Text 2236, 133 rader
Skriven 2006-06-16 22:17:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: end of the cruise 830
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Other eateries that we didn't investigate - Johnny Rocket's
($4 supplement for all you can eat), Sorrento Pizza (free),
and Ben and Jerry's (advertised at a "nominal" cost).

There's duty-free on the ship, with a lot of hard sell.
Carol came back with a cute little tanzanite ring; I merely
some booze (selection is small, leaning heavily toward rums,
and worse, flavored ones, but there were things worth
getting). Also there had been some goodies courtesy of the
company: a Cutter and Buck shirt for me; a digital camera,
a Coach clutch, and a Land's End beach wrap for her.

One packs one's bags the night before and leaves them
outside the room by midnight. Something I didn't know,
though, is that express checkout people can take their bags
with them, something that would cut an hour plus of waiting.
Not that that would matter, as we would have to wait for the
bus to take us to the airport anyway.

=

A last sit-down breakfast. Carol had normal breakfast food,
and I ordered a side of hash, which came as a side of hash
plus a side of hash browns (perhaps our waiter was hedging
his bets). The hash was the same mixture of two immiscible
ingredients as upstairs, only molded into a cylinder and
browned (blackened, actually) on the surfaces. Even with
the additional attention, the potatoes were nearly raw and
fell out of their own accord. The hash browns were rubbery.

Leaving is peculiar. You are assigned a group (a color)
and a subgroup (1 or 2). The first group is Beige 1, and
the last is something like Green 2. We were Brown 2, just
about halfway. They start letting Beige 1 (people with early
flights home) off before 8; then nothing until 9, when Beige
2 is called (the wait causing some anxiety); then groups at
10-minute intervals. Result is that the departure deck is a
milling sea of people; it's as if people actually wanted to
get off the ship.

Immigration was a snap, but still a number of people from
our cruise were held up for insufficient documentation.
These were shunted off to various places for filling out
the proper forms, or looking for appropriate ID, both of
which we saw, or more thorough treatment, which we didn't
see, although I did note a family that appeared to be headed
in that direction. After a quick customs check (Any liquor?
Two bottles. Okay, welcome back.), bag claim, which was just
like at any airport, only older and creakier.

Nutshell. Pleasant enough experience, especially for the
price. I can see the appeal of forgetting reality for a
while, and at 880 feet, the ship is more like a hotel than
water transportation, so this is a good way of getting one's
feet wet without getting one's feet wet, if you know what I
mean. Accommodations were okay, food was okay and plentiful.
The hard sell was annoying, first of excursions, then of the
entertainment and activities (I mean, we're holding hands on
the promenade deck, looking at the water, and there's this
huge loud announcement by the altogether too cheerful and
hyper cruise director for art auctions (nasty art), the
performing acts (on the whole ok), the Bingo jackpot (up to
$3500, and it has to be won on this cruise, and why not by
you?), and assorted shuffleboard tournaments, adult Crayola
art classes, and stuff), or last but not least, duty-free.

I and several others had the runs all through the trip.
Whether that was the fault of the cruise food, the incessant
minor rocking, or Chick-Fil-A back at MCO I don't know.

Some of the remote employees had had early flights to catch,
and the top executives this time went off in a taxi, so
there were fewer of us, but there were still two buses, one
for each terminal, which is peculiar, as they're both in the
same building.

Check-in was pretty chaotic. Again, I feel it's a psychology
thing - arrivals areas are clean and nice, departures areas
are crowded and nasty. Security was pretty easy, and we had
two hours to kill inside. Carol had Sbarro pizza, which
smelled like old leftovers; I didn't feel like eating.

0605 WN 204 MCO BWI 1435 1645 733 22EF

There were an Albuquerque and two Baltimore flights leaving
in quick succession from the same gate, which meant more of
that departure chaos. Gary and I again lined up right at the
beginning of the B line, only to find that the 1-something
BWI hadn't boarded yet, and we were in the wrong line. After
that was cleared up, we got back in line.

Interestingly, 1AB were available when we boarded - I guess
a vestige of the olden days, when I noticed that people, in
their populist zeal and to avoid looking like United fliers,
tended not to fill the front of the bus seats. Up until 3 or
so years ago, on the rare occasions when I flew Southwest,
I always managed to get a window in the first few rows,
despite being in Group B or even C.

I didn't want to put the booze into a distant overhead, so
we passed on those and proceeded to 22, the second to last
row of the plane. This had the advantages of not being the
last row with its least generous room on the plane and being
far away from a squalling baby in the late teens.

On this flight (away from vacation => back to reality =>
associating Southwest with vacation => good cheap mind
control), much more professional flight attendants giving
the standard deadpan announcement and safety reminders,
which I and probably the FAA very much prefer.

The snack was peanuts, in contrast to the way out, when it
was plane crackers (sort of like animal crackers only in
737 shape which leads to infantile games reminiscent of the
Pearls before Swine cartoon about the rat eating off the
gingerbread man's head). I had tomato juice and a Heineken,
not together, although encouraged by good taste reports of
the Bleary Mary, I did do alternate tastes until that bored
me. Carol sneaked sips of my beer, so I had to get another,
which the surprisingly perspicacious FA served with 2 cups.

Nothing interesting about this flight either, except for
the company. Landed on time, but we still had quite a long
wait for the bags to appear. I think that Southwest must
definitely pressurize less effectively than other airlines.
My ears hurt more than usual.

They had gotten wise and for the 18 people remaining had
reserved one minibus and an SUV to carry the luggage.

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