14. June 2009 by Matt.

The Queen Mary

The Demise of a Wonderful old Gal

This is the tale of a wonderful old ship named “The Queen Mary”. In her hay day she was the flag ship in an era of the rich and famous cruising all around the world. Now she sits in dock out at Long Beach to die the slow and painful death that so many other great California attractions have suffered. (Note Belmont Park in San Diego, CA.)

Where once was, as recently as ten years ago, a bustling, thriving, tourist attraction, now  a ghost town exists. The shopping and dining that at one time had all its shops running, selling everything from miniature Queen Mary models, to clothing with the Queen Mary logo attached is now a current day ghost town.  All the shops are boarded up and as a matter of fact the gate to the shopping area appears to be permanently stuck half open.

Mean while the poor lady sits quietly as her bilge pumps work franticly to try and keep the water from rotting her hull away completely. As I walk along her decks I can almost hear all the famous people like Laurel and Hardy or Bob Hope dancing and partying. Now all I here is her creaks as she lists ever so slightly to port.  I remember a time not so long ago when there where people on every deck open to the public. There where, as I recall, at least three different cafés on the different decks and they were all bustling with people. Now there is one snack shop and it sells food that looks suspiciously as if it where heated in a microwave rather than cooked in the Queen Mary’s gigantic galley. 

One would think that with such wide scale degradation of her infrastructure and almost no customer service that the management company tasked with setting a fair entrance fee would understand that the people of this generation aren’t willing to throw away their hard earned money as quickly as they have in the past.  All this to say their prices are as high as they were in the old Lady’s hay day.

After first parking almost a block and a half from our destination, then walking forever across empty (reserved) parking spaces I am confronted with the fact that it will cost over ninety dollars to get myself and my three children in to see the old lady. I should have become suspicious when I saw the hand written sign that said, “All sales final. No Refunds.” Or when I inquired what kind of discount they offered for triple A and the lady behind the bulletproof glass only laughed and said, “None”. Undaunted I pay the required booty and head over to the elevator to start our self guided tour. The elevator doors we wait at never open. Eventually another elevator door opens up and we climb aboard. It takes us to the second floor.  We need to go up a flight of stairs from there, along a walkway, down a flight of stairs and into the room that is supposed to be the start of our tour. As we cross the walkway from dry land to the “Queen Mary” I get the feeling that the gangplank is way beyond its allowed life.  Entering the Queen we are supposed to be greeted by a purser who can give us our equipment so that we can listen at different spots around the ship. We see him off to the side inside what looks like a janitor’s closet. He smiles and waves us over. We step up to the half door and he says, “Welcome to the Queen Mary.” I think to myself, well this is a good sign. At least he knows where he is. Quickly the gentleman goes on to dash my hopes by saying, “I can give you these recorded tour radios, but they won’t be of much help.” Reluctantly Andrew takes one pair. They didn’t help at all. After touring this room and reading all the interesting information on the walls I am cautiously optimistic about our experience here.   When I realize that we now have to leave this room and backtrack up the flight of stairs that we just descended to enter this room I’m less optimistic.

Imagine my chagrin when I realize the self guided tour then goes on an escalator that climbs up three flights. Oh did I mention the escalators where all turned off. Yes we had to climb up the escalator all three flights. As we climb the outside of what would be a ten story building I keep thinking why exactly are we doing this?

With the wind blowing our hair back and the escalator actually swaying a bit we finally reach the top. I’m so winded from the climb and determined not to let this thing get the best of me I don’t even notice the walkway from the escalator landing to the ship until I’ve walked about half way out on to it. Hearing a creaking and cracking sound I look down and freeze in my tracks. There in front of me is a whole about four inches in diameter. I’m standing there gripping the rail and looking straight down the side of the ship to the water sloshing against its rusty bulkhead. I realize the cracking sound is the plywood I’m walking on cracking under my weight. Quickly I scurry of the walkway as I encourage my kids to do the same as calmly as I can.  I’m so winded and my heart is racing so fast all I can do then is plop down on the nearest seat and try to catch my breath.

We tour the upper decks for a bit but instead of it giving us a sense of the past all we feel is a sort of sadness for all of the old lady’s once grandeur now gone forever. Everywhere we look we can see signs that there was at one time resplended beauty but now all that is left is a broken hull and rusty decks. The few shops left within the Queen are stuffy and way overpriced. One would think with so few clientele to draw from, the few remaining purveyors would be going out of their way to get us to enter their shops and per chance part with some of our hard earned coin. On the contrary most of the shop owners we encounter have a sour look to their faces and an attitude of superiority that speaks volumes as to why this poor old lady is so crippled. The feeling I get when I enter one shop is almost as if I don’t have a right to be there. As if I don’t belong to some unspoken, secret club and when I leave the counters will immediately need to be cleaned. The one shop owner that does greet us and welcome us aboard has prices that are so outlandish I can’t imagine anyone purchasing anything from them. For example Phillip inquired as to the price of a new memory chip for his camera. He was informed it would cost at least sixty dollars for a two gig memory chip. Do these people think we are actually at sea? I purchased a four gig memory chip later that night for $19.99 from a Best Buy close to our hotel.

All told we spend about an hour and a half aboard the Queen Mary. During that time nothing there changes my mind concerning the cost/fun ratio. Even if you factor in the history lesson (for children) that can be learned by touring such a place as this, I find it very hard to justify spending so much money on what is in effect a falling down decrepit old hotel that, if it were on dry land, would probably be condemned. The final blow came when we were attempting to leave and we were informed that we must pay twelve dollars for the privilege of parking in their unsupervised, non-secured, pothole infested parking area that was completely devoid of any signage directing their guests as to the shortest way to the attraction.

In short -I would have to say, as sad as it is to say, don’t spend your time hunting this “used to be” attraction. I think this old lady deserves to die in peace.

The La Brea Tar Pits

A Good Way to End the Day!

The rest of our day was spent at the Page Museum (Le Brea Tar pits). Suffice to say it was a vast improvement on the first part of the day. The cost was reasonable, (including parking about twenty dollars for the whole family.) The people where pleasant. Even the parking attendant. The actual exhibit was enjoyable. I would recommend visiting this place to anyone who posses even a minor interest in paleontology. For those of you who don’t know what this museum is, it is a real tar pit chocked full of bones from animals from the ice age on to the mid eighteen hundreds. Animals are attracted to the water that pools on top of the tar pits then get stuck. Predatory animals then attack the bleating animals and many times they too get stuck in the pits. In the museum you can watch real paleontologists at work delicately extracting and cataloging the many diverse bones that have been excavated.

If I had it to do again I would skip the Queen Mary and head straight for the tar pits especially considering that it took over an hour and a half to travel thirty six miles back to the hotel that evening through Los Angeles.

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog. Be sure to visit our main site to see all the photos we have uploaded.

Matt…

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