Rene forwarded an interesting piece from Gizmodo on cruising. It’s catchy title? “Stop Going on Cruises.” Let’s start things off with a few choice quotes from the article.
“Cruise ships are even worse than you think. ProPublica recently published a very alarming and downright dark interactive feature about health and safety on cruises. I’ll come right out and say it: Stop going on cruises. Don’t cruise. Don’t do it.
As ProPublica’s Lena Groeger reports, “Almost every year, a child drowns in a cruise ship pool, most of which have no lifeguards.” Then there’s the 21-year-old college student who fell overboard at night and was never found. There’s always the chance of a deadly norovirus outbreak. One doctor, an infectious disease specialist, last year called for cruise ships to be banned outright, since the risk of contracting some vicious bug on these sealed germ factories in the middle of the ocean is so high. This is all assuming your ship doesn’t turn into a floating sh*t barge due to some mechanical error.”
There’s enough here that I could write blog posts for days, but I’ll stop myself with just a few things. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the article except for the overuse of “floating sh*t barge” and ignoring the other side of the story – that any of those things can and frequently do happen anywhere. Here’s a cruising truth for me and some free cruising advice for you. When I’m on a cruise I conduct myself in a manner identical to the way I conduct myself in any foreign country and right here in Atlanta, GA. I have fun, enjoy my surroundings, maintain a certain sense of self-awareness, and generally try not to do anything that would get me arrested in most any city in the USA and indeed, the world. I also wash my hands before meals and after restroom visits. The end. (Image courtesy of Shutterstock)
As a result, I’ve never been arrested in any city or on a ship, never gone overboard, and never felt the need to refer to any of my 36 cruises (5 more booked at the moment) as a “floating sh*t barge.” Cruising, like most things in life, is what you make of it. Do bad things sometimes happen? Yes. Do bad things sometimes happen here in Atlanta? Yes. I haven’t stopped living because of that, and I won’t stop cruising either. YMMV.
-MJ, May 23, 2015
I’m embarking on a cruise tomorrow. Please tell people to stop cruising so I have more space to myself.
Which park do you like to cruise in Atlanta?
While your position is rational and I wouldn’t discourage anyone from cruising, the illness argument against it does resonate with me. In an earlier career, I was treated to a number of cruises courtesy of my employer, the US Navy. While it was extraordinarily difficult to fall overboard while traveling 150 feet below the surface, I can clearly remember the the waves of colds and ‘flu’ during the first three weeks that were a consequence of cramming 100+ ‘passengers’ in extremely close proximity, after which were weeks or months with nary a sniffle among the lot of us. Mostly, though,… Read more »