Thread: Have you had any strange things happen on a cruise?

Have you had any strange things happen on a cruise?

I can think of a couple of examples:

On QM2 I received a birthday cake and the waiters sang happy birthday. Ok not that strange, but this was in May and my birthday is in October. Also the cake had Frank written on it.

On QE2, I returned to my cabin to find an envelope containing a note saying “thanks you’re a life saver” and a 20 Euro note. The note was signed but I could not read the signature and there was no cabin number so I could not contact the sender.

A few days later I did received another note politely asking me to forward the money to a cabin 2 down from mine, which I did.

Hmm, Stephen, was the person 2 doors down from you FRANK?!?

Notice Stephen did not say WHICH direction. I will bet Frank was in the opposite direction from the cabin he delivered the note to.

I have posted this before, but on one of our cruises there were two gals, both blondes, who were taking pictures of the ships departing the port. As our ship was pulling away and they were taking pictures, they realized that it was THEIR ship that was leaving. They frantically notified the people who were in charge on the dock and the ship returned the 10 feet it had departed to pick them up. Everyone on the ship who was watching the departure clapped and cheered as they got on...

They were very lucky

Not really strange, but an incredible coincidence, I suppose.

When sailing on a Caribbean cruise my husband went to the Pursers Desk (can't bear the new title for this!) and as he got to the front of the queue the young man on the desk said Hello, you taught me maths a few years ago! My husband is a retired maths teacher and this was one of his ex-pupils. What a coincidence that we should meet him on a ship more than 5,000 miles from home!

He sent us a lovely bottle of wine to the dining room which was really nice of him.

Originally Posted by ellie1145

Not really strange, but an incredible coincidence, I suppose.

When sailing on a Caribbean cruise my husband went to the Pursers Desk (can't bear the new title for this!) and as he got to the front of the queue the young man on the desk said Hello, you taught me maths a few years ago! My husband is a retired maths teacher and this was one of his ex-pupils. What a coincidence that we should meet him on a ship more than 5,000 miles from home!

He sent us a lovely bottle of wine to the dining room which was really nice of him.

That must mean your husband was a good teacher

Originally Posted by ziggysun

Hmm, Stephen, was the person 2 doors down from you FRANK?!?

Originally Posted by nealberk

Notice Stephen did not say WHICH direction. I will bet Frank was in the opposite direction from the cabin he delivered the note to.

The money did go to the right cabin, might have been Frank, who knows.

I have not done well with cakes, one year we moved table and on my birthday the waiters sang to somone I the table I should have been at. When my cake arrived it was for Stephan.

Even though both cakes had the wrong name on, I still ate them.

On the subject of coincidences, two people I know were both on the same cruise on QE2. One was a person I know from another forum who lives in New York, the other lives about 4 miles from me here in the UK.

At dinner on the first night, they turned out to be sat next to each other. They go chatting and managed to work out they both knew me and my mum. What are the odds of that?

I guess this could go under "justice" or "strange": a couple of cruises ago, there was an extended family (and yes, if you think the story is familiar, I've told it before) of about 52 from South America. In just two weeks, they really managed to endear themselves to their fellow passengers.

One of my fellow rollcallers reported that the first afternoon she was approached by one of the women, who insisted that they switch cabins. Now my friend was on a waitlist for that coveted cabin category and was ecstatic when one finally became free. Well, in the coming days, that other woman made it clear she was an unhappy camper by terrorizing my friend -- eg. ramming her child's stroller into Tina.

The parents decided to basically hang out in the casino whenever it was open (another roll call friend noticed). So their kids would just hang around the ship. Undoubtedly bored and for whatever reason felt they were above participating in the kids' program (my daughter noticed). They threw objects overboard (some furniture, some chess pieces from the giant chess set up on the top deck), they would take over a stairwell so that passengers couldn't take the stairs, they would run around the hallways late at night, early in the morning, knocking on cabin doors.

One kid even ran into my new friend Kim, which caused her to spill a glass of wine all over a new dress.

My daughter was in the pool having a fun time until one of the boys decided to hit her. Then he got out of the pool and my hubby went over to the kid and gave him a stern lecture. I added my own words, and the boy shrugged and said in Spanish that he couldn't understand (which we doubt...plus we said some things in Spanish that he should apologize to our daughter, which of course, he didn't). No parent came over to find out why we were talking to their son-- which has to indicate to us, he was unsupervised.

We were talking to one of the youth security and he said he had tried to talk to one of the fathers about his kids being unsupervised. The man said, "I'm on vacation." The security guy replied, "You're never on vacation from being a parent."

Apparently the adults in this family kept making demands of the waitstaff and cabin stewards to the point that other passengers who were also serviced by these crew members felt they got lesser service.

Others had their stories about this family. But here's the strange (or justice) part:

The last day of our cruise, we had a required stop in Ensenada (the PVSA requirement). That night at dinner, one of our tablemates told us that when he was off the ship and on the pier, he witnessed one of the women from this family on the gangway with a couple of her kids, while pushing her stroller and holding her toddler. She apparently stopped to put away her ID/cabin card into her purse, when she lost her hold of her toddler, who fell into the water. One of her kids and someone else jumped into the water and rescued the baby.

Everyone, including our tablemate, who saw this incident made sure to mention it. It got around the ship very quickly. It also got mentioned in the cruise junkies site.