Ending a Cruise Early

Yesterday while I was feeling sorry for myself, I began whining about the cruise again. I would up going down a semi-humorous, semi-morbid path. (There's a name for that, isn't there? Lately I've had terrible vocab recall. I think anxiety really screws with the ol' brain.)

The biggest problem I had with the cruise that I was on was the length of the trip. Ten days is about five too many to be stuck on a boat. There were at least a few times when I wondered what would happen if I didn’t get back on the ship at one of the port calls, but flew home instead. (Although the only stop in which this was even a slightly realistic fantasy was Puerto Rico. I can’t imagine how much it would cost to fly back from St. Martin!) I mentioned this to Husband last night, which made me wondered what types of incidents I would have been willing to endure as long as it got me home earlier. Compared to other recent cruise happenings:

Rogue wave – Given that no one was actually hurt in April 2005 when a 70 foot wave hit the very ship I traveled, I think a rogue wave would have been a very interesting way to end my trip early. Sure, it would be scary and some people’s things were damaged. But everyone got a full refund (and a discount on a future cruise, which my in-laws would be pysched about) and those who wanted out were flown home when the ship reached Charleston, saving them a day at sea. I’ll take it!

Fire – This one is a little trickier because someone actually died when Carnival Cruise Line’s Star Princess caught fire and burned out over 100 cabins. Everyone was offered a refund and a 25% discount off a future cruise. If my ship did catch fire, I would have been pretty upset. But I’d still be glad to be off the boat and on my way home.

Legionnaire’s Disease – If an outbreak of illness happened on my ship, I’m not sure that they would have let people fly home and risk infecting others. I wonder if everyone gets hospitalized at a port call. If that is the case, and then you get to fly home, I might be willing to deal with it. I’m not sure what the long term consequences of Legionnaire’s Disease are or if any died from it when it happened on a ship last year. It seems like it would probably be better to avoid and stay on the entire cruise.

Death – Sadly, this did happen to a ten people on a Celebrity Cruise last week when their excursion bus plunged off the road in Chile. I hate cruises, but not enough that I would have wanted to die rather than be on the ship.

Clearly, most things that have happened in the past to cut cruises short are horrible. I’m not wishing them on anyone. Yet given the cabin fever I experienced, I can’t help but wonder if there weren’t any passengers on those cruises who were a bit relieved to be home sooner as a result.