Clueless in Cadiz

I have been very impressed with the standard of the tours on our Mediterranean cruise. On our cruising debut last year we did not participate in any of the organized tours and in fact we only left the boat once, for less than an hour.

I don’t think that getting off the boat is an essential ingredient for a successful cruise, but with two weeks at sea it made sense to make a few stops. Karen waded through the enormous brochure.

We visited Monaco/Monte Carlo, Pisa and Cagliari. The boys and I went to a water park at the Rome stop.

On all of those I was struck by the high level of organization and the precise timings. I thought the tour guides did an excellent job in all respects (exceeding my expectations significantly). You might say it’s not a difficult job, but in my opinion it’s not easy to do it really well.

Today’s trip to the Cadiz water park Aqualand fell far short. Since all the tour escort had to do was get us on the bus, give us our tickets and arrange to get us all back on time, you might say it was hard to go far wrong.

However, although he did meet the low bar of not losing anyone, it was a seriously unimpressive performance !

Even before we left port he managed to be off by 4 on the headcount and the supervisor had to sort it out. He didn’t really speak English and met all questions with no answer beyond a shrug of the shoulders.

Our trip was not billed as a guided tour but his total silence on the 40minute trip was a weak performance. Our escort to the Rome park took the opportunity to tell us something “for free” about our surroundings, and also explained very clearly where we were going, what would happen etc. This makes a good deal of difference to the feeling that everything is under control.

The contrast was total.

On arrival, our escort today made a good effort to lose people on the way to the gate. He did state the time and place for our rendezvous at the end of the day. However, when we came back later he was not there to greet us, and eventually he showed up late at a different location. After he made no apparent effort to consolidate those who had found him and those who had duly arrived at the meeting point, most of us made our own way to the bus.

It wasn’t that we felt there was a serious chance of us being left behind, but it was clearly badly organized and “clueless” was the unanimous verdict among those on the trip.

Now, the waterpark itself was a nice facility: in good condition and well laid out.

However, “clueless” applied very well to the business running the park.

For a start, I seriously question the wisdom of opening the park at 11am in high season. It’s already very warm at 9am (say).

The enormous queues for tickets and entrance tell me very clearly that they could and should have got people in much earlier. Thankfully we did escape the main queues with our “group” tickets but I would have been furious that it wasn’t possible to arrive early to get any kind of jump on the queues inside.

Once inside, it was a 45minute queue to get a key for a locker. Just 2 people serving the entire mass of people. I estimate the 45 minutes, as I gave up waiting. Instead, we went to find a seat and shade.

Now, there was a charge for the sunloungers. I’m not delighted about that but if the business decision is to have lowish entrance prices and charge for everything else, then they should at least collect the fees. We saw no one taking the money all day.

When I went back to rent a locker after waiting 30 minutes, the queues were as long as ever.

Crazy to have so few staff at that key bottleneck.

We abandoned the locker mission and just hoped for the best. We now discovered that queue management was not a strong suit. The over-riding impression of the slides was that no one was on them. This was not for lack of people queuing up to ride, but somehow they contrived to have a 3 minute gap between each actual rider. Even allowing for the fact they need to ensure absolute safety, the fact is that it was poor ride control that massively exacerbated the problem.

We managed to get one ride on a relatively fast-loading ride (6 lanes). But still the method of sequencing the queue must have added at least 50% to the gap between rides.

We decided it was time for a drink. Could we find a drink? We could not. There were no signs for bars or cafes, no bars or cafes in sight. Our seats were actually next to a pizzeria – shut. At 1pm with the park packed. The bar next to the locker queue was shut.

There were so many places where they could and should have had a drinks stall or a vending machine or a mobile drinks seller.

Eventually we found they did have one cafe open. Two people were attending to a queue that was already growing fast. Apparently one person fulfilling orders in the back.

The food was nice, in fact, but the queue got only worse from then and later it was inconceivable to try to buy another drink. This has to be a classic lose-lose.

Later they did open one of the closed bars – with one staff member doing everything.

Simply incredible. The good news was that the few staff on duty were friendly and relatively efficient, and the customers were fairly placid although obviously frustrated.

There were more people taking the inevitable photographs of visitors (does anyone ever buy them ?) than employed in the entire food & beverage business in the park.

One place where we can give full marks was for plenty of bins for depositing rubbish, but since the availability of food & drink was so strictly rationed, there wasn’t much call for rubbish bins !

Still, thankfully we had had a good dose of water rides in Rome so we had a splash around in the pools and amused ourselves marvelling at the spectacle of bad management. Perhaps the park was supposed to double as an exhibit of Spanish business efficiency. It reminded me very much of some experiences in Spain last year (see the fishing licence and banking fiasco blogs !)