March 14th, 2020 Day 70 of 128

Can we go back to this morning and erase today please? It is with great sadness, uncertainty and positiveness that I type this post. We were having a normal day today until noon when the captain came on and made an announcement, he started by saying he needed to end any rumors going around before they got too far:

Effective March 24^th our World cruise is coming to an end. They are going to require us to disembark the ship that day in Fremantle, Australia.

So that was at noon. It is now nine o’clock. I have been through every emotion possible today. I have comforted my daughters many times as they cried their eyes out and have had a good cry of my own, more then once. We know nothing else. Now, I understand the captain needed to tell us this before the media grabbed on to the corporate announcement telling us the cruise was being cancelled, BUT, his announcement would’ve been so very greatly appreciated had it been followed by,  “We (Holland America) are working on accommodations and plane tickets to get you safely back home.” I believe that is what they are doing, but it hasn’t been said. Everyone went into panic, do we need to book a hotel, do we need to book our own plane tickets, are we going to be reimbursed for travel, for the unused portion of the trip……on and on and on. NO answers have been provided to us. We have been asked to wait and we will be told what we need to do when we need to it. Now I am putting great faith in Holland America as a company that they have a wonderful reputation for taking care of their cruise guests. They call us family and I believe they are going to make sure we are well taken care of. We may be in Fremantle for a while waiting on a flight and we may not even choose to go directly home anyway. We have two more moths of vacation we were planning to have and I have all the schoolwork the girls need for the rest of the school year so we can do it anywhere, sadly we are extremely limited on where we can go. So needless to say the morale on the ship is quite strained right now. We will have to start packing. I can only assume Fedex will take care of our luggage as was previously arranged prior to boarding the ship, but we don’t know. There is a petition on the common bulletin board on the ship asking people to sign demanding Holland America to take us back to Fort Lauderdale. I love that it is a little therapeutic to have signed it and feel like I had a say in any of this. But I am not optimistic that anything is going to change from it. But it was a good example to the girls how to go about asking for change in a peaceful and organized way. Flight to Fort Lauderdale = 17 hours, flight to Maui = 14 hours. Makes you think…hmmmm. So after the announcement mom and I poured ourselves two strong cocktails (one for each of us) and went to the pool to soak up some rays and drown our sorrows. Tonight was also a Gala, an under the sea theme. But even the staff seemed stressed and on edge tonight making it feel a little uncomfortable. My understanding is even the staff is going to be required to leave the ship too. That’s about 2,000 people that need a lift home. Come on Holland America don’t let me down. I am putting my faith in you to do right by us and take care of us. I am going to try and get some rest, I have a feeling tomorrow will be a packing day. I am going to stay positive, even in our uncertainty, as we have new adventures ahead. We are still together, we are still safe and we are all healthy. I will keep you all updated as I hear anything. Please keep our travels and us in your prayers. Also, praying for you and your families as you are all being required to stay home and schools are being cancelled and your lives are being turned upside down too. Stay positive and find the blessing in the moment. Love and Hugs, Debra.