Blue Odysseys

Posts Tagged ‘review’

Recently I made arrangements via Continental One Pass reward miles to fly to London on Lufthansa. Since my travel days were very flexible I was willing to take whatever they had available. They asked if I would be willing to fly through Frankfurt on Lufthansa if they put me in business class since they have nothing available for Continental reward travel for the entire month of June. Well… ok… sure.

This flight was the best flight I have ever taken in my life, and I have taken many flights between Houston and London, since England is home for me. I was a little concerned during the boarding as they allowed people with children and those needing assistance with boarding to board first – which took at least 30 minutes while the throng of other passengers seemed to be pressing toward the gate. When they announced Business Class to board at their leisure, I presented my boarding pass and passport. At that point I realized I had left my other travel documents, including my additional boarding passes, in my travel dossier on the seat in the departure lounge.  I was panicked. They said… leave your things here you can go and see if it is there then just come back without going thru the line again… they had just opened for coach boarding and a 747 holds a LOT of people. Luckily I found my travel wallet and finally boarded.

The seat was comfortable. Lots of leg room. There was a quilted blanket and feather pillow. Having never flown Lufthansa before it took me a little while to understand the seat operation as well as the in-flight entertainment. After take-off I realized my seat had a MASSAGE in the lumbar area. It was awesome! During flight we were served two rounds of beverages before they brought the appetizers (we had a choice of 3 different starters). They served a variety of wines with the meal. Then they brought the main course, of which we also had a choice of 3 menus as well as desserts and apertifs.

After dinner I decided to watch a movie. Their inflight entertainment system had at least 100 options for viewing. Additionally they offered music, games and language courses. The seat lay to an almost flat position and even though the legs were still at a downward angle it was very comfortable and I was able to sleep.

There were several times during flight that passengers had issues. One guy lost his debit card – two flight attendants took the time to take his entire seat apart to find it. The guy next to me somehow unplugged the earphones to use his own fancy ones – and ended up breaking it – but again the flight attendant was somehow able to take the entire seat apart and restore his ability to hear audio during flight.

The landing was perfect even though it was raining when we landed.

I will fly Lufthansa again! They have great attention to detail and offer great service. As a matter of fact, we are flying Lufthansa in the fall when we go to Europe – so we will be able to give a review of their COACH service and attention to detail.

The only thing I found bothersome was more the fault of Frankfurt Airport – we were not given a gate to pull up to but they unloaded the plane ON the runway IN the RAIN on staircases without any cover. So we had to grab our carryons and walk down metal steps in pouring rain and get on buses that were waiting to take us to the airport. This screwed up my knee for the duration of the trip. Frankfurt Airport is the most disgusting place ever… and I will be writing a blog about that later.

We went on a Carnival cruise in August 2009. After cruising on Royal Caribbean just 4 month prior and having a wonderful time, our expectations were high. Boy were we let down – our experience with Carnival left something to be desired. The room itself was really nice, the balcony terrific, but that’s pretty much where the positives end. We were on the ship name Carnival Legend, and how apropo because how bad this cruise sucked is already legendary to us. Let’s break each horror down one by one, shall we?

• The food. We thought people who went on cruises always talked about the food, the food, the food and how much weight they gained. We BOTH lost weight this week. Since neither of us are morning people we decided to have room service for breakfast on the first day. The only choices were cereal, a banana, milk, coffee and not much else. Big fat whoo. The next morning, we decided to go upstairs and figured breakfast food is pretty safe, right? Wrong.. The eggs and bacon were SO greasy because they didn’t put anything under them to CATCH the grease, they just left it there to sit and soak. *yum*. I had milk in a little kindergarten lunchroom container and prayed for better luck at dinner. Well my prayers fell on some pretty deaf ears because in an entire WEEK, out of all the nonsense they put out, the pasta with plain sauce was the only thing that didn’t make me nauseous. Of course they only served it ONE TIME. Yippee for me. My friend, who is braver than I, tried a variety of these culinary disasters only to have one bite and push away the plate.They had numerous desserts, and I love desserts and am not picky about them, I will eat cake made from a box mix and be happy. I tried them all and can’t say I liked (or finished) ANY OF THEM!! HOW DO YOU SCREW UP CAKE? Seriously? HOW? These people did DAY AFTER DAY. WTF? You can get pizza and cheeseburgers 24-hours a day but they even FUCKED UP PIZZA!! How gifted do you have to be to do THAT? I can make Ellios pizza from a box in the toaster oven and not like it but it was still better than that undercooked NONSENSE. It should at LEAST BE WARM. The burgers had zero taste (which may have been a blessing) and once again, cheese isn’t melted and it isn’t even WARM. WTF? We even ordered a grill cheese sandwich, again from room service and the cheese was NOT melted. How does that make it a grilled cheese sandwich? So pack a lunch folks if you plan on going anywhere with Carnival.

• The casino : 9000 machines, all of them THE SAME. All boring and OLD! Whippee again. And hey, let’s not say anything about the CHILDREN constantly running around who were brought in by their parents darting in and out of the Texas Hold “Em room or running back and forth to the Follies theatre. Thought there was a law against that but I guess not. The other folks we talked to were not having too good a time either because every single slot machine was jinxed against the player – HAH!! No wonder Carnival cruises are so cheap!!! On the last day the hideously perky cruise director said, and I quote, swear to god “Why not spend some time in the casino and try to win back some of the money you lost?!!”. Need I say more? Actually I do, but the entertainment choice for the casino is getting its own number, which brings us to number 3.

• Tony Ray. Yes, Tony Ray. While passing around a crack pipe at  annual “Carnival cruise think tank” meeting, some idiot came up with the brilliant idea that the casino needed live music. ????????? WHY would you want music to be louder than the sound of the slot machines which encourage passengers to play? Oh, that’s right, they never pay out anyway, so you might as well have music. They then decided to make a bad idea even worse and hire Tony Ray, a band of one, to deliver his “smooth sounds” that are probably the soundtrack playing in HELL. He picked all the favorites folks, and delivered them in an order that made zero sense.

  How do you go from Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello” to Ozzy Osbournes “Crazy Train” and for God’s sake WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? His vocal range is non-existent, and we want to know is if he is the cousin of someone who works for carnival cruise lines or if he made a deal with the devil. Even the devil and all his powers couldn’t get this dude a gig better than a carnival cruise ship in the casino! He had a captive audience!!!! If you wanted to gamble you had to suffer through 5 hours, 5 grueling hours, of Tony Ray. He even had a SHTICK. Think Bill Murray doing the lounge lizard singer Jerry Vale on Saturday Night Live! We would have been thankful for Bill!!!! Actual line uttered by Tony Ray : “Yes you once, twice, six times a lady”. I have WITNESSES!

• If you are not an American citizen, any my friend is not,  be prepared to be UP and OUT of your room at 6:15 AM on the last morning of your cruise to go through Immigration. They don’t tell you this until about 8pm the night before by leaving a piece of paper on your bed. If you don’t read it, you are screwed, so you better fucking read English AND it says that they will not start unloading the boat until ALL non-US citizens have done the Immigration walk. Great time for them to take a chance like that, don’t you think?

• Before you get on the ship and actually go on the cruise you get NADA, NIL, NOTHING. Nothing telling you where you have to go to get on the ship, what time you have to be there, what you can and cannot bring, tips, rules, what to expect, warnings about tony ray, NOTHING. We had to look it up online and even that was bleak because the goddamned website was problematic. They should send something to your house, in advance, like Royal Caribbean does, so you know WTF is going on!

• Free ice cream for 24 hours a day! Yay! The first problem is they are so well hidden you will need a treasure map to find them. The area is such a mess you would think 98 gremlins came and trashed the place. Every time we saw it, it looked as though the machines exploded. Three flavors were available. THREE. No sprinkles, nuts, topping, nothing. Guess buying a vat of sprinkles would have broken the bank.

• The captain needs some people skills too. He never made a single announcement that we heard, so we never heard his name or his voice. We never got a “This is your captain…” WTF? When he walked through the casino and we caught a glimpse of him he made ZERO eye contact with ANY passenger on the ship or said hello, he was too busy hanging on and kissing some lady that he was obviously involved with and the next time he was talking with another member of the crew. No gold stars for him when it comes to friendliness, but we sure heard enough, and we mean ENOUGH, of our cruise director… good thing we never saw the bitch, we would have thrown her overboard!

• Children running and screaming in the hallways – why do parents allow this??? We did not do that when we were kids, we were not allowed!

• We don’t want to buy your stinking diamonds. Even at 50% off!! Even with the additional 20% off. Yes, cruise director shoved this bullshit down our throats hourly. Why the FUCK would we go on a cruise to buy god damned diamonds???? Hell, every fucking port you stop at the god damned cruise villages, that were obviously built with the help of the cruise lines, have DIAMOND INTERNATIONAL. Why oh WHY do I want to buy diamonds in Belize, Cozumel, Honduras, Grand Cayman AND on the fucking boat. Knock if off with the fucking jewelry sales already.

• Cruise photographers… we just wanted to stab them. You can’t even get on or off the boat without some stupid fucking Kodak moment with either Mayan warriors, Mexican folk dancers, a parrot, a pirate or the stupid Carnival smoke stage super hero. WTF? ENOUGH already. I won’t buy it so leave me the fuck alone and get out of my face.

After our Carnival experience we will only be sticking with Royal Caribbean in the future for all future sailings… so if you want to avoid us, make sure you book your cruise with Carnival!

I’m never flying American Airlines in this lifetime, and neither will anyone I know after they hear what a bunch of rude, unhelpful monsters they were for something that was NOT OUR FAULT.

We had a trip planned through Expedia.com (who are also fuckers, but that is another topic) for three of us to fly to Mexico. All tickets and connections were purchased through Expedia. The first person, my cousin, was flying Continental from London to Texas where he would meet my buddy, and they would both fly to Florida (where I am). The next morning the three of us would fly to Mexico on an early morning flight. The initial tickets we purchased from Expedia were to fly out at 9:00 AM, a reasonable hour, BUT, American kept sending us flight updates during the two months before departure, our final departure time being 6:00 AM – this is HOW we got SCREWED in the first place.

There was, of course, a snafu. My cousins plane couldn’t land due to foul weather, and when it did land, they of course pulled HIM out of the regular line to do an extensive “are you a terrorist” search, even though he was wearing his police ID. WHATEVER. Anyway, Continental KNEW he had to get on a flight and they were trying to find him in time to get him and my buddy on the flight to Florida. Of course the 10 min we needed we didn’t get and the plane left without them. It was the last flight out for the day.

The next flight coming to Florida was arriving too late the following moring to allow us to catch the flight to Mexico. We are all in a panic, I am in Florida and my friend with my limited English speaking cousin, stuck in Texas. I called Expedia. They would have been happy to change the flights for Mexico for a small fee, but AMERCIAN AIRLINES WOULDN’T LET THEM. They called American Airlines. I called American Airlines. The people that worked for Continental in TEXAS called them and told them they should do all they could to help since it was not the passengers fault.

Know what they said? Tough, you want to change tickets it is $700 dollars PER PERSON. They all called a supervisor who said the same thing. NO ONE at American Airlines cared, was helpful, NOTHING. Know who saved the day? CONTINENTAL AIRLINES. They felt very bad for us and found a way for us all to go for 400$ TOTAL COST TO ME. So, American Airlines, you have forever lost a customer and for what you put us through I will tell anyone that will listen how shitty your service is and not to fly with you. American Airlines should be ashamed of themselves. CONTINENTAL AIRLINES on the other hand, went above and beyond the call of duty to help us and saved our vacation!

We traveled to Europe from the US wanting to see Malta and Tuscany. Being the travel savvy chicks that we are we decided to try and do this as economically as possible. We flew to London from Houston, flew to Tuscany and then on to Malta, back to London, and finally to Houston using cheap European puddle jumpers to get to our destinations. You don’t even want to know how many hours we put into fine tuning the flights so we had enough time in each place, enough time to get to the airports, etc

We saved a CONSIDERABLE amount of money doing it this way. Before you try this at home there are some things you need to be aware of.  With both RyanAir and Easyjet… you are allowed 1 suitcase and 1 carry on (which is obviously a purse for a woman). It will be WEIGHED. And the limit is NOT 50 pounds, it is closer to 20. And your empty suitcase weighs something you know, even before you put something IN IT. EVERY pound over that you will PAY FOR and it is expensive.

Ryanair who we now call CRYIN AIR – allowing 15kg Checked Luggage + 10kg Hand Luggage and you may not share weight with your travel companions!!! When Ryanair states a limit of 15kg this doesn’t mean that when travelling as a couple one can carry 20kg and the other 10kg. “All baggage allowances are personal and cannot be combined”. This nonsense is being enforced to the extent that people are having to repack at the check in desk so that each individual bag conforms to the weight limit.

And here is the kicker – if you go OVER you are charged 15 EUROS per KG that you are over. So if you take two pairs of shoes instead of one you are totally fucked. TO MAKE THINGS WORSE, THEY INCREASED THEIR PER KILO OVERAGE CHARGE WHILE WE WERE TRAVELING!!!! WHAT A BUNCH OF STUPID BULLSHIT – WHEN WE LEFT IT WAS 10 EUROS PER KILO – WE HAD THAT ON OUR DOCUMENTS, BUT THE BITCH AT THE AIRPORT IN MALTA INFORMED US IT WAS RAISED TWO DAYS AGO, FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.

Then we have the assholios over at SLEAZY Jet – well really it is EasyJet, but having flown with them several times now, I am so done, although they are WAY MORE REASONABLE than Ryan Air. You can check up to 8 pieces of checked-in hold baggage to a maximum combined weight of 20kg. A fee per kilo for excess weight is charged at the airport prior to departure of only 12 EUROS per KG over.

So do you really save money on the ticket? PROBABLY NOT! Other airlines charged 300 dollars as opposed to Ryanair and Easyjet less than $150, but when you add on the extra pounds for your luggage, it may come out pretty close to even. At least you can BUY some stuff on your vacation, other than what you brought with you. And some clean underwear. We are NOT heavy packers but being gone for two weeks with no opportunity to wash clothes, we obviously exceeded the weight limit.

If you live in America you may opt instead to use one of the more expensive airlines instead of doing what we did. We were constantly trying to fit our purses in our carry-ons, packing, re-packing, weighing, and worrying. If you are traveling light for a short stay, not the two weeks we were gone or if you have the opportunity to do laundry while away, go for it and try the cheaper options of Ryanair and Easyjet – god damn though, where is British Airways when you need them.

Please think about what your needs really are before you chose an option like Ryanair or Easyjet. It just may wind up costing you more money, and more frustration than you bargained for!

What the hell is happening to television programming? AMC used to stand for American Movie Classics. Then they started showing shit like Steven Segal movies and I demanded their heads. Bravo TV used to show weird cool stuff like Cirque de Soleil (before everyone knew what it was) and now they have Real Housewives of the (insert name) and their rotten kids. They need to change their name to MTV.You can read our rant Why Network Programming Really Sucks, but now we are focusing our attention on The Travel Channel. They are really working my last nerve. I want them to start calling themselves “THE CLOGGED ARTERY CHANNEL” or perhaps The Glutton Network.

23. Diner Paradise : followed by alka seltzer paradise

24. Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern: Gross. Just gross. I don’t want to see someone eating spiders, rats on a stick, bats on a stake, grasshoppers, sheep heads, fish eyes or anything else that is creepy crawly. GAG. Why isn’t this who on Chill or SyFy?

Its no wonder there is so much obesity in this country… The Travel Channel clearly promotes it with their line of programming. But what about travel? What about shows that highlight Paris, Ireland, Thailand, Yellowstone… anywhere but a greasy-spoon truckstop in the middle of Podunk, Nowhere who serve up 64 oz chicken fried steak smothered with cream gravy.