Carnival would like you to muster as soon as you board. We did and checked in and the guy said thank you, he just scanned our boarding pass, we just took off, no life jacket demo...interesting. We stayed on board in Nassau and the Dream had an abandon ship drill where they launch the lifeboats and actually run them and then re attach them to lift cables. Our cabin attendent was one of the drill people. He is a talker and I asked him do you guide the guests on this deck to the muster station, he said yes. He said down the hall and up the stairs to your muster station. I told him the stairs are the walls as ship will list one way or the other, they dont sink level,aka concordia. He told me he did not know that. I asked him the lifeboats say it can handle 150 people, is that 150 small or huge people? He just said people. I asked him how are you going to get a 200 pound plus person from this deck to the muster station. He said easy, up the stairs(duh) no stairs ship is listing walls are stairs(scooter people, he did not answer). He asked me how will I get off ship since I climb on walls? I said I will jump overboard. He said ship too high. I said I was In Navy and we jumped off a platform as high as an aircraft carrier where the pool looked like a small square. The lifeboats has 3 crew members on it, a helmsman, a bow person and a stern person, plus each station on the ship has a person operating the lift to lower the lifeboat in the water. It takes about two minutes to get lifeboat in the water and away from ship(got it all on video). It took an hour to get the lifeboats back on the ship as no one knew how to parallel park them to their lift stations, look liked a keystone cop movie. I dread the day and I hope I am not on the ship that has a major disaster with 3ooo people on board,with crew brainwashed that ship will sink level and everyone will go to life rafts like they will be getting off the ship.As I said in one of my posts before, the muster drill is a laugh, now they just scan your card and let you go to your merry way it is getting even more laxer...a disaster waiting to happen
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Muster on our April cruise
18 Answers
Lest we forget (or gloss over like the cruiselines have) that the PURPOSE of a muster drill is in case of a CATASTROPHIC EMERGENCY that calls for EVACUATION of passengers and non-essential crew...what they're doing isn't even a sniff of preparing for that. Pick any circumstances you could imagine...a severe storm coupled with a power loss and/fire...whatever...mix and match the disaster...add in a FEW THOUSAND helpless, panicked passengers (and less than helpful crew)...and when the body count is tallied, the cruiselines will be forced to return to the old-style muster drill...It isn't hardly perfect, but as inconvenient as it was, its way better than this joke.
I do like the convenience of the check in once on board but sort of do believe that it should be the all hands to station for muster. Just seems sensible.
This is nothing new...been this way (a bad joke) for quite awhile...we dispose of the so-called muster drill asa we get onboard...first thing..couple of times she didn't feel like walking to our muster station so I took her card...they checked it in anyway...didn't stay for the "demo" either...no crew cared or noticed..thats the last two....as I have posted many times...ad nauseum...a handful of military trained people "might" have a better chance of surviving a serious disaster...(mebbe)..altho I would admit folks who served at sea are in the best group, the rest of us would just rely on bad attitudes...
Thanks for putting all our minds at ease.
Unfortunately, you're right, and it will probably take a disaster to change things.
For reasons already stated, I'm in the camp of people who would like to go back to the old style muster drills, as inconvenient and unpopular as they are.