You guys may have forever ruined me from being happy with a DIS group ever again. Or it's just that my work is nuts, and I'm travelling every week for work, and I just don't have time to keep up with the threads for my future cruises. But that excuse doesn't work, since I stayed up many a night reading this group's threads in an effort to keep up even when I was travelling.
For whatever reason, I can't seem to really get too into the meet threads for my upcoming cruises. To top it off, there are lots of attitudes running around the DIS these days that just seem quite negative for whatever reason. I know we're having a beautiful full moon outside tonight, but seriously, there seems to be attacks, backstabbing, negative comments, and little battles all over the board in every place I look tonight.
Some of the things that make me feel a little bit sad about being a board member these days (which I'm coming here to vent about) include:
- My August 2011 Dream cruise, that on the day it was booked quickly skyrocketed in number of posts to rival this tread at it's heyday, has now resulted in three separate meet threads and a Facebook site (just on the DIS alone, not counting Passporter, CC or other board threads) because folks can't or won't even try to get along. We'd had a website set up from the very beginning, that has grown to include members from all 3 "factions", which is driving the person who set up the site nuts since some folks have chosen to speak negatively about another group, putting her in a difficult position that's inconsistent with a "vacation." Oh, and did I mention that we've never been able to rebook that cruise to get OBB benefits, and our 9A corner room, while quite spacious, has a cruddy little window and our kids sleeping on opposite sides of the room with no way to close them off from the rest of the room when they go to bed early, which will put quite a crimp in our cruising style. I'd switch to the 8/21 cruise, which I also have booked, except that our kids' godparents and family are going on the 8/16 cruise with us, and I'd feel guilty about abandoning them.
- I was really aggravated earlier tonight when someone posted something that seemed pretty neat, and someone else jumped into the thread and started bad mouthing and making negative implications against another board member, who wasn't even participating in the discussion (can you say way off topic??) I tried very hard to avoid saying anything, in an effort to keep the topic focused on the purpose, but finally chimed back in when the attacks spread to include others (again going way off from the original topic.)
- Then someone else got everyone all worked up about unreported "obstructions" on the Dream, and complained that I should have pointed them out on my special rooms thread, when I don't even think they qualify as obstructions since they are part of the main design of the ship, and existed on the Magic/Wonder without ever being considered as obstructions on those ships. Thankfully others have chimed into that thread making the same statement, but it's taken the fun out of helping folks quite a bit.
Anyway, for those reasons and others, I just can't quite get as engaged in the discussions like we did in preparation for this cruise, and I admit that I miss it.
On a positive note, I booked the 11/17/12 Thanksgiving cruise on the Fantasy this wednesday morning when Tracy notified me those dates had been released. Cost just a slight bit more than the August Western cruise I'd had booked, but we also upgraded to a 8A room so that accounted for much of the price difference, making it seem pretty reasonable for a holiday cruise.
