Our Cruise Experience 

In 2018 we traveled by airplane, hotel shuttle, and finally arrived at the port to board the cruise ship.  Everything seemed great, we unloaded all of our bags onto the ships carts to be scanned, searched and brought onto the ship. Everything went smoothly.

We then started on our way to load the ship and go through the security check with my dialysis machine in tow.  Like normal I was pulled to the side for my machine's inspection.  They wiped down the machine for drugs, pulled it out of the case to look it over, and called me over to put everything back into my case.  I was through.  We then made our way directly to our cabin room, even though you were not supposed to be there yet as our luggage had not arrived.  We talked to our maid and shared with her what I had with me, the dialysis machine. Also found out where we should put our garbage and medical waist as to pre plan my treatments.  She was amazing and appreciated the heads up, guided us on where to put my empty boxes and where to leave my used treatment supplies, aka large garbage bag.  

A short while later we got a call from guest services as my dialysate boxes had not been delivered to the ship.  I had arranged this months ahead following Nxstage's travel policy.  Without my supplies they would not let me leave port and would remove me from the ship.  We called Nxstage, waiting on hold to find out what to do and why they were not delivered.  They were, we found out from Nxstage the name of the person who signed for the palette.  This took forever and lots of calls between Nxstage and guest services on the ship.  We then went down to guest services with the name of the signee and they then started to track him down.  My boxes went to the food area instead of to our cabin like requested.  

All of my boxes made it to our cabin and our trip was successful just started out with a lot of stress.

LESSONS LEARNED:  

1.  Track packages to ship

2.  Call Nxstage to get the name of the signee

3.  Go directly to customer service with signee name to confirm supplies are on ship