kitty9

My mom fell in love with cruising about 7 years ago. She totally and completely loved being on a cruise ship. We had three cruises planned for next year, but mom passed away suddenly two weeks ago. Our hearts are broken and we're having trouble moving on.

We canceled two of our booked cruises and to be honest, I'm not sure we will want to cruise again, at least not for a long time. It will be very painful with all the memories and not having mom along. My sister and I loved being with her on all the cruises, two or three a year, but I don't know how we'll handle cruising in the future.

It took almost two years, but we finally convinced mom to take a cruise in Europe, so off we went this past May. It was so wonderful to see her face light up as we went to places she only read about or saw on TV. She was so happy that we had talked her into going and we wanted to take another one next summer. But it's not to be.

So to everyone here, don't put off anything in life. If you want to take a special cruise, don't wait until "someday". Do it. You won't regret it and you'll have everlasting memories.

HamburgAvonLady, a lot depends on when this happening occurred. If it was after final payment, the surviving passenger just goes on the cruise as a single and submits the cost of the fare to insurance for reimbursement for the passenger who passed---hopefully insurance was purchased. It's the same thing if no insurance was purchased, with the difference being the surviving spouse would not get a refund.

If this happened before final payment, the surviving spouse has a choice---either changing nothing and paying both fares or canceling the booking and re-booking as a single, with the appropriate single supplement being paid. With this, you could get off a little cheaper as you don't pay both port tax fees and you might get a tiny reduction if the single supplement is less than 200%

There are probably a number of reasons, one being that perhaps they don't want to be on a forum. They are also somewhat of a travel agency, and the terms of service would prohibit this. And, being they're not exclusively a cruise line and this is a forum for cruise lines, that could be another reason. If CC included all agencies such as Tauck, then they would have to include others like Abercrombie and Kent, Globus and all others. That would make this sight impossible. And, Tauck isn't just for cruises, as they are better known for their escorted land tours rather than their cruises, and after all this is called CRUISE Critic.

It's OK to call me stupid, but I'm totally confused on these passport cards. Will they supplant current passports? My regular passport is scheduled to expire next year and I will have to apply for a new one. So, when I send in my current passport and the forms to whatever agency, will I only get the passport card? Are they no longer going to give out the usual passports with all the pages????

Forgive me, but what in the heck are you talking about? No cruise line is going to put anything in their food that could cause a passenger to become ill. And what kind of additive does ANYONE put in food consumed by the public to supress "stomach disorders"?

You pretty much have to be part of a large group who charter part of the ship in order to do this. I know there have been HOG groups on board RCCI and Carnival ships. I had a friend who wanted to do what you're asking, and the cruise lines either wanted a ton of money for the "cargo" or they flatly said no. Good Luck

Only the luxury lines like Crystal and Seabourn give freebies in the casino. The mass markets do not.

Don't bother trying to bring large quantities of beer on board---when they xray the luggage, it will show up and they will call you down to the bowels of the ship to open your bags and they will take the stuff until the last night of the cruise. Better to stop at a local store near the port, purchase one six pack and put that in your carry on. They might not take that away from you, but they might do that too. Also, beer cans are not all that tough, and with the way they throw bags around on the dock, you're going to have ruined clothing when the cans crush.

You guys are fantastic! Thank you so much for all the suggestions . . . I am definately going to follow up on the compression stockings and both Elemis and L'Occitaine. By the way . . . where can I find these things? I looked in the drug store on Saturday and no luck . . . :( (Hi Lois . . . :p )

I got my compression socks at Walgreens.

I spoke to my doctor about this swollen ankles/feet and she said there doesn't seem to be one simple reason. For me, I'm very short, and on many of the chairs on a ship, my feet don't touch the floor. If I sit for a long time in those chairs, I can just feel my legs throbbing. Doc said that sitting like that often causes the fluid in your legs to head south towards the feet. She gave me prescription water pills and they didn't help one tiny bit. I start wearing the compression socks on the flight down. I don't add salt to anything but still, the swelling is there. It's gotten to the point that I have to take shoes at least one size larger because of the swelling.

I've never heard of anything like that happening. Plus, it's against the rules to throw anything off the ship. And, if you try and do this on a moving ship, the ashes would blow right back on the ship, onto the balconies. You could take the ashes to a private beach, and do whatever there, but throwing ashes off a ship is something I do not believe they would allow.

Kitty....would it not be easier for you and your mom to wait until the end of boarding, when most passengers are off the ship and have picked up their luggage, before leaving the ship yourselves? That's what I do. It makes a tremendous difference, and it's safer, too.

Not when you're stuck with a flight that leaves earlier. Where we live, we don't have a lot of choices for flights, so we can't wait until nearly everyone is off the ship. Plus we don't want to have the expense of staying at a hotel just because we miss the flight.

We just got off Constellation and I was amazed by how terrible people were on disembarking. Both mom and I were in wheelchairs in the terminal and I actually had to get out of my chair to protect my mom from the horrible people who were shoving her out of the way and hitting her with their luggage. It was an awful experience. Mom is only 4'9" and she weighs 90lbs, so she's really tiny, but there's still no excuse how animalistic those people behaved that day.

I've also been "petted" and told I was too "pretty to be in a wheelchair". Usually this is done by little old ladies, who also talk to my husband rather than to me. I try to laugh it off... I figure you either laugh about it or you begin plotting world domination. And I just don't have time to dominate the world. Yet.

I've had just the opposite experience. I had polio at age 2, and have been using a cane and a parking placard for many years, now that I've reached certain age--and now I sometimes have to use a scooter, many times I've had people walk up to my car, and pound on the window yelling at me for parking in a disabled space. Just because I was young, they thought I couldn't have been disabled. And, I've had people park right behind my car, watch me walk, and once a woman actually followed me in the store to make sure I limped the whole time.

There's nothing you can do with the rude ones. I've faced them almost my entire life, from elementary school on up. Unfortunately, it's just the way the world is. But, I have said a few times, to the really rude ones, "I hope neither you nor anyone in your family has to be in a wheelchair in the future, and I hope that if you do find yourself in a wheelchair, you meet people who are as rude as you've been to me". Boy, that shuts them up.

Do you have a company called Pak Mail? They are all over the US. I have a local Pak Mail shipper five minutes from my house. I call him and tell him when I'm leaving for a cruise, and where I'm departing from. He finds a local Pak Mail store in the port of departure, and makes arrangement to ship my bags to that store. Steve, the owner of the Pak Mail store, comes to my house and picks up the bags, and ships the bags to the other Pak Mail store, via whatever is the cheapest. I make arrangements to meet the Pak Mail man at the terminal, and then give my bags to the porters. It's very simple.

Well, I think this question falls under the category of TMI LOL

The only problem you could have, other than the huge cost of the service, is finding a place to ship the luggage to. Most cruise lines will not accept shipped bags as a matter of security, so you might have a problem finding a place to ship. If you're doing a pre-cruise stay, you can check to see if the hotel will accept the luggage, but some hotels also do not accept shipped bags. And, if your cruise departs on a Sunday, many services do not deliver to the terminal on Sundays. I've used a shipping service, but I've always made arrangements for the delivery place to meet me at the cruise terminal at a specified time, but if my cruise departed on Sunday, I wasn't able to ship the bags.

Not to lessen your experience with the 10 to 14 ft seas, in the reality of the high seas, that height isn't all that uncommon. I've been on cruises where the seas were 45ft and higher with force 10 gale winds. Now, that was rough. A lot on how a ship handles the seas depends on a few factors. Small ships such as ones like Seabourn and Silversea, don't handle high seas very nicely. Ships with a shallow draft also tend to bounce more. I did a crossing on Crystal where for three days we had seas of 35 to 40 ft and most everyone barely felt it----you know it's rough when you see green water washing over the windows on deck 6---but it was a very smooth cruise. I did a cruise on the QM2, and even in 15 ft seas, the ship really rocked. Plus, there's a big difference between waves and swells. Waves don't seem to have that much of an effect on bouncy ships, but huge rolling swells make a big difference. For some reason, I've been finding that these really huge ships are rougher than your mid-size ships. Perhaps it's because they are now building them with drafts that are much more shallow than the mid-size ships. And, BTW, I'm disabled and walk with a cane, so I'm very aware of rough seas and how careful I have to walk. It's the cane in one hand and holding the railing in the hallway with the other.

Prices don't vary much from island to island as most of the stores you see are on every island. If you see something you love, but it there as they might not have the same style at another store.

FranKes, ewwwwww. Don't you love the "entertaining" thing? How rude !!!!

I'm spoiled and I like my bathroom to myself. The whole sharing the room thing MIGHT be ok, but I'm too picky about the loo.

Sorry, but there's no way I'd do a cruise with a perfect stranger as a roommate. Just the bathroom issues alone makes me shiver.

Penny, take it from me. Mom is 80, only has Medicare, and broke her hip on Millennium. Medicare didn't pay for anything on the ship, and only picked up her expenses once she was med evac'd off the ship to Ft Lauderdale for surgery and rehab. The 1/2 hour plane ride was $9000. They need trip insurance, for sure.

You need to post this on the Ports of Call===Brazil board

India insists on individual visas. We didn't have a choice, unlike places such as Vietnam or Russia where you can get by on a blanket ship's visa. And since you'll be flying to Agra, if you decide to do this trip, you must have your own visa in India. They are very strict.

Does your ship offer an excursion to Agra? If so, take it !!! On Crystal's world cruise in 2001, they offered us a day long excursion to the Taj Mahal and it's been one of the highlights of all my cruises. You fly Jet Airways from Mumbai to Agra, which is about a 90 minute flight. From there it's a bus ride to the outskirts of the Taj---no gasoline fuel vehicles are allowed too near the Taj. You then take electric buses to the entrance. Inside it's absolutely beautiful and well worth the cost and hassles.

You absolutely cannot do a train or bus to there from Mumbai. Their trains are not the best and they are slow and not very reliable.

But be aware, security in Indian airports is like nothing you've ever seen. They do not allow cameras on their planes, and if you have one, they will take either the camera, battery or film/memory card from you and return it once you land. In security, they separate you by gender and give everyone a very concise pat down and will wand your person all over. And, you will not be allowed to bring any kind of food item into the Taj area---no gum, no breath mints, no cigarettes no nothing. They inspect all bags and they throw all that away.

Travel Smith has the quick dry undies. They really do dry quite quickly.