The ship gathered the children on board for an Easter treat and there were about five. Unusually, one couple at our supper table actually have jobs to return to.
A common question is "What did you do? What were you (implicitly ... when you actually amounted to something)?" While retirement is a great leveler socially, a cruise ship has few passengers retired from menial occupations as they'd normally not be able to afford the fares.
Walkers are somewhat common and a few pax have powered chairs to zip around the ship in. I started to call those "electric chairs" and realized that term has another, more sinister meaning that I didn't intend.
This cruise has many Asian pax who can be noisy, loud and sometimes boisterous in inappropriate settings. I predict Princess will find their Japan-based ships draw fewer-than-expected non-Asian pax after an initial period when "the word" hasn't gotten out.
When travel agents hear negative reports from their clients they'll recommend cruises based in the U.S. or Europe, or even Singapore. Posters on the Cruise Critic boards will also be influential. The DrsC have wondered if the basing-in-Japan experiment Princess is trying may turn out the way Norwegian's experiment in Honolulu-basing did ... overly optimistic.
This post written two days ago.
