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snowy · 11-12-2010, 09:16 AM

Never been on a cruise, but I'd like to, and this incident certainly doesn't discourage me. The closest experience I've had to cruising is taking long-haul train trips, and there is an incident that reminds me of this.

When I was younger, my family took a train trip back East--we went by train from Portland to Seattle to Chicago to New York City to Washington, D.C. to Chicago to Portland. When we hit Chicago for the second time on our way home, we found that Chicago had been recently pummeled by the worst rains in recent history, and that flash floods had washed out the tracks our train was supposed to go on. So they packed us up and shipped us across the state to Galesburg, IL, where we caught a cobbled-together train about 8 or so hours after we'd been scheduled to depart Chicago. Our sleeping car was supposed to have been the staff sleeping car, so it wasn't as nice as the usual SuperLiner sleeper, and since they hadn't left from Chicago, the train didn't have all of the food it was supposed to have. Dinner that first night was KFC. Subsequent meals resembled bad airplane food. At the time, Amtrak usually had excellent food onboard; you could always count on a good steak being on the menu. The only good meal we had on that trip was the evening after we left Denver, because they'd been able to replenish some of the food. But then another disaster struck: halfway through Wyoming, the engineer ran out of his allotted hours and stopped the train; Amtrak had to drive a new engineer out to our stranded train. We went from being 8 or so hours late to being 14 hours late. We ran out of food again before we hit Boise the next evening, so dinner in Boise was KFC again. We finally rolled into Portland at 4am, and never were we so relieved to be off a train.

Originally Amtrak didn't offer us shit, but my dad raised hell and we got vouchers that paid for the family vacation the next summer.

If I were a passenger on the Splendor, I'd take the free cruise. A class action suit is likely to only yield $20.

11-12-2010, 09:16 AM	#27 (permalink)
snowy Kick Ass Kunoichi Location: Oregon	Never been on a cruise, but I'd like to, and this incident certainly doesn't discourage me. The closest experience I've had to cruising is taking long-haul train trips, and there is an incident that reminds me of this. When I was younger, my family took a train trip back East--we went by train from Portland to Seattle to Chicago to New York City to Washington, D.C. to Chicago to Portland. When we hit Chicago for the second time on our way home, we found that Chicago had been recently pummeled by the worst rains in recent history, and that flash floods had washed out the tracks our train was supposed to go on. So they packed us up and shipped us across the state to Galesburg, IL, where we caught a cobbled-together train about 8 or so hours after we'd been scheduled to depart Chicago. Our sleeping car was supposed to have been the staff sleeping car, so it wasn't as nice as the usual SuperLiner sleeper, and since they hadn't left from Chicago, the train didn't have all of the food it was supposed to have. Dinner that first night was KFC. Subsequent meals resembled bad airplane food. At the time, Amtrak usually had excellent food onboard; you could always count on a good steak being on the menu. The only good meal we had on that trip was the evening after we left Denver, because they'd been able to replenish some of the food. But then another disaster struck: halfway through Wyoming, the engineer ran out of his allotted hours and stopped the train; Amtrak had to drive a new engineer out to our stranded train. We went from being 8 or so hours late to being 14 hours late. We ran out of food again before we hit Boise the next evening, so dinner in Boise was KFC again. We finally rolled into Portland at 4am, and never were we so relieved to be off a train. Originally Amtrak didn't offer us shit, but my dad raised hell and we got vouchers that paid for the family vacation the next summer. If I were a passenger on the Splendor, I'd take the free cruise. A class action suit is likely to only yield $20. __________________ If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau