Thursday August 29, 2019
Today is the last day of our 7-Day cruise aboard the Celebrity Millennium. We traveled south along the Inside Passage from Seward, Alaska, stopping in several ports. Tomorrow morning we’ll arrive in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It’s been an active and fun cruise.
This morning, we scheduled to take a “Behind the Scenes” tour to see the workings of the ship. First, our guide took us up to “The Bridge” located on an upper deck in the bow of the ship. This is where navigation and steering of the behemoth takes place. There is no huge wooden wheel however there are many monitors and a relatively small “joy stick.” There were just two people “driving” the ship! One officer was watching the “Auto Pilot” which was actually doing all the work. Another officer was looking out of the front windows to see where where the ship was going. Amazing!!!
The navigation area was behind the steering section. There were just two officers; one man looking at monitors and the other making coffee:
Next we went to the “Control Room” which is where all the systems on the ship are managed. Everything is monitored and controlled from here: engines, generators, electrical systems, plumbing, alarms, air-conditioning, desalination, waste removal, security, communication, etc. etc. It’s a large room full of monitors and one man watching them:
The next area we visited was the huge stainless steel kitchen for the main dining rooms:
Then we descended several flights of stairs to the Laundry Room. Two men were feeding sheets into a machine which dried and folded them in minutes:
Our tour was extensive and fun. It took two and a half hours to run around and up & down to see everything. We worked up an appetite and went to the Oceanview for a tasty lunch. The dessert offerings were too pretty to eat:
We returned to our cabin to pack and watch the scenery from our balcony. The weather was gorgeous: sunny, cool, crisp, and clear. At one point we saw splashing in the water. First a spout, then the dark moving curve of a dorsal fin, and finally a large tail. It was a pod of whales stirring up the calm bay!
Later, we went out to the aft deck to watch the sun set. It was a spectacular ending to an amazing Alaskan adventure.
