February 17 - Embarkation

Today we started the ocean cruise portion of our trip.  We embarked on the Celebrity Solstice in the port of Auckland for a trip around New Zealand and the south east coast of Australia.  

The embarkation process in Auckland was not as efficient as we have in other ports.  I would place the blame on two factors.  The terminal building is small which meant that too many people arrived at the same time causing massive confusion and delays.  Also. the coronavirus has required several barriers to be implemented to check each passenger for possible contact with the virus, adding to the delays.

Coleen Foster, our friend and travel agent for Expedia on Vancouver Island, who has coordinated this large group, was able to expedite the embarkation process so that everything ran smoothly. 

Once we got to the check-In counter, we started to run into problems with the Celebrity reservation system and the link to their housekeeping and security system.  To start with they lost Marg’s sea pass card.  This meant she didn’t exist as far as Celebrity was concerned.  We got that straightened out with a new card for Marg.

Unfortunately, the key did not work with our door lock. So, I went down and got a new key.  You guessed it, they didn’t work either.  So, I went back down to customer service and they printed a new set of keys for both myself and Marg.  Neither key worked.  On the next try the fourth set of keys finally worked.  There is not a judge in the land who would convict me for shooting the entire customer service staff.

At dinner tonight we finally got to meet all 20 people who are in our cruise group.  Marg already knows everyone’s name and personal history and their relationship to everyone else.  I’m left to asking who is that several times tonight.

It was great to see Matt and Pat from Missouri.  It felt like no time had passed since we last saw them, but of course it has been close to two years.

One of the big surprises is the reappearance of Leslie, our pet tit-mouse.  It has been twenty years at least since he took a vacation with us.  He has been to Mexico, Great Britain and Florida with us over the years.  I guess he loves the warm weather.

The Celebrity Solstice is a smaller ship than the normal Celebrity cruise liners.  It has a bank of elevators in the middle of the ship.  Other millennium based ships have three banks of elevators, one in the aft, one in the bow and one in the mid-ship.  The same holds true for the staircases. We are looking forward to seeing what other surprises this boat will hold.