The Worst Muster Drill of All…

As you may recall from my last blog, I was spending the weekend on Celebrity Eclipse. I promised to tell you all about the ship and my Sky Suite Cabin, however this will now come in my next blog.

I certainly have plenty to say on my weekend on board, but first I wanted to get out there about how bad the Muster Drill was on Celebrity before I tell you more about the ship and Celebrity Eclipse… plus many of my other colleagues have already saturated the blog world with their experience on board.

Now a Muster Drill is compulsory on all ships and sailings, even for a 2 night trip. Safety must come first and quite rightly too. I informed my partner (whom had never cruised before) that we would be attending the muster drill and it normally takes around 15-20 minutes, subject to how they do their roll call. He was happy with that, and understood the meaning of why a Muster drill is so important.

As per usual the information regarding our meeting location for our cabin was printed on our guest cards and also inside the cabin door, our butler Nelson informed us that we did not require to take our life jackets but did confirm the time required to be in the meeting area.

Now, as I have done a lot of cruising, I know that each ship does try to do things slightly different, most require you to go to your designated area, some with life jackets and some without, complete the roll call, listen to the instructions on what to do in an emergency and the sound of the alarm, the captain normally has a few words to say and then you are dismissed.

Some cruise lines do go that bit further:                                                                                                                                                                       Cruise & Maritime had us complete the roll call, put our life jackets on and then form a line on how to get to your life boat, we was made to stand under our specific lifeboat and the wait for the captain to walk past to check he was satisfied we had completed the muster drill.

MSC, you do have a little longer here as they want to make sure everyone knows what they are doing and the instructions will be played in all languages to cover every nationality on board. But it is essential everyone knows what to do. So there is no point in complaining.

Now Celebrity take the biscuit…. Once we had all gathered, which seemed to take an age, they then played a video, I really couldn’t tell you what was actually going on in the video as the small screen they used wasn’t visible to me from the area I was standing, plus there was too many guests surrounding the TV stand. I can tell you it was a short film, supposedly a bit tongue in cheek about a master criminal on board and a spy trying to take them down, with some safety information thrown in for good measure. It was absolute nonsense, a waste of over 2800 guests time that people started to lose interest in, to the point you couldn’t hear what was meant to be going on as everyone was talking. This lasted for at least 10 minutes or so. Once the video had finished playing, we then had the roll call and given full safety instructions and alarm drill, then a chat from the captain.

In my eyes the whole thing with the video before hand was not necessary and made the muster drill long and uncomfortable with nowhere to sit. The offending Muster Drill video can be seen below, which having watched it in the comfort of my own office, I think this would be more suited to be played in the cabin, where you are more likely to take notice of it and maybe enjoy it more.

What’s the worst muster drill you have attended?

Dawn

x