The Mariner of the Seas has arrived in its new home port of Los Angeles where she will commence cruises to the Mixican Riviera.  Building up to the arrival was a film festival, and aboard the ship, Carol Channing and Cloris Leachman lent star power to the cruise.  Channing screened Thoroughly Modern Millie, while Leachman, fresh from her PR bounce from Dancing With the Stars, performed her one woman show.  On shore, a film festival was billed as the first of an annual series.

Mariner of the Seas is the first Voyager class vessel to sail from the west coast.  She is the second to last of the class to have been built before Freedom of the Seas.

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I have never bought cruise insurance.  I’ll admit that up-front and directly.  Each time I had taken a cruise, the offer came from my travel agent, and in turn I would decline.  Granted, when I first cruised the wider cruising world was not yet as religious about advocating insurance.  Personally, I lumped the products that were on the market into the same category as extended warranties on refrigerators and DVD players.  I came very close to buying the insurance on my last two cruises, both with Royal Caribbean of course.  Yet I still didn’t push myself to spend the extra money to guard against the unexpected.

Looking ahead towards future cruises, assuming my entire family were going with me, I figured I would buy the insurance.  But it was this past week which is prompting me to “get religion” on the topic.  As some who read here already knew, my father was set to take a cruise on Mariner of the Seas over the holidays.  As you’ll appreciate, I reframed from talking much of it for the same reason you wouldn’t want to hang a banner in front of your house to announce you weren’t there.  However as matters unfolded an appearently benign enough health matter developed just prior to the date he and those going with him were due to depart.   Thankfully all appears to be well, but suffice to say it is bad enough to have any cruise canceled on such an account.  To then also lose the money for said cruise would be that much more crushing.

Any talk of travel insurance spurs thought of bad sales pitches and people padding commissions.  Yet having seen it happen to my dad, and considering how such a disaster could stall cruising for a year or more with my own family, it is something I am figuring into my budgets.  To which, I’ll have to research a primer on the subject for 2009.  My advice for now?  Talk to somebody about it, it is worth knowing about, and likley it is worth having.

You can always drop by our message boards and ask about it if you like!

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