Yeah, Cindy, as awful as it was for all the passengers onboard and I totally understand what they're feeling (seriously, I do), it was going to be a miserable experience no matter what. Hurricanes are not pleasant from any angle.
I guess it's human nature to need somewhere to lay blame when something so awful happens to people. I mean, hey, it was said that Katrina was something George W did.
On other forums people (both passengers who were there and those who are reading the tales of it) are absolutely certain that the captain sailed knowingly into the storm disregarding safety to keep to the schedule. That confuses me. Whatever decisions the captain made were the best that he could. Thankfully, the majority of people will never know what it's like to be in a position where you literally have the lives of others in your hands 100%. It's difficult. When weather gets involved, especially hurricanes, things are impossible to predict with total accuracy. There's no textbook that dictates what hurricanes will or won't do. It seems the ship sailed into conditions they weren't anticipating otherwise there would've been more prep done by the crew before everything went crashing about causing damage. I've seen hurricanes do some strange things. In 2008, Ike hit Galveston as a strong category 2 but pushed a storm surge that was more akin to a category 5. Even with Sandy, my first look at wunderground.com and I was like "What's the big deal? It's a cat.1." Well, the effects won't be what a cat. 1 normally would be because of other systems interacting with it. There's no way of really knowing exactly what it will be like. Again, there's no textbook that says THIS is what's going to happen. Mother Nature has a way of keeping us in check and reminding us that we are at her mercy always. So I'm sorta perplexed as to why people point fingers and say "The captain knew and sailed into it anyway." I think ship captains may be similar to 911/communications officers in that people expect them to know everything 100% of the time but when weather comes into play that's just not possible. Oftentimes what we anticipate, in spite of all the data, knowledge, experience, and historical information, isn't what actually happens.
Again, my heart truly goes out to those who went thru all that. I realize it was terrifying and have no doubt people were scared to death. I hate they had that experience at all. That's so sad...when a Disney cruise is usually so awesome.
