Carnival To Spend Millons On Safety Program

by Chris Owen on

Digging deep into Carnival Corporation pockets to address the safety concerns of cruise travelers worldwide, Carnival Cruise Lines is looking to put the past behind them. Today announcing a multi-million comprehensive safety program, the cruise line that just can’t seem to get ahead of the game is taking a different approach: changing it.

This time last month in the article “Carnival Cruise Line Shake Down Begins, And That’s A Good Thing,” Gadling reported that Carnival was in the process of shaking down their ships, looking for and trying to anticipate anything that can go wrong.

“This review is very comprehensive; it will take us a little bit of time to complete it,” said Carnival President and CEO Gerry Cahill. “But you can rest assured that it is our highest priority throughout the entire organization.”

Today, the fruits of those efforts were revealed, with Cahill noting, “by applying lessons learned through our fleet-wide operational review after the Carnival Triumph fire and by taking advantage of new technologies, we have identified areas for enhancement across our operations.”Called the Operating Reliability and Guest Comfort program, the focus is deep, promising to tackle three major areas of concerns to travelers:

Enhance emergency power capabilities- Each ship will have a new, emergency generator that will provide 100 percent of stateroom and public toilets, fresh water and elevators in the event of a loss of main power.

Improve the level of operating redundancies– All ships already have two separate, redundant engine rooms. But new modifications will include a reconfiguration of certain engine-related electrical components.

Introduce new fire safety technology– Fleet-wide, Carnival will invest in the newest and most technically advanced fire prevention, detection and suppression systems, upgrading the existing water mist systems.

On the guest comfort front, Carnival will expand the availability of hotel services for the comfort of its guests if a shipboard event involves the loss of main power.

Looking beyond Carnival Cruise Lines, the program will be applied to all 101 ships in the Carnival Corporation Fleet, which also includes Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Cunard Line and Seabourn.

“The overall program of enhancements across the fleet, including Carnival Cruise Lines’ ships, is expected to cost between $600 and $700 million,” said Carnival Corporation spokesperson Lanie Morgenstern in an email.

Included in the announcement was a new video featuring Cahill and Carnival Corporation chairman, Mickey Arison. Accused by the Boston Globe of paying more attention to his Miami Heat than the heat passengers on the Carnival Triumph endured without air-conditioning, Arison goes on the record, describing where safety fits into Carnival’s plans.




[Photo Credit – Carnival Corporation]

Olympic Bid Holds Tournament On 7 Continents Over 7 Days

by Adam Hodge on

Traveling to seven continents in seven days is grueling enough. Throw in a daily match against a former professional squash player and that makes for some pretty exhausting travel.

Two former pro squash players, Peter Nicol and Tim Garner, are in the midst of a week-long, 40,000-mile world tour in an effort to get squash into the 2020 summer Olympics. Their whirlwind competition ends in New York City this Saturday after successive matches in cities on each of the other continents: London, Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Santiago and the Falkland Islands.

Wait… the Falkland Islands? That’s not quite Antarctica Geographically; it’s South America. And politically, well, it’s still in Europe. Perhaps they are going by the ecozone or floristic kingdom definition of Antarctica? Perhaps.

This type of trip flies in the face of all the principles espoused by slow travel, but it’s an impressive feat all the same. It still kind of blows my mind that we can access every edge of the planet in but a week (at least nominally or floristic kingdom-ly).

For those wondering, they’re currently tied at two games a piece. The ultimate winner is likely to be the one who doesn’t collapse from jet lag in New York.

[Photo credit: SummitVoice1]

Should Seniors Pay More For National Parks?

by Libby Zay on

Besides being able to snag early bird specials and senior discounts at museums, there isn’t exactly a laundry list of tangible perks when it comes to aging. But one benefit – the ability to purchase a lifetime access pass to all U.S. national parks for just $10 – might soon go away.

CNN is reporting Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, questioned whether or not aging Americans could afford upping the economical, one-time fee during a House Oversight hearing on forced cuts at parks, museums and archives. According to the news outlet, the National Park Service is currently facing a $153 million budget gap, and simply doubling the price of a senior pass could potentially gain the agency $10 million per year. It’s only a fraction of the amount of money needed, but it’s a start.

Currently, adults under the age of 62 can purchase a multiple-park pass for $80, but it only lasts a year. At $10 for life, the senior pass gets older people into all 391 national parks, monuments, battlefields, military or historical parks, seashores, recreation areas, rivers and trails. So what do you think? Will hiking up the fee really cause dissension amongst retirees, or could it be a simple, affordable way to get more money flowing into national parks? Weigh in below.

[Photo credit: Jkinsocal / Wikimedia Commons]

Should This Hotel Be Open To Guests?

by Reena Ganga on

In the hospitality industry, it’s becoming increasingly common for hotels to remain open while they’re undergoing renovations, or to open their doors to guests while they’re still under construction. Known as a “soft opening,” it’s a way for hotels to recoup costs and train staff while they finish up the building. Usually, a soft opening means the hotel bar is still being completed or the pool is out of order, but occasionally you come across a hotel that has taken the concept to a whole new level.

Reddit user zxphoenix was shocked at what he found when he turned up at the Red Roof Inn in Brentwood, Tenn., this week. The first sign of trouble was the construction scaffolding, which enveloped the building on all sides. Despite the dubious appearance, a “now open” sign can be seen hanging from the metal framework. Handwritten cardboard posters direct guests from the boarded-up lobby to the “front desk,” which is little more than a table wedged in a doorway. The hotel guest said of the three floors in the hotel, only one side of the first floor could be considered “livable.” That’s something of a relative term given that his room door wouldn’t fully close, bits of construction debris blew out of the air conditioning unit, and the plumbing sounded like “a pig is being butchered in the pipes.”

Take a look at the pictures below and you’ll see the exposed floors, the walls ripped down to the studs, the plastic sheeting covering windows and plenty more that would have any rational traveler running the other way.

Have you ever seen such a crazy “soft opening” before?

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Update: The folks from Red Roof Inn reached out for comment:

This hotel location is no longer a Red Roof Inn, hence the construction and changes,and has been closed from our brand as of 3/15/13, we appreciate the authors relaying of the story she picked up from a reddit user but in this case the location is not ours and in the story is not correctly identifying the location.

[Photo credit: reddit user zxphoenix]

Smithsonian Channel To Air Special King Richard III Discovery

by Sean McLachlan on

The Smithsonian Channel will soon air a documentary about the remarkable discovery of the skeleton of King Richard III in a parking lot in Leicester, England.

“The King’s Skeleton: Richard III Revealed” premieres Sunday, April 21 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The two-hour show was produced by the only team allowed access to the scientists, the excavation and the lab tests used to determine the skeleton’s identity. The documentary has already aired in the UK and attracted five million viewers. This will be the first American showing.

Gadling received an advance copy of the show. For some background, read our article about Richard III and the discovery. Also check out these amazing photographs from the dig. Our review follows and contains some spoilers. Of course, everyone already knows how the story ends!

%Gallery-185896%The documentary follows the quest of Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society to find the king’s remains, said to have been buried the now-disappeared Greyfriars church in Leicester after he was killed by Henry Tudor’s forces at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Research with old maps revealed it to be under a municipal parking lot. Langley raised money from society members and spent years convincing the local council to allow an excavation.

Langley tells of how when walking through the parking lot she felt certain that she had found the spot where Richard lay. Remarkably, the letter “R” was painted on the very same spot. The documentary fails to mention that this R was a symbol for Reserved Parking. Once the excavation begins and a skeleton is found, there’s a sudden downpour. This normal English weather is given a spooky significance by the producers.

Once the paranormal silliness is dispensed with, we get to the real meat: the excavation and meticulous examination of the body. One interesting sequence is of an art historian talking about how later painters commissioned by the new Tudor dynasty made Richard look deformed, which then was considered a sign of moral corruption. This was the origin of the Shakespearean Richard with the hunchback and withered arm.

Then comes an interesting sequence where members of the Richard III society get their say. They’re dedicated to rehabilitating the king’s image, denying he killed his predecessor’s young heirs and denying he had a hunchback. Their main objection to his having a deformity is that he couldn’t have worn armor. Anyone with a passing knowledge of medieval warfare knows that knights and royalty didn’t go to Ye Olde Shopping Mall to buy armor off the rack; it was made to their specific measurements. Try wearing metal plates on your body that aren’t shaped to your dimensions and see how well you can move! This obvious rebuttal wasn’t mentioned in the show, although surely the producers were told this by their scientific advisers. It seems narrative tension is more important than historical clarity.

While I found some segments of the show distracting, historians and archaeologists get plenty of airtime and we learn a bit about how bones are analyzed and how a DNA match with one of Richard’s descendants proved it was him. There’s also some gruesome detail about all the wounds on Richard’s body, including demonstrations of some of the weapons probably used. The army of Henry Tudor repeatedly hacked at Richard and appears to have humiliated his corpse by stabbing him in the rear end. It was a grim end to a short reign.

My wife, a scientist with no special interest in medieval history and perhaps more representative of the target audience than a former archaeologist like me, commented that the documentary could use some more historical background to place Richard III and the Battle of Bosworth into context. This could have been easily done by shaving off some of the more frivolous segments.

Despite these reservations, we both thoroughly enjoyed the show for its stunning imagery, clear narration and scientific detail. We recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the archaeological discovery of the year.