What coincidences have you encountered on your cruises? ;-)

[RickEk]

A couple of cruises ago, we sat down for breakfast in the dining room and it turned out that one of the ladies already seated had worked with my companion about 20 years ago at Bloomingdales.

[billet]

I was on the Crown quietly reading when this woman walked up to me and asked if I my sister was Patricia. When I told her it was she said she was Sandra. The last time I had seen her she was 15, I was 12, and she was my sisters best friend. It was now 45 years later. We had a delightful cruise with her family.

[gooch47]

In July of 2008, we were on the Pride of America (NCL) in Hawaii. We didn't get our tour tickets for our helicopter tour and went to the desk to complain. They didn't have them, didn't know where they were. (In fact, there were worse troubles. We needed four tickets, they only had a record of us needing 2.)

 

Anyway, we're walking through the lounge on our way somewhere and all of a sudden I hear my name called. I turned and there sat our former Pastor and his wife. We got to talking and he said, I wondered if it was you on the ship. *THEY* had our tour tickets. They had been delivered to the wrong cabin.

 

Toward the end of the cruise, we found something on our bed that didn't belong to us. It was something to do with a special disembarkment procedure. Guess who the paperwork belonged to??? Our Pastor and his wife.

 

We were on the same deck, but on opposite sides of the ship.

[geoherb]

On the flight down to Florida for our first cruise as a couple, a woman a few rows behind us recognized my DH's voice. They worked for the same company and had talked on the phone but never met. It turned out they were on the same ship with us.

 

A co-worker and her family took a cruise we were on in 2001. They were originally booked on a southern Caribbean cruise but changed it to one leaving from Florida because of 9/11. I did not find out about the change until I saw her onboard.

[ShipsandDipper]

2) In January I found out at the last second a family that I work for was going on the same cruise as my husband and I..what are the chances!

 

A couple of years ago my co-worker's husband was invited to a conference in Europe. They were going to take a land vacation in conjunction with the conference, but his travel agent suggested a cruise and suggested a particular date and ship -- which happened to be the same sailing that we had booked six months before! When he called to tell my co-worker about the agent's great idea, she asked if we minded sharing our ship.:D

[billet]

and another... In March on the Crown we were at dinner, anytime dining table for 8, and we were chatting mostly with the lady directly opposite. It wasnt until dessert that we asked where she came from. It turned out she came from Atlanta. After some quick discussion we realised her sister lives one block from us in Victoria and we know her very well. It then got stranger since our son and her sister's son are best friends. We eventually figured out that the lady had even met our son when he visited Atlanta about 4 years ago.

[Tiffany's mom]

We were going to a cruise in Europe and taking our adult daughter with us. We are from the West Coast so we had to change planes in New Jersey. for the international flight. My husband said he would sit in the middle aisle seat and my daughter and I would take the window. There was a very nice older couple seating next to him. During the flight the lady started a conversation with her asking what he did for a living -CPA. She said my husband was in accounting for the Dupont Company in Delaware. My husband said my mother-in-law work for one of the Dupont's in his private office. The man at that time got into the conversation and ask which Dupont. At that time husband ask me and I give him the name. At that point the man ask for the name of my mother.

 

You would not believe it but they were cousins. My husband turn to me and said meet your cousin. He turn our to be my grandmother brothers son. I had meet my great uncle when I was a kid.

 

Now for the real unbelieve fact. They were going on the same cruise as we were. We got to know them during the 2 week cruise. We stayed in Europe for a few says after the cruise and when we got home my mother already knew about meeting her cousin. (This was before e-mail)

 

I have pictures of all of us in Turkey together. A cruise to remember.

[fridaythecat.u.k.]

Sorry, I just realized that the question was cruise specific - duh. :o

 

No worries ;) All contributions are welcome, and there are so many fanstastic stories posted so far, thanks to all who have contributed :D

[Cruising from Mississauga]

Must be something about Venice! We boarded the water taxi to take us to St. Marks, and another couple came on behind us. Usual chat occured, and we find out they're from the same city, about 4 miles away. When the next couple boarded, my wife did a double take; turns out they go to the same hair salon and they lived about 4 minutes away. I had to go halfway around the world to meet the neighbours!

[Times Prince]

When living in Colorado we had a doctor who was very careful to keep his private life separate from his business life. Imagine our surprise when we sailed from Florida (Princess, of course), and went to dinner the first night finding our doctor, with spouse and children, at the adjacent table. We spent a somewhat awkward meal, knowing the doctor's privacy concerns, and then we shifted to the alternate dining room for the rest of the cruise.

 

We still saw them occasionally onboard in passing, and explained to the doctor why we moved, receiving the doctor's appreciation in return.

[cantwaitfornextcruise]

I'm sure you will have interesting stories to tell...So what coincidences have you come across on during your cruising escapades?

 

I had three on our Ruby cruise in August, felt a bit like the twilight zone sometimes... :D but the best one was as follows:

 

Our last port of call was Venice and we got in during the early evening. We decided to get the ship's water taxi into St Mark's square. When we got on the water taxi, it was very busy and we ended up standing at the front with quite a lot of other people, right next to a man, his wife and their early teenaged daughter, but we didn't speak.

 

We travelled towards St Mark's square with no incident, but then when we got to near the docking point, we had to wait for another taxi to disembark. We waited and waited, and then as the other one moved out and we were about to move in, the water taxi behind us pushed in the queue and went to the dock! :eek: Anyway, everyone was getting a little annoyed and started to talk about what was going on, but still we did not really talk to this couple and their child, but we gathered they were from the UK (from hearing them talk to others).

 

Then eventually we managed to dock and get off and for some reason we started to chat to these people. We were talking about the flight time home the next day and they said they were flying into Manchester, we said that was our nearest airport, although we flew from London to get direct flights... it was through this conversation that we eventually realised that the people who we had been standing next to for about an hour on the taxi lived about 5 miles away from us!!!

 

I would love to hear your stories, I'm sure there are some interesting ones out there ;)

 

I live about 12 miles from you and was born in Shrewsbury , to prove it which side of the river do you come from?

 

My coincidence, on our cruise in Feb on the Island 3 people, me from UK a Canadian and a lady from UAS who had been chatting for a few month on the roll call all celebrated our birthdays on the same day in August, whats the chances of that

[fridaythecat.u.k.]

I live about 12 miles from you and was born in Shrewsbury , to prove it which side of the river do you come from?

 

My coincidence, on our cruise in Feb on the Island 3 people, me from UK a Canadian and a lady from UAS who had been chatting for a few month on the roll call all celebrated our birthdays on the same day in August, whats the chances of that

 

Wow! I live in the countryside 8 miles outside of Shrewsbury itself, so might make you either 20 miles from me or just 4 (depending on which side you live!) So, here goes... I live NW of the town, half way between Shrewsbury and Oswestry. So back to you? :D

[cantwaitfornextcruise]

Oh my

currently live in Telford/Ironbridge area but originally from Shrewsbury, have family in LLanymynech.

So now we have a coincidence, me thinks

[fridaythecat.u.k.]

Oh my

currently live in Telford/Ironbridge area but originally from Shrewsbury, have family in LLanymynech.

So now we have a coincidence, me thinks

 

Yes :D So you are the other side of Shrewsbury to me, about 20 miles away! That's a shame because we could have met up for a coffee!

 

Anway, sorry to all you other guys for going off topic, I'm sure this conversation has been very boring for you.

 

Back to the interesting coincidence stories, they have been great so far, so would love to hear some more. :)

 

My third and final one from my Ruby cruise is as follows....

 

Very early on, we chatted to another UK couple and saw them quite regularly throughout the cruise and would often have a drink and a chat with them.

 

My DH is a coach driver and drives throughout the UK and Europe, and does tours usually with UK passengers but they can be from anywhere, not necessarily just near to where we live.

 

It was the penultimate day of the cruise when I asked the couple where they actually lived (we knew they were on the outskirts of London, but not the exact place). When they told us the place, DH said that he had picked up one of his tour groups there a few weeks earlier.

 

It turned out that the tour group organiser that DH had picked up there was one of this couple's best friends. The place where he picked this group up was less than a mile away from this couple's house!

[NeurosurgeryNP]

On our first Princess cruise in January 2008, that left from Fort Lauderdale, one of our ports was at St. Thomas. There on the main street, along the water, we were approached by a family and found out that the wife worked at the same hospital as I do on Long Island. Weider - we were on the same flight home to JFK - not even the nearest airport to us, but rather where JetBlue flew into.

[WendyVF]

I've got 2...The first is that my uncle and his girlfriend were taking their first cruise. We don't talk much but for some reason I got an e-mail from him about a week before a cruise we had scheduled. After a few e-mails back and forth we figured out we were on a same ship. It was great getting to see them other than at Christmas. On the same trip, we ran into one of DH's co-workers who was also on the ship.

 

The 2nd is a RCCL cruise we were doing out of Norfolk. The kids were hanging out with the other teens and met a family that had been living across the street from us for about a year. We finally caught up with them and met the parents a couple days later.

[ibfern]

We met a couple celebrating their 50th on the Island Princess Panama cruise in Jan of 08 and discovered one of their kids lived a block away from us in Chatsworth. We thought this was a huge coincidence. Then 6 months later we were on a 2 week Alaskan cruise on the Tahitian Princess. We decided to take a charter boat out of Valdez and managed to sit next to the only people who were not from the Princess ship (they were RVing) and they were the other children of the couple from the Island Princess cruise 6 months prior!

[NVCLVR]

I have one: We had just disembarked from the Grand (in Southampton) on July 4th ('07), rented a car and drove to Bath for our special post-cruise relaxation spa pampering at the Thermae Spa. Between treatments, I was getting something out of my locker when there was this couple struggling to lock their locker right next to mine. I helped them and the gentleman said "Oh, what part of Canada are you from?" I replied, "Try Reno, Nevada". (They assumed I was Canadian because everyone they had met up until that time had been from Canada and they had "assumed" they were from the US). Anyway...turns out they live about 30 miles from me. Asked what I did for a living and when I told them, he had just been in my office on business...about 30ft from my desk, 2 days before our meeting! 1/2 way around the World, in the UK and on the Fourth of July, to boot! Very small world, eh?!:D

[lkmamom]

Great thread:)! On our last cruise onboard the CB, DH and I were walking around embarkation day trying to figure out the ship, because we had not been on the CB before. DH heard someone call out his name and it was a fellow physician and his wife that neither of us had seen in years. We talked for a while but did not really make plans because we did not want to interrupt their ? "time together" and this was our "just the two of us, empty nester" cruise. Well, we ran into them all over the place. We spent the last sea day talking for hours and then bid eachother a "safe trip home". Low and behold, we met again at LGA and sat right across from eachother on the same plane home! I am positive we were just destined to have that time with them and we all really enjoyed spending time together.

Linda

[notentirelynormal]

I have lots of the above type experiences but I think one of the funniest is this one. We were on a Caribbean cruise and my brother, who is a teacher in Los Angeles, was walking down the hall. One of his students came up to him and said in an incredulous voice, Mr. G. What are you doing here? My brother just laughed and told him teachers were allowed to have vacations too. :rolleyes:

 

 

I’ve met people that work in the same building as me. Once I was relating a story to my travel agent about a girl that was injured on our cruise the week before. She laughed and told me that that girl was her best friend.

[nyjetsfans]

Our first cruise at our first dinner woman next to me from nj I start talking. She mentions they winter in NC so I ask where (since my parents do the same) Yup you got it same small spot of sand. Sunset Beach NC. I still have her number but have not been able to get down there. Wonder what the odds are of running into them on our next cruise? Hmmmm

[imsulin]

First cruise on NCL Norway (really loved that ship!) in 1987. Booked an excursion for the Atlantis submarine, meaning a 45-minute boat ride out to the site from STT. Thought it was absolutely fantastic (even though paid scuba diver followed us, throwing out dog food to attract fish, so we could take pictures). On the boat ride back to St. Thomas, I started talking to a couple near me, and it turned out that we lived six blocks apart, and our kids went to the same school! (Denver)

 

Whatever happened to those Atlantis submarine tours? I still have the certificate.

[Tina G]

Some years ago, we were introducing ourselves at anytime dining - you know the drill. Since DH worked for the US Dept. of Defense in a high security capacity, he never said much about his job. I saw his face change when the gentleman across the table began describing the company he owned. He looked carefully at him, and said "We met at a conference last year. I'm (DH). and you wouldn't believe how we have used your product." The man blinked and said, "Who are you, again?" Then, "OMG, now I know who you are! We spoke on the phone last week!" The conversation abruptly stopped for national security reasons.;)

[MrElvis]

My DW and I were on the CB cruise April 2008. We were sitting by the aft pool when I happened to bump into a parolee. I am a PO.

 

While in Cozumel, we went to Chankanaab National Park and sat under an umbrella enjoying the sun and beach when quess who shows up next to us. The ex con. :eek:

[piper28]

Hmm, we've had a couple of times when we've had people from our cruise on the same flight as we had. Once it was someone from the roll call, another time it was someone that we just happened to run into (our flights were running late, so I'd overheard them talking about needing to make it to make a cruise). Probably not a huge surprise that this can happen, but it was a small commuter jet from Flint that this happened on. (Oh, and we had luggage that didn't make it, and so did they.)

 

We met someone on our Coral cruise, they'd been on a Windjammer cruise in the past. They were quite surprised when we docked in Aruba and there was the rusting hulk of the ship they'd been on.

 

And finallly, when my parents were looking at photos from our Coral cruise, in the line of ship's personel that were singing Christmas carols, my parents recognized a cabin steward they'd had before.