10 ways to survive a cruise vacation- updated

Safety at Sea is normally a snooze-fest boring topic that few paid a lot of attention to up until now.  The grounding of Costa Concordia and the resulting loss of life alone are good reasons to pay attention during the safety drill held at the beginning of every cruise.  Add in the occasional reports of teen rape, drug dealers on board or suspected murder and we have good reason for a brief checklist that may very well keep you alive.

The facts are clear: cruise vacations are safe.  Of that there is no doubt.  In general.  Looking at the incidents of bad things happening on cruise ships the number is low.  But for those to whom bad things happened, their lives were altered forever as a result.  Still, planes crash from time to time but we pay little attention to the cabin attendants safety instructions at the beginning of a flight.  We assume safety

1. Pay attention during the safety drill.  This is not the time to be drunk or absent.  Ships commonly close bars a half-hour before safety drills take place.  I don’t know a drunk on the planet that can sober up in 30 minutes enough to receive, process and retain information that may very well save their life later that night…which is exactly the skill needed by many guests on the Costa Concordia. One of the most common comments from passengers on Costa Concordia is that they could not hear or understand the instructions.
2. Know where to go without instructions- When we hear the ship‘s whistle go off, hear an announcement over a public address system or simply get direction from a crew member, act on it.  Right then.  Do not wait around for others or count on seeing crew members placed strategically in places you can’t miss to guide you.  On Costa Concordia, those heading to muster stations on the side of the ship that was going down had to make other plans or they would not have gotten off the ship.  We often suggest memorizing the deck plans just as a way of efficiently knowing our way around the ship rather than bumping into walls and getting lost the first day or so.  This is one more good reason to memorize deck plans and know where your cabin (and thus the location of your life vests) is in relationship to other common areas of the ship.
3. Do your own safety drill- Inside every stateroom, as required by maritime law, is information on where to go when it is time to be at muster stations.  Normally, the only time we see this place is for the safety drill.  We think you should find this place and find alternate routes to it.  Imagine where you might be at any given time and find your way there.  If you are on a ship that stores life vests in the cabin,  know several ways to get to your cabin and then from your cabin to the muster station quickly and efficiently.  Again, knowing your way around the ship is essential.
4. Don’t visit crew areas of the ship- This sounds like a no-brainer, crossing over into the world marked “crew-only”, but here’s one good reason for it: While you are visiting with your new crew friend, you are surely not in your cabin and that would be a great time for some other crew member to get in and take your stuff. If you or someone you know is entering the crew-only world that’s a big red flag that something is wrong. Maybe that person is drinking too much and having an alcohol-induced crush on that handsome bartender with the charming accent.
5. Minors can and will buy booze and/or drugs ashore. Make no mistake; in most Caribbean ports of call there is no legal drinking age and sellers of everything from beer to hard drugs are as plentiful as the lovely scenery you see from the ship.  Getting it back on the ship is only about half a step harder than buying it too
6. Your wine added to a Shirley Temple makes for a great kiddie cocktail. There’s something to be said for setting a good example. Smuggling booze on to your cruise for the adults, in and of itself, is enough to open the door for teens to give it a try. Teens can and will sneak a bit of your hard-to-monitor box of wine.  You may recoil at the thought of wine mixed with Coke but they won’t
7. Keep an eye on the kids, at least a little bit.  The notion of cutting your teens loose on the first day of the cruise then seeing them again on the last day is a bad idea.  A cruise is a very flexible vacation option, offering everyone the opportunity to do just exactly what they want to do (or not do) that makes for a fun time.  Let them sleep in if they want to, hang out with other teens on the ship or even go ashore with others in a safe pack-size group.  That’s important for them to have a good time too.  Equally important is meeting up regularly throughout the sailing.-
8. Teens need to travel in a pack-I commonly encouraged our teen girls to travel in a pack with other nice kids (or kids who were sufficiently good at appearing to be nice kids)  from the ship.   Still, I remember one call in San Juan when one of them called me come get them from shore after the scene at Carlos and Charlies got uncomfortable.
9. Bring a Cell Phone- Odds are that in an emergency, either on the ship or ashore,  it will work.  The premium fee you may incur to make that call will be rendered meaningless if it avoids a bad situation.  Check with your cell phone service provider on rates, roaming fees and plans that may be available.   Walkie-talkies are a bad idea; you don’t really need or want to know where they are all the time and the devices themselves are annoying.   Royal Caribbean has phones you can rent on board, Disney is adding them as standard fare fleet-wide soon.
10. You have no money- Regardless of the truth, don’t talk about, flash, or seem as though you have money.  Going ashore? Leave the designer clothes, handbags and gadgets behind.  Need cash?  Get it from the ATM on the ship, not ashore. This is good advice for adults as well.   Believe me, everyone ashore already knows you are a tourist and probably have cash with you, they just don’t know how much.  Would-be robbers look for the fat, juicy wallets and hunger for more.

Here is just how badly things can go:
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• Chris Owen is a travel writer from Orlando Florida who shares frank, inside information about cruise vacations with travelers.
  Chris can also be found at Gadling.com, writing about a variety of travel topics like these recent posts:
  

Flickr photo by The Shopping Sherpa

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