Here's cruise news which happens so seldom that when it does it makes headlines:
Holland America cruise ship fails health inspection
That was the headline on a cruise blog by USA Today's Gene Sloan. It was a headline because for the first time in 10 months a cruise ship didn't measure up to the cleanliness demands of the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
Twice a year, CDC inspectors board every cruise ship in a U.S. port, by surprise. When they're finished, if the ship's report card is below 86, it goes back to cleanliness school, scarred with failure.
Holland America's Veendam failed.
Its score was 77, the lowest of any failed ship in the last three years, in which time only two other ships didn't make the grade, Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas (85) last December and Cunard's Queen Mary 2 (84) in June 2011. The Veendam visit was last month.
The Veendam is the fifth-oldest ship in Holland America's fleet of 15. Built in 1996, it was cited for dozens of violations, from refrigerators and dishwashers that didn't work cleanly to ice machines that were dirty to flies in the kitchen. The cruise line took exception and did some citing of its own…that the Veendam had passed all 32 previous inspections and that the inspection dealt with only one area of the ship's operation.
A statement sent to Sloan by Holland America addressed the failure this way:
"The unsatisfactory score is highly unusual and an aberration. We are confident that this will not occur again, and that Veendam's (CDC) scores in future will return to their consistently high levels."
Like so many things in life, it only takes once.
Carnival Splendor
7 nights
December 9, 2012
Long Beach (return): Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta
Inside: $509
Cost per day: $72
www.carnival.com