Beautifully Spoiled – Part Three

SO – when we went to bed last night, our plans for today were to complete our packing, etc., because this was going to be our last day on the ship. Everything was set up for spending a day in Aruba, flying out the next day, etc. Including a Covid test appointment this morning on the ship and another one at the hotel the following day – it was a timing thing that would be needed for our flight.

Steve climbed out of bed at 7:00 a.m., and on the way to the bathroom noticed a letter that had been slipped under our door sometime during the night. I had been awake for a little while, lying in bed thinking, “for a ship that should be pulling into port, we’re doing an awful lot of rocking.” Steve climbed back in bed, moved in close to me and said softly in my ear, “We’re not going to Aruba.” And that began our day!

Let me show you select pieces of the letter:

“Although Crystal Serenity was cleared to arrive in Aruba today with all services paid for in advance and even though there are no reasonable risks or claims made against the vessel, local officials informed us on Friday at 4:30pm that the ship will not be permitted to dock in Aruba as scheduled. Since receiving this most unfortunate news, we have spent hours conferring with Aruba officials toward a positive resolution – with even our humanitarian pleas falling on deaf ears – but to no avail.

As a result, we are now forced to conclude our voyage in Bimini on Monday, January 31. …”

And the adventure has a new wrinkle! BUT, here’s the thing: it’s actually a very helpful wrinkle for Steve and me. Instead of spending a night in Aruba, having another Covid test and having to take two separate flights to get to Orlando, we’ll have a ferry ride from Bimini to Ft. Lauderdale (about 2-3 hours), stay in a hotel there, which Crystal is paying for, pick up a rental car the next day and make the 3-4 hour drive to Kissimmee and our condo! AND, we actually get one more day on the ship, which we are absolutely fine with! So, “thank you Lord for watching out for us!”

And now you know almost as much as we do. Our travel agent has already canceled our flights from Aruba and our hotel reservation, which they did not charge us for; she’s in contact with Luggage Concierge to get our luggage picked up in Ft. Lauderdale, and National has a rental car facility at Ft. Lauderdale airport which is probably where we’ll go to pick up our car.
It’s now the end of the first week of February and time let you know what happened next:

We did get into Bimini okay and in good weather – we spent the morning finishing packing our last little bit and putting our cases outside the door for the crew to take down to the hold. Then all we had to do was wait … which we did by walking leisurely around the deck, or sitting up on Lido spending some time working, or sitting in the Bistro having something to drink and talking with friends. Finally, they began calling the groups for disembarkation – we’d each been given a designated color/number; example: Pink 2. Ours seemed to be among that last of the groups; we’d moved down to our stateroom to sit and listen to the announcements rather than stand around somewhere with our carry-ons.

It was weird to be disembarking late in the afternoon; normal procedure was to get every guest off the ship by 10:00 a.m. (or at least as close to that as possible) because new guests would be embarking at noon. Of course, this time there would be no new guests. And the ferry we were scheduled to take from Bimini to Ft. Lauderdale only sailed in the evening. So, group by group we lined up on the pier and waited as patiently as possible to board the ferry – while we watched the sun set. By the time we boarded it was fully dark.

Once settled on the ferry we waited for the rest of the passengers to arrive and settle in. The ferry ride itself was fairly smooth which was nice since it was about 90 minutes long. Might have been a little longer since we were able to watch most of a Marvel movie before we docked – which was actually more frustrating than entertaining, since there was virtually no sound because of the noise of the other passengers and the ferry itself. Plus, I’m not a big fan of Marvel movies at the best of times – let me just say they leave a lot to be desired as silent films.

I breathed a sigh of relief once we stopped at the pier in Ft. Lauderdale, but the relief was short lived. What no one had mentioned was that we were required to stay in our seats on the ferry until they had unloaded ALL the luggage into the terminal building, which would take about another hour!

FINALLY we were able move slowly off of the ferry; picture a cattle chute where someone has forgotten to fully open the gate into the corral and you’ll have a fairly accurate picture. Things were about to get even more complicated, because you now had somewhere around 400 people milling around a huge warehouse looking for their luggage, which had to be gathered and then moved into a line to get through customs. Add to that the fact that no one who worked in that terminal seemed to understand that it might be a good idea to gather all the bags with the same color tags into one area … they had simply unloaded them into the building and their job was done! Most people needed a porter in order to get their stuff successfully up to and through customs which highlighted another miscalculation on the part of the terminal staff: they had scheduled exactly seventeen porters … total! So, there was a new line to stand in – the line for a porter.

Then once we had found our luggage, managed to get a porter and go through customs (which the porter had to do with us), we got to walk outside and find Luggage Concierge to drop our bags for shipment, then get ourselves and the bags we were taking with us over around the corner to stand in line for a bus to take us to the hotel. But, unfortunately, none of us knew which of the two hotels we were going to, so before boarding a bus we had to stand in line to talk to the lady with the clipboard who could tell us where we would be spending the night. We also discovered one more thing they’d forgotten to tell us – both hotels were in Miami, not Ft. Lauderdale.

Finally on board the bus, we settled back for the thirty-five minute ride to our hotel, where we were once again told that we needed to stay on board until they had unloaded all of our luggage, which they took up to the hotel lobby and unloaded off the carts. In the lobby we waited in our last line for the night – to check in and get our keys to our room. Gathering our stuff, and our two friends who would be going back to Ft. Lauderdale with us in the morning (us to pick up the rental car; them to board a plane home), we finally made it into our room – at 2:00 a.m.

It was the first time in probably 25 years that I didn’t wash my face before bed … all I could manage was unpacking what I would need that night and for dressing in the morning, changing into pajamas and brushing my teeth before falling into bed. Steve set up chargers for our phones, and figured out how to order some breakfast to be delivered the next morning. We had to be up by about 7:00 in order to get ready, pack up, meet our friends in the lobby and go climb in the car Steve hired to take us all back to Ft. Lauderdale airport.

Somehow, we managed it, and after we’d dropped our friends at the airport, we asked our driver to take us to a local market to pick up a couple of things, then he took us back to the airport and we were able to pick up a rental car and head to our condo. I have to say that the moment we climbed into the hired car at the hotel, I was able to take a deep breath and look forward to our time together in Florida. Yes, there have been many times when I feel sad about so many things: what happened to the Crystal Cruise line; wondering what is going on with the staff who have given us so many fabulous memories; when we’re trying to figure out if we’ll cruise again, and how that will look … and much more that pops into my head, sometimes into my dreams.

But, even before we left the ship God began to show me the blessings of those most recent days on board. And through the weeks since we left Ft. Lauderdale, he has allowed me to see in more detail some of the reasons we had this adventure.

I’ll share a few of those with you in my next post …