kirk and the Enterprise and its five-year mission to boldly go where no toupee had gone before).

To some extent this spin around the Caribbean was not a lot more than an extended stay at a floating version of a Las Vegas 'resort' hotel, with the Oasis Of The Seas providing a dizzying enclosure containing 17 restaurants and 11 bars, four luxury brand boutiques, a running track, four swimming pools, six jacuzzis, an ice skating rink, yoga classes on the helipad, a casino, an open-air cinema which also doubles as a water show, and around 6,000 'guests' using 24 elevators (more of which later...).

The key difference, however, between Vegas and the Oasis is what you can do when the ship sails into a port. The choice of shore excursions is bewilderingly impressive, although the extensive options include plenty of premium-priced days out, some of which could set you back up to $145 each - heavy going if you're travelling as a family.

Plenty, though, are just happy to get off the boat for a bit to go shopping. Our final shore stop, Cozumel in Mexico, is a case in point. I say 'Mexico', but Cozumel is an island south of Cancún, and hardly representative of the whole country. There are long-distance excursions on offer, such as Jeep tours of Mayan ruins or dolphin encounters, but most of the disgorged passengers (including this one) seem content with heading straight for country star Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville chain restaurant to chug a giant cocktail and a burger, or do a quick whip round the shopping centre for jewellery bargains (a similar concept to the cruise terminal shops in Falmouth).

Cozumel is also a hub for these giant cruise ships: it's hard not use superlatives like "majestic" when you see several of these beautiful, gleaming boats berthed together. On our stop I counted five of them, including our own and its sister, Liberty Of The Seas from Royal Caribbean, and three from the Carnival line. The cruise industry is so competitive that you can't help but looking across at another ship and making comparisons of which had the nicer sun deck or the better looking swimming pools. That's also when you realise that the ridiculous number of facilities touted in the marketing blurb is all about breeding cruise line loyalty and even the sort of attachment to individual ships that people have for hotels.

But back to the shore visits. As with Haiti and Jamaica, you’d be hard pressed to feel like you’d absorbed Mexico for the day, but on the other hand, a day of pure indulgence in the sunshine, with some booze and retail therapy thrown in for good measure, is what holidays should be about. At the end of the day that's precisely what this cruise has been for the 6,000 on board. Some have been perfectly content to spend all seven days on a lounger doing nothing more strenuous than watching clouds skud overhead. Others have been on the gangplank at the first opportunity, like D-Day commandos champing to get ashore to zipline/kitesurf/snorkel/insert_activity_here.

And if truth be told, the shore visits provide freedom from a form of claustrophobia. That might sound mad for a ship as big as Oasis, but even in an 18-deck, 1100 foot-long gargantuan like this one, 6,000 people can very soon get on top of each other. On Saturday, our final full day at sea, with the sun playing hide-and-seek as we cut between Cuba and the Florida Keys, a shopping frenzy broke out in the 'Royal Promenade' as a rank of jewellery stands turned it into a ship-borne Hatton Garden. Like duty free catalogues on planes, there is a suggested glamour about it all, but the close-up reality is less so, with the laid out ‘designer’ watches and handbags looking more Peckham Market than upmarket.

With this retail feeding frenzy came zoo conditions as people, desperate for a bargain, stepped over their own to get to the front of the queues. This, then, leads me to the less savoury aspect of this trip: manners. We Brits are said to be distinguished by our observance of good etiquette, so the absence of it on board comes as an abrupt shock. Such is the urgency with which people have to get to their next meal or to the handbag sale that Ps, Qs and a basic "excuse me" suddenly become abandoned. I'm sure these same people are perfectly civil at home, or when out at the supermarket, but somehow a pre-paid floating resort experience gives them a sense of entitlement.

Nowhere is this more so than in the lifts. I mentioned this in my post the other day, but as the week has worn on, elevator etiquette has disappeared altogether. The 24 lifts on the Oasis never seem to be working all at once, which means the fight for space is excruciating. At meal times or any other peak period of inter-deck travel the lack of common courtesy is almost comically bad. Royal Caribbean claims the average age of its cruise passengers is 48, but on evidence of these last few days, I'd say it's at least 78, and these 'seniors' are a sturdy bunch. What they lack in walking speed they make up for in sheer bloody-mindedness to get to the front for coffee, discounted leather goods, free pizza - you name it.

I could go on about the elderly and their lack of manners (or lack of bipedal speed), but I can hear a voice at the back of my head saying "that'll be you some day". As I approach 50 on Saturday I sincerely hope that I don't become that discourteous or even that desperate to eat before 6pm, but then that also raises the question of whether I'd take a cruise again. I'll defer that for now. Because I know - and you know - that whether you're on a cruise ship or at the Get Lucky Big Casino Resort & Hotel in Las Vegas, there will still be an octogenarian riot for the Early Bird Special Buffet and there will still be a traffic jam of mobility scooters queuing to get into the breakfast cafes. Likewise the hotels of Benidorm and Magaluf.

Again, as I stressed a few days ago, I don't wish to appear a holiday snob. I just prefer a more genteel meal experience, and being someone who uses public transport to get to work, I like a holiday where I don't have to let a lift go because it's overfull, and I'll take the next one. Or next but one...

Despite all this, as I settle into my final stop - an airport hotel in Orlando - I definitely feel more relaxed than when I arrived here, which surely is what a holiday should achieve. But where does this come from? How can the technicolour maelstrom that has been life aboard the Oasis Of The Seas be anything like relaxing? It's quite simple, and it covers two-thirds of this planet's surface. Sitting on my 'stateroom' balcony at various times over the last seven days, with nothing but ocean all around us, I have been rendered utterly placid. Normally on holiday I will spend most of it with headphones clamped to my head listening to music. I've just realised that I haven't touched my headphones since the flight over from London. The ocean has been all the soundtrack I've needed when I've needed escape from the hubbub onboard.

Living next to the Thames in Greenwich for the last year, I have come to appreciate the power of water, that commodity, essential to all life. When I need some meditation time, I will grab a coffee from Costa and just sit on the wall near my flat, watching the river go by. Over this last week, I've done the same, albeit with an entire ocean going past. And whether it's the sea air or the sense of perpetual motion, I have found peace and an almost zen-like calm. That, for those who've been asking, is my takeout from my inaugural cruise. It's not about the "dining experiences", or the amusement factor of an ice skating rink at sea on a ship touring the Caribbean. It's not even about the wonderful, entertaining company I've been fortunate to keep during this trip.

No, it's about the ocean. So here's my tip, if you're going to go on a cruise (and there's nothing that says you shouldn't), get a cabin with an exterior balcony.

Thursday, 2 November 2017

Jamaica, in

“Jamaica? No, she came of her own accord”. Sorry, had to get that out of the way. Yes, we have arrived in the aforementioned island, home to reggae, Bob Marley, Usain Bolt, implausible bobsleigh teams and a colonial history that, being European and, particularly, English, I have nothing to be proud of.

I say I’m "in" Jamaica (or is it on?), but if the truth be told I’ve ventured less than a quarter of a mile into the country (and half of that was walking off the boat and through a sort-of border post) and only as far as the Falmouth cruise terminal. This is, essentially, a prison exercise yard for cruise passengers, branded 'Red Stripe Beach', with rival ships from the Royal Caribbean and Disney lines offloading their human cargos to spend a day wandering around assorted local 'craft' and jewellery shops (i.e. tat), buying rum, drinking Red Stripe and chowing down on Jamaican pies (basically, Cornish pasties, and the fact it is in a town named after Cornwall's Falmouth is not lost, either).

For those feeling particularly adventurous, seven-hour, heavily-escorted bus excursions to Bob Marley's house or Montego Bay - presumably to also buy Marley-themed comedy Rasta wig combos, rum and packets of rum cake - are also on offer at the terminal. If I'd been feeling brave I would have hired a taxi to Goldeneye, Ian Fleming's estate (which he first occupied following a stint in British Naval Intelligence on the island and from which James Bond was inspired). But having spent much of my last holiday scampering after Bond filming locations in Sardinia, I chose a more sedate day in Jamaica, a decision helped by it being exceedingly warm and humid. So, no to Dr. No. As it was, when I ventured outside the cruise terminal's gates for no more than ten yards I was accosted by a gentlemen offering me "a smoke". I safely assumed it wasn’t going to be a Marlboro Light.

Today's brief land invasion did, however, serve a purpose that the cruise lines have noticed themselves, especially amongst younger passengers, that the cruise stopover agenda is a sort of tapas tasting plate of destinations. Our Haitian and Jamaican visits could hardly be described as immersive, new land experiences, but the warm waters of Haiti and the almost cartoon-like whirl around a tiny triangle of Jamaica provided some flavour of these Caribbean islands, if only a taste as expansive as being handed a sample of cheese in a supermarket. But as someone who has mostly holidayed in either the US or the Mediterranean, I’m suddenly awake to the idea of Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua or any other of the recently storm-beaten paradise isles that live in this parish. All those idyllic beaches and swimming in bath-temperature seas, cocktail-infused nights and laid-back vibes. These are all, of course, horrendous cliches straight from the brochure, but having seen a little of it, it's not all that out of reach.

Tomorrow we reach Cozumel in Mexico, another purpose-built resort owned by the Royal Caribbean line, and much like Falmouth, a well controlled destination. There will be on offer bus tours to Mayan ruins, ATV adventures and opportunities (for a price) to swim with dolphins. Nothing at all that would bring one in contact with Mexico's worsening darker side. In fact, an enormous smorgasbord of activities which, should you be so inclined and have the funds at your disposal, can enable you to spend an entire day "in" Mexico. But, like visiting a zoo, there’s never any danger of being allowed on the other side of the reinforced glass. I must admit, though, as much as planned activities aren’t exactly my cup of tea, you can’t say you don't have the opportunity to see these countries in some part during the stopover. For some, they enable a sip of somewhere new. For others, it’s an excuse to spend the day dozing on the sun deck of this giant floating hotel, absorbing another paperback and occasionally trotting up to the bar for a cold one. Each to their own.

Wednesday, 1 November 2017

Island life

Yesterday morning the Oasis Of The Seas arrived in Haiti, and for this cruise newcomer it was a unique experience, waking up with an entire country hoving into view. Now, I know that anyone who has flown anywhere - including myself - will have experienced this novelty many times, but ideally from 38,000 feet. To see, for the first time, the trees, mountains and beaches of a ‘new’ country from the deck of a boat is something to savour.

It sounds corny - actually, it is corny - but you can’t help thinking what the early European explorers must have been like, casting first sight on the white sands of these islands (obviously, before claiming them in the name of the colonial power that sent them). Haiti, which shares an island with the Dominican Republic, is where Christopher Columbus is said to have landed in 1492, in his pre-GPS attempt to find Asia. "D'oh!" is, I believe, the appropriate comment. Columbus' 'discovery' was the 15th century equivalent of a truck driver misreading his satnav and getting wedged under a railway bridge. After running his ship aground near what is now the town of Limonade (Prop. R.White?), Columbus set about creating the first European settlement in the Americas - ‘La Navidad’, named after Christmas Day, the day they arrived. The rest, as they say, is history, from Columbus to Trump.

Somewhere in that timeline evolved the American cruise passenger, a creature with a recognisable descendency from the early settlers. Bold, fearless and fully prepared to consume all that lies in front of them. Just as those early pioneers felt no fear from a strange land with strange flora and fauna, the cruise passenger is unperturbed by a full elevator (a phrase I must use instead of "lift" as I am technically on American soil). There are 24 elevators on the Oasis serving its passenger decks and they are in constant use, shuttling the blessed 6,000 between decks, free food and sundry entertainments. Despite this, these elevators are rarely empty. Indeed, such is the demand, if there’s a gap - no matter how minuscule - people will cram in. Most notably this affront to good manners is at its worst amongst the more 'senior' passengers, who pile in like the front row of a rugby scrum, as if it was the last ride out of town and the buffet was about to close. This is often accompanied by a "Don’t mind me, dear", as a little old lady flattens you against the elevator's wall.

Even for a ship this size (for comparison, it is almost 200 feet longer than the Royal Navy's new 'super' aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth), it can become claustrophobic. There are, simply, people everywhere, usually moving slowly in packs seeking sustenance. The platoons of mobility scooters alone create urban rush hour conditions (early morning traffic reports: "There are brake lights all the way up to the entrance to the Windjammer Marketplace...!"). The vast Windjammer restaurant spans the entire width of the ship's crown on Deck 16 and during breakfast it resembles the Florida alligator farm I visited two years ago - a lot of leathery looking creatures circling each other in the hunt for food and a coffee tank not on its last dregs. This swirl of humanity at 7am can be overwhelming, especially if your idea of holiday bliss is a Tuscan village, empty in the searing afternoon heat.

This is why the shore stops are very welcome. Arriving in Haiti was a welcome reminder that cruising is as much about arriving as travelling, and not just about lying on a topside sun lounger as vivid blue ocean gushes past. The opportunity to go ashore was too good to decline, especially with access to a cabana on a private beach. In my ever-expanding list of holiday preferences, I'm not naturally a beach person, but the novelty value of these 'off world' excursions is that you get some sand between your toes, take a swim in warm ocean and look across the bay to the boat you arrived on. Momentarily you feel like you've visited the island, even if you haven't, actually, gone any further than the boundaries of a private resort owned by the company that owns the boat itself.

Over the course of seven days, we will have visited three countries - Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico. This, in itself, is not so strange for someone who has many times driven from Amsterdam to London through the Netherlands, Belgium and France. But even though this isn't the grandest of voyages - there's only so far you can go in seven days at sea - it's not without its adventure. Much of this comes at a premium, with an eye-watering array of shore excursions offering everything from zip-lining and kayaking, to dolphin encounters. Given the prevailing demographic on board, the shopping trips and wine tasting trips are probably the more popular. Cynical as it's easy to be about all this activity, and the sensual overload that being on this boat is, you have to remind yourself that you are, essentially, on board a giant holiday camp. In 1950s Britain, it would have been a daily regimen of knobbly knees contests and questionable beauty pageants; here, it's prize-bearing Halloween parades (in which people really do go the distance to dress up), karaoke contests and an at-sea casino where hundreds of dollars appear to be gambled - and lost - with crazy abandon.

For me, it's been illuminating so far and a truly fascinating exercise in people watching, too. Every American stereotype is on board, all - it would appear - having an exceedingly good time. As I write we have just docked in Falmouth, Jamaica. Named after the Cornish port, of course, and - according to the weather forecast, likely to be as inclement as every childhood holiday I had in Cornwall. Bring it on.

Monday, 30 October 2017

Cruise Control

I’ll be honest, a Caribbean cruise had not really been on my ‘Things To Do Before You’re 50’ list. But on the basis of ‘why not?’ I said, “why not?”, and now find myself at the aft end of Deck 14 (or the "14th floor", as I like to call it) of a ship measuring almost a quarter of a mile long and towering 236ft above the water, amongst 6,000 other passengers and 12,000 plants and 56 living, breathing trees, watching the sea, the occasional tropical island and, hopefully, a few whales and dolphins float past.

With the approach of my 50th year on this planet, the opportunity to see a new part of it while travelling at a sedate 21 knots an hour seemed like a perfect convergence. Admittedly, though, the idea of being on a boat with more than 8,000 people, crew included, is not my normal idea of a holiday: I’m someone who gets people-phobic in a hotel with more than one lift, and I would not, normally, go to a resort offering all-you-can eat dining and a demographic that could realistically enable the staging of mobility scooter races around the half-mile running track on Deck 5, with a grid size not far off the 22 vehicles that start a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

This might sound snobbish, but I assure you it is not. I just - normally - prefer more holidays which don't require dressing up and in which I have the freedom to explore places in my own time or simply do nothing, without having to queue to sit down for dinner at a set time because of a system. So, to be at sea for seven days amongst a population similar in size to that of a small town is certainly out of my comfort zone. And to be on an itinerary whereby whole days elapse without the scenery changing much from, simply, blue ocean seems counter-intuitive. But that should be exactly what I’m doing, 13 days before I turn 50: a new experience, a new vista.

Cruising is, today, far from some Hemingway-esque exercise in rugged adventure it may have once been seen to be. Nor is it anything like Carry On Cruising or The Love Boat, my two sole reference points (carefully removing Titanic from that frame) - a never-ending programme of mass keep-fit sessions and deck quoits, with occasional bouts of projectile vomiting. Cruise ships today come with celeb-chef restaurants, sky-diving simulation machines, casinos and designer brand boutiques. Mine - Royal Caribbean’s vast Oasis Of The Seas - has an ice-skating rink, it's own English pub, a production of Cats, two rock-climbing walls, and more dining options than I actually know what to do with. Cruising is also no longer the preserve of the elderly (though the age group on this boat is definitely skewed somewhere considerably north of my own...). Indeed, the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association claims that cruisers are getting younger, with Millennials and Generation X-age passengers choosing cruise holidays over land-based breaks. Indeed these two groups, according to the FCCA, like cruising as a means of ‘sampling’ destinations for later and longer trips.

That said, it's hard - yet - to get a full idea of who is on this boat, such is the enormity of its human cargo. Boarding was relatively - and reassuringly - quick, through the logistics must be astonishing: if you know how chaotic boarding a Boeing 747 can be, imagine more than ten times that number pitching up at Port Canaveral in Florida, in scenes resembling the Ellis Island sequence in The Godfather Part II. Credit, though, to Royal Caribbean: it all works.

Once on board it takes time for the newbie to get acclimatised. For a start, there’s the sheer scale of the boat. Oasis Of The Seas was, when launched in 2009, the largest cruise vessel in the world, and even with bigger ships coming into use, it still beggars belief. I could probably spend my entire week exploring it and still not cover everything. And that’s the point: these cruise ships are an exercise in over-consumption, and you pay the privilege for it.

The cruise industry is a big, $40 billion-per-year business. The major cruise lines will invest almost $5 billion this year alone in new ships and services, and their 23 million passengers will spend more than $3 billion at the various destinations the ships call into. The US accounts for roughly half those passengers, and with a predominantly American clientele on board this ship, it’s easy to see how. Not for nothing is the baseball cap the predominant headgear, and the capped-sleeve T-shirt very much in evidence. Cruising draws a loyal crowd: the average passenger on one of these big US-based ships will have taken more than five cruises as an adult prior to the current trip, and that’s certainly borne out by the people I’m travelling with on this seven-day voyage around the Caribbean, which will take me to Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico before returning to Florida. And that, in itself, is a statement I couldn’t imagine making before: a "voyage".

Ever since humankind first discovered that a felled tree could float, we've been exploring these oceans, crossing them, migrating via them, discovering new countries, subjugating their indigenous incumbents, trading with them, exploiting their resources and more. So I can hardly claim, at the end of October 2017, to be Columbus. But, after 24 hours on board and almost 24 hours at sea on the first leg of the trip, with nothing but endless ocean outside of my cabin, and hot-and-cold-running buffet seemingly available around the clock on the interior of this floating town, I’m starting to see the attraction.

Yes, you can indulge in a daily curriculum that includes Martini lessons, karaoke, jazz guitar instruction, “fun” activities around the pool and a machine dispensing Coca-Cola simply by holding up a cup with an embedded chip in it; or you can lie on a sun lounger surrounded by others exposing their equally pale, flabby flesh to the sky, just dozing to the rhythm of a ship at sea, occasionally dropping anchor to indulge in beach life and local craft stalls for a few hours before returning to the onboard buffet and casino. And despite the size of this ship, with its battalions of 'seniors' moving at a sluggish pace in search of food at 5pm, or the gaudiness and volume of the entertainment options, there is also a peace and calm to be found, that I'm enjoying from my balcony overlooking water of an almost unreal blue. The only sound being the gentle chug of engines and water washing against the hull. In fact, it really is most relaxing.

Tomorrow we stop spend a few hours in Haiti, a country I know principally for its natural disasters, its murderous father-and-son dictators ‘Papa Doc’ and ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, and being the back story of Steely Dan’s Haitian Divorce. I have a lot to learn. Welcome to the new order.