{"id":4542,"date":"2010-12-02T01:10:26","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T09:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=4542"},"modified":"2010-12-02T01:10:26","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T09:10:26","slug":"cruise-ships-muster-stations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=4542","title":{"rendered":"Cruise Ships and Muster Stations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We’ve almost come to the conclusion that the mandatory muster station drills are in the same boat as the seat-belt drills on airplanes. Nobody’s listening, in part because most of the people have heard it all before, and know \u2014 or at least think they know \u2014 what to do in an emergency.<\/p>\n

The cruise lines say they’re compelled to to this by international law, but nobody’s quite sure what “this” is any more. On our first cruise, some years ago, we all had to take the life jackets from the cabin to the appropriate muster station. Our arrival was noted on a clipboard. How we fastened the jacket was inspected. We took it all seriously.<\/p>\n

On Celebrity’s Millennium<\/a>, no life jackets were necessary. There was just a demonstration, not unlike what flight attendants do.<\/p>\n

On Carnival’s Ecstasy<\/a>, the “muster station” was the theater, the demonstration was held there, then everybody was moved (row by row) outside onto the deck, where we stood for \"\"<\/a>a period of time before being dispersed, without another word being spoken. Meanwhile, we missed the sail-away.<\/p>\n

On Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas<\/a>, crew members started rounding up passengers 15 minutes before the drill, herding everyone to the appropriate muster station. The drill was late, crew members briefly demonstrated how to put on and secure the life jacket, while instructions were read over the intercom that few passengers were paying attention to, and those who were couldn’t hear because of the decibel level of the others. Then, class dismissed.<\/p>\n

On Norwegian’s Epic<\/a>, it was your basic demonstration by a couple of crew members. Ours was held in the casino, just about the last place you should take us to see something that’s supposed to be serious!<\/p>\n

On NCL’s Sky<\/a>, passengers were admonished (yes, us) for clicking cameras while standing near the lifeboats for our muster station drill, which wasn’t really any different from the others. When it was over, we asked why photos weren’t allow. “If photos were allowed, 90 per cent of the people would be taking pictures instead of listening,” he said.<\/p>\n

So there would only be 10 per cent of the passengers listening…instead of 20.<\/p>\n

While not wanting to take emergency procedures lightly, the conclusion to be drawn here is that the muster-station drills are simply done to make sure the cruise lines are covered. Yes, it’s the law, just like it’s the law for flight attendants.<\/p>\n

But if there’s an emergency at sea and somebody doesn’t know what to do, the cruise line is not going to be liable because\u2026<\/p>\n

“We did the compulsory muster-station drill.”<\/p>\n

Does anybody think we’re wrong?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve almost come to the conclusion that the mandatory muster station drills are in the same boat as the seat-belt drills on airplanes. Nobody’s listening, in part because most of the people have heard it all before, and know \u2014 or at least think they know \u2014 what to do in an emergency. The cruise… Continue reading Cruise Ships and Muster Stations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,36,19,15],"tags":[154,390,71,400,395,375,33,401,2207],"class_list":["post-4542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-reviews","category-ships","category-stories","tag-carnival","tag-carnival-ecstasy","tag-celebrity","tag-muster-stations","tag-navigator-of-the-seas","tag-norwegian-sky","tag-royal-caribbean","tag-safety","tag-ships","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}