Keeping it running smoothly: The Wonder of the Seas

They control the ship from the bridge, but running it takes so much more.

It takes hard work and a lot of attention to detail to operate the world’s largest cruise ship.

As I did on the Harmony of the Seas, a huge but smaller ship, Michelle and I took a behind the scenes tour.

Seventeen passengers met in the Main Dining Room with two crew who would be our guides.  They distributed large identification badges which we wore on bands around our necks.  They also gave us ear phones so that we could hear what they were saying in a noisy room even if we weren’t close to the guide.  They are hard to use if one wears hearing aids, but I was able to hold one above the hearing aid microphone, and it worked fairly well.

We saw the ship from the very lowest deck to the navigation bridge.  Although everyone went through security before we boarded the ship, we had to pass through another security check twice more during this tour. The first time was to get into the control room deep in the ship. The second time was to visit the bridge. We were allowed to take photos each time, but not videos – curious!

There are 26 kitchens on the ship. They are elaborate affairs that try to cover every detail. They even had pictures of the food above the line where waiters picked up their orders to help those who might not be familiar with a particular dish.

The laundry was reached by going down a flight of metal stairs, a ladder on a naval ship. They handle an amazing 15,000 pounds of laundry per day. But when I inquired, they confirmed there is less passenger laundry now as ships become more and more informal.

A wide hallway runs the length of the ship on Deck Two. Cabins, dining and recreation are available off it for the crew. Supplies are stored there. And huge refrigerators that looked like vaults and seemed to have vault security, supply the needs of the kitchens each day. A digital thermometer on one freezer read minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit. After we entered the other, the temperature rose to minus 22 degrees.

The solid waste disposal area was surprisingly small. Crew must hand-sort all the trash coming from waste baskets. As much is recycled as possible, and food waste is compacted. There was even a machine labeled “bone crusher.”

There are crew cleaning and painting constantly, even in storage areas. Out walking early one morning, I noticed crews cleaning areas used by passengers later in the day.

Click on photos to enlarge and see the captions.

On top of all this behind the scenes work, the crew has to deal with passenger problems! It is an amazing example of management that I suspect others could learn from.

Day of our visit: 20 October 2023

Entertainment at sea: The Wonder of the Seas

Country and Western singers perform live in several venues.

Many people choose Royal Caribbean’s enormous ships because they offer so much entertainment variety.  Indeed, we suggested the Wonder of the Seas to our nephew and niece because we thought their son would enjoy it more.

We particularly liked the AquaTheater which has amazing diving feats including two divers who dove from platforms more than 56 feet above the water.  It also has lots of diving from lower platforms and synchronized swimming.  The bottom of the pool can be raised and lowered so that the water went from a few inches deep appearing to allow performers to dance on the water to fourteen feet deep for the high dives.  Scuba divers beneath the water ensure it reaches the proper depth for those dives.

Alie and I are also fond of ice skating, watch the championships on TV and have seen professionals perform live.  So, we were amazed at some of the moves done at the ship’s ice shows.  — Yes, it is big enough to have an ice rink.  — In particular, the pairs skaters performed some really lovely lifts in a relatively limited space.

Last week’s post had pictures of the carousel, restaurants, bars and other venues.  There also were water parks for kids, wet sliding boards, a zip line, other sports and miniature golf.  I rode down the ten-story high dry sliding board.  Seeing this 79-year-old white-haired man get off caused a little stir among other passengers.

I rode the curved sliding board from deck 16 to the Boardwalk on deck 6

On the other hand, I chose not to take surfing lessons, spend my money at the casino or go to the comedy club [because I am nearly deaf and can’t hear the comedians].

Some of these ships have Broadway productions.  This time, we saw a wonderful exhibit of percussion and dancing by the Tap Factory and an interesting acapella performance.

Click on Images to enlarge and see captions.

Days of our visit: 15-22 October 2023

What a wonder!

The Wonder of the Seas next to a large ship.

The Wonder of the Seas is currently the world’s largest cruise ship.  My next several posts are primarily photo essays which I hope will give some glimpse into what that means. This is not an advertisement.  I am not compensated in any way and leave it to decide whether this is something you would like to try.

It’s really big!  The ship displaces 236,857 gross tons.  Its maiden voyage was 4 Mar 22.  It can carry 6988 guests in 2867 staterooms and 2300 crew.  It measures 210 feet/ 64 meters wide, 1188 feet/362 meters long, and has a 30-foot/9-meter draft.  It has 18 decks and 24 guest elevators.  That’s as many people as small town, and that town isn’t likely to have anything as high.

For those with a mechanical bent: six diesel engines generate 96,000 kW which power four 7500 horsepower bow thrusters to move sideways and three 20 MW Azipods.  The latter are motor-driven propellers hanging beneath the ship which can rotate 360 degrees.  There are four giant extension cords, shore power connections, which enable the ship to get electricity in port without risking air pollution by running the diesels. There are two advanced emissions purification systems to remove Sulphur and NOx, however, to keep that pollution at a minimum.

Later posts will describe in even more detail, what it takes to house, feed and entertain all those people while moving this huge structure over the seas and into ports.

Click on photos to enlarge.

Wonder of the Seas may be the right thing for you – or perhaps not.  It depends on who you are and what sort of vacation you are seeking.  When we lived in Florida with cruising a convenient option, we went often and had already visited the ports we saw on this cruise.  We also were on the Harmony of the Seas, next in size down from the Wonder.  We went this time to accompany our nephew and niece and their son on their first cruise.  The ports were new to them, and it is a wonderful ship to provide entertainment to every family member, whatever their age.

We are glad we were on this mammoth ship and enjoyed the entertainment.  We have no regrets.  But we doubt we will do it again.  It was too big, too noisy, too frenetic for these old fogies.

Date of our visit: 15-22 October 2023

P.S.  The Icon of the Seas which debuts next year will be 9% bigger.

Wagnalls Memorial Library, Lithopolis, Ohio.

The garden sits at the side of the library.

We found this gem when there was a piece about gardening on our local TV station.  I was more interested in the building behind the garden, but both turned out to be well worth the visit.

As a child, Mabel Wagnalls Jones often visited this small village, home to her grandmother.  Mabel’s mother Anna wanted to honor her mother Anna who always wanted to do something for the village where she grew up but had few opportunities.

So, Mabel, an author and concert pianist who lived most of her life in New York City, built and donated a library to the town in honor of her parents Anna and Adam.  Adam was co-founder of the publisher Funk & Wagnalls.

Built by local workman using mostly locally quarried stone, the Tudor-Gothic library was dedicated in 1925.

An auditorium seats about 300 people.  Lift the wooden seats and see a rack designed to store top hats.  A banquet hall was designed with a fully functional kitchen, pantry and china place-settings for 300.

The original library, since expanded, is furnished with handmade tables and chairs.  When the stone was quarried, baby owls were found in a cut-down tree.  They are memorialized in perches on the library arches.

Additions complementing the original architecture were added in 1961, 1983 and 1992.  Two original Norman Rockwell paintings are displayed near the services desk in the 1992 addition as is an O. Henry letter written to Mabel when she was a child staying with her grandmother.  Paintings throughout the building date from the period just before the library was dedicated.  Many were originals paintings used on covers of Literary Digest published by Funk and Wagnalls.

Letters from her friend Harry Houdini are on display outside the auditorium.

Click on photos to enlarge and to see captions.

The 1992 addition sits on what had been the grounds of the home of a local doctor, Edward Roller.  Roller collected rocks from all over the nation and built bird houses, vases and other structures moved to today’s library garden.  The garden is maintained by volunteers working with the Ohio University Agriculture Extension Service.

The garden was a delight even as late as a day in September.

Adam Wagnalls and Anna Willis were both born in Lithopolis, but Adam’s family moved away when he was five.  They became acquainted after Adam mentioned to a cousin and friend of Anna that he would like to marry someone like himself who grew up poor and worked her way through college.  He took Anna’s maiden name as his own middle name after they were married, an unusual gesture for the time.

Date of our visit: 10 Sep 20

Healing a wound that is not visible.

Famous, moving and beautiful.

This post talks about a trip, but that is secondary to the real purpose.  It is centered in the U.S., but tackles a worldwide issue.

After 1968, a Culture of Hate was created.  Some blacks urged all blacks to hate all whites and vice versa.  Some anti-war leaders preached hate for all who served in the military.

When I arrived in San Francisco in 1971 after a year in Vietnam, I was told not to wear my uniform flying home because the military were being spit on and otherwise abused.  I learned the problem was real at my first party as a civilian.  The attitudes at home hurt.

I wasn’t the only one.  Over the last decade or so, when a Vietnam veteran meets another for the first time, the likely greeting is “welcome home” for the welcome they didn’t get.

Now, decades later, the Culture of Hate is back with us.  Some on every side of every political and social issue deplore and condemn those on the other side of the issue.  Radicals talk of killing other races and ethnic groups.  A “pro-life” idiot killed an abortionist doctor without seeing the irony in his action.  So-called women’s rights advocates attack other women.  Hate crimes against Jews and Muslims in the U.S. have increased.

Contrary to this trend, on November 9, I was privileged to board the 128^th Columbus Honor Flight.  Columbus is one of 124 hubs in the national Honor Flight network.  Those in rural areas not near a hub can use the Lone Eagle Program to participate.  The first Honor Flight was conceived by a VA doctor, also a private pilot, who was concerned his World War II veteran patients might never get to see the new World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.  He and his buddies flew 125 veterans to D.C. that year.  A man in North Carolina decided it should be done on a larger scale with chartered jets, and that grew into today’s program.  After opening the program to Korean War veterans, it is now open to those from the Vietnam War era.

Having lived in D.C. and seen most of the memorials, I regarded it as a nostalgia trip.  It was so much more.

Met at the airport curb by a volunteer, I was taken inside to meet my “guardian.”  After checking in with the Honor Flight Staff, we proceeded to the gate with another veteran who had the same guardian.  TSA just looked at our nametags, crossed us off a list and waved us through.  Alie joked later she thought that many old men with metal replacement parts would have taken hours to get through normal security.  Authorities extended similar courtesies for the rest of the day.

As we taxied to our gate in Washington, water cannons saluted us with an arch of water over the plane.  We were cheered by a crowd inside the gate and again after we left security to board our busses.  More people cheered at our first stop, the Naval Memorial.

We saw the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial before lunch by the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial. 

Then we went to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where we had first row places to view the Changing of the Guard.  After that, we went to the Air Force Memorial and Iwo Jima Memorial for Marines before having dinner at the Women’s Memorial in Arlington Cemetery before going back to our plane.

When we landed in Columbus, once again, fire trucks shot an arch of water over our plane, maybe to wake us up. It was a long day.

When I arrived at San Francisco’s Fort Travis in 1968, not even Alie could meet me on base.  When we entered John Glenn International Airport in 2023, 2200 people lined up to shake our hands.  It healed a wound that wound that was not visible.

Click on photos to enlarge and to see the captions.

As ordinary people, we can’t do much, but we are not powerless.  When we hear someone express hatred, even if they are on the same side as us, we have to correct them.  We have to tell them hatred is wrong.

Date of my trip: 9 November 23

P.S. Not all Honor Flight programs are the same as that in Columbus and not everyone was in Vietnam at that time, but I encourage every veteran to apply to go on a Honor Flight.

Where both the salmon and men came to spawn, Ketchikan, Alaska

August 2023

Ketchikan, Alaska was the first stop gold prospectors and other early adventurers coming to Alaska from the south were likely to encounter.  Historically, the stream there was fished by First Americans for salmon, and many new arrivals did the same.

We had a tour of all the prominent tourist spots in 2008. This year, it was our last stop before Vancouver, Alie was no longer in isolation, and we just walked around the town. Among other places, we visited the famous Creek Street.

There was a good market among all those 19th and early 20th Century single men for women willing to supply female companionship – for a price.  Among those female entrepreneurs were several very successful black women who came for opportunities not found in the segregated lower 48 states. 

In 1903, city leaders trying to make the frontier outpost into a respectable city, required all “bawdy houses” to move to the area along Ketchikan Creek where prostitution remained legal until 1954.

Many of the ladies invested in properties, put down roots, contributed to the broader community and fought for women’s rights in general.

Click on photos to enlarge and learn more about Ketchikan.

Date of Our visit: 23 Aug 23

Whale Watching at Icy Point, Alaska

A humpback whale spouting

I saw whales before in Antarctica, Juneau, Alaska and Hawaii, but they were always distant.  So, I took a boat out of Icy Point, Alaska, a port that only recently started welcoming cruise lines.

Female humpbacks grow to an average 49 feet long and weigh approximately 35 tons. Males are a little smaller.

It is hard to track old humpbacks.  They are estimated are live 40-50 years, but some think they can reach 80.  

Alaska’s humpbacks migrate as much as 3000 miles each way to warm waters off Hawaii, other Pacific islands and Mexico to breed.  There is an 11.5-month gestation period, so they come back to give birth, usually a single calf every one to three years.  Calves average 10-15 feet long and weigh about 1.5 tons.

Humpbacks are baleen whales and have fringed plates called baleen hanging down on the either side of the upper jaw.  They feed by taking in larger amounts of water and straining krill out using the baleen to trap them inside the mouth.  They take in about one and a half tons of krill and small fish per day.

They eat almost all their food in the summer months and live off of fat reserves while breeding.

Approximately 10,000 humpback whales travel from Alaska to visit the Hawaiian Islands every winter, starting in November and lasting through about May spawning a major tourist industry in both states.

The boat wasn’t nearly as fancy or nice as the one we took to see Kenai Fjords National Park earlier in our trip, but it did the job.  We got close enough for a really good view, and I will share the few pictures I took.

Click on photos to enlarge.

Date of our visit: 22 August 2023

It was sunny in Skagway, Alaska so I took the train again.

Skagway: in 2008, we huddled in a bar with hot chocolate for warmth.

On average, Skagway has just 85 sunny days per year.

When we visited Skagway in August 2008, it was cold and raining.  We took the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, but we could barely see anything outside the cars until we crossed White Pass.  We enjoyed our trip once we reached Bennett, British Columbia and Carcross, Yukon but really wished we could have seen more of the route taken by prospectors in 1898.

So we scheduled another ride in 2023, and although Alie was still in isolation due to the flu, I went ahead so I could show her what it looked like in the sun!

Click on photos to enlarge and to see captions.

For more details about the 1898 gold rush that led to the construction of the railroad, click on my previous post here.

Date of our visit: 21 August 2023

All the glacier ice is melting: a “false fact” simply wrong. Juneau, Alaska 2023

Hubbard Glacier: We were in the doctor’s office when the ship sailed close.

The heck with the heirs; I spent a lot to take the most expensive helicopter tour offered because it said where it went was “the pilot’s choice.”  Alie, stuck in isolation because of the flu, said to go ahead.

Avoiding absolutes like always, all, never and none is a good rule.  Bad reporters, journalists and others pushing an agenda have annoyed me at least since the 1960s.  They tend to see things in absolutes.

Nonetheless, when we flew to Alaska, I blithely accepted the common belief that all glaciers were melting as a result of climate change.  The ship’s daily newsletter immediately caught my eye when it said the Hubbard Glacier was getting heavier and moving toward the sea, not retreating.

Then I boarded the helicopter in Juneau with four other passengers.  When we landed on Taku Glacier, part of the Juneau Icefield, our pilot said it was not retreating.  On the other hand, we saw the Mendenhall Glacier terminus, also part of the Juneau Icefield.  In 2008, it was much closer to the sea than it is now.  Indeed, when I looked down, the area where I once saw icy waterfalls was now beginning to become green with vegetation.

The Juneau Icefield, at 1500 square miles, is the fifth largest in North America and stretches 100 miles north to south and 45 miles east to west.  There have been four expansions and retreats over the last 10,000 years.  The most recent accumulation ended in the mid-1700s.  The Taku Glacier also began to retreat in the mid-1700s, but then it began to grow again in the mid-1800s.

Click on photos to enlarge and see captions.

The shear weight of thousands of years of accumulated snow creates a thin film of water under a glacier.  The weight of the glacier then pushes the glacier downhill on that water.  When it reaches a body of water like the ocean, pieces break off – icebergs!  As the glaciers move down mountains, the ice carves those mountains into valleys.  The broken and ground stone is carried along with the ice in masses called moraines.  Near the front of the glacier, it is often pushed up into low mounds or hills.

If the glacier melts faster than new snow accumulates, it retreats moving back up the valleys.  That is what is happening with most glaciers.  But in those cases where a moraine slows or stops the glacier moving downhill, calving – breaking into icebergs – and melting does not happen as fast as new snow accumulates.  That is why Hubbard and Taku are still growing.  Usually, in such cases, the “dam” caused by the moraine eventually breaks and water floods downhill.

Date of my visit: 20 August 2023

When you get ill on a cruise ship.

Cruise ship hallway leading to patient rooms.

If you have been reading this blog very long, you know Alie has had rheumatoid arthritis for 54 years.  In the early days, aspirin was the only medicine designed for arthritis.  Subsequent medicines used for other purposes were found to help, and finally in the 1990s, some were developed specifically to help. But the years of damage and the side-effects of those early medicines left her with a compromised immune system.

We really aren’t complaining.  To quote an old Dupont add, she keeps going through the “miracle of modern chemistry.”  We are very fortunate indeed to have been able to travel as extensively as we have.

However, we became aware of the problems associated with medical care on cruise ships quite early on. 

The medical staff are not specialists, so once we had to make very expensive ship-to-shore phone calls to consult with one of her experts.  We haven’t had that problem in recent years, so it may not be as difficult today with much better Internet service ships and smart phones. Our first suggestion is that you carry a paper with your complete medical history and contact information for both your primary care doctor and any specialists.

On one cruise, another passenger had to be evacuated by helicopter after a heart attack while still at sea. That is expensive!

U.S. Medicare for those on Social Security does not cover health expenses outside the United States.  Neither do many private insurance companies.  You should definitely check.  If you don’t have coverage, it is available for purchase for your trip on a cruise or anywhere abroad.  The U.S. State Department has a list of insurers, and they can be found on the Internet or through your travel agent.

Alie was coughing the first day out of Seward and tested positive for the flu.  We found it interesting that had she tested positive for COVOD, we would not have had to pay, but as it was flu, it was our expense.  She went into isolation and relied on room service for meals.  I put our trash outside our door and obtained clean towels, etc. as necessary from our room steward.  To be careful, I also was tested but came out negative.

In this new era of cruising after the pandemic losses, Royal Caribbean charges for room service in the evening.  But they waived it for Alie, and to our surprise, we received a letter at the end of the cruise that said she would receive credit for the days lost on a future cruise.  Later, she did have a good time in one port and at our destination and will tell you the trip was a success simply for our time on the Kenai Peninsula.

If you are blessed with youth and good health, keep this advice in mind nonetheless.  You might trip on the dance floor and break an ankle.

Click on photos to enlarge.

Date of our problem: 19 Aug 2023