Readers' concern's addressed - Letters - Letter to the Editor

Cruise Travel, Dec, 2001 by George Schneider

This is in response to two letters in the October 2001 Cruise Travel--from Lucinda & Lawrence Dyjak of Ben Avon, PA, and Roy & Docia Williams of San Antonio, TX.

Roy and Docia were dismayed when they learned in January that they wouldn't be sailing on the Enchanted Isle this September. As former musical director on that wonderful ship, let me say this: Think of how the hundreds of crew-members felt when they learned on Thursday, December 28, that the ship would not be sailing that Saturday! The collapse of Commodore Cruise Line came as a sad shock to all of us. We spent New Year's Eve (the one going into the new millennium!) tied up at a desolate pier in Violet, LA, downriver from New Orleans--where indeed the ship still sits. There are many, many of us who hope and pray that rumors of the ship's reentering service this December might be true, including cruise director Dan Stapleton, who has since January spent time on the ships of Radisson Seven Seas Cruises. There was a true "family" feeling on the Enchanted Isle, among passengers and crew alike. I think she had the highest percentage of repeat passengers per voyage of any ship afloat. There are many among the crew who still haven't gotten over the shock.

Since then I've been lucky enough to sail, off and on, in Hawaii on another venerable and even older ship, the Independence. But alas, that ship's days are numbered, due to USCG regulations. So one more stately vessel of the seas will cease to exist, thus addressing Lucinda and Lawrence's letter: Yes, I too miss the passing of the old ships, being replaced by behemoths that are little more than floating resort hotels. Why bother taking a cruise when everything you need for your vacation is in the thing they call a ship?

Let us keep our fingers crossed that the Enchanted Isle will sail again. And that someday someone will build a real ship again!

George Schneider, Medford, NJ