Tired passengers leave crippled Costa cruise ship

VICTORIA (Reuters) - Weary passengers complained of unbearable heat and appalling hygiene for three days in the Indian Ocean aboard cruise ship Costa Allegra after a fire knocked out the vessel's main power supply.

With no air conditioning, running water, lights or hot food, the 627 passengers were forced to sleep on deck in the stifling heat until the liner was towed intoSeychelles capital Victoria on Thursday.

One of the Costa Allegra's three diesel generators caught fire on Monday and although the blaze was extinguished within an hour two more generators in the engine room then failed, the ship's captain, Niccolo Alba, told a news conference.

Alba said a general emergency was declared when the generator caught fire, the lifeboats were prepared and passengers were ready to abandon ship as the liner drifted in the Indian Ocean, where Somali pirates roam.

"It was terrible, as you can imagine. Hygiene conditions were absolutely deplorable. I have some photos that show the state of the toilets. We stayed for three days without electricity, it's very difficult to live in such conditions, especially in such heat," one passenger told Reuters Television.

Alba said two people had fallen in the dark and hurt themselves, but he denied an earlier report from a Seychelles health ministry official that six people had broken limbs.

"They were able to put the fire out and from that point on, it was just a matter of inconvenience, not having enough food, not being able to rest well at night...the heat is unbearable, so we had to spend most of our nights on the top deck of the ship," said another passenger.

More than half the passengers took up the offer of a seven or 14-day holiday on the archipelago from the ship's ownerCosta Cruises, the same company whose giant liner Costa Concordia smashed into rocks off Italy in January.

At 29,000 gross tonnes, the ship is considerably smaller than the huge Costa Concordia which capsized, killing at least 25 people.

A team from Costa Cruises, a unit of the U.S. cruise line giantCarnival Corp., boarded the Costa Allegra on Wednesday to arrange hotel accommodation and onward flights for the passengers. It said more than 600 airline seats and 400 rooms had been reserved.

"I WANT TO GO HOME"

A small generator was installed in the crippled vessel, but was only powerful enough to run its auxiliary communication system, not the air conditioning or cooking systems.

With no lights working on board, the company said it had dropped hundreds of torches onto the ship to help passengers find their way around at night.

A passenger from Germany praised the crew, saying they had tried their best to make those on board comfortable.

Another passenger from the Indian Ocean island of Reunion said he felt tired and dirty and had been afraid of pirates, but there was never any shortage of drinking water or sandwiches.

Norbert Stiekema, executive vice-president at Costa Cruises, told the news conference that all passengers were offered the option of a holiday or a flight home, and that all outstanding bills on the ship had been cancelled.

The passengers were met in Victoria by ambulances, aRed Cross medical team and a fleet of small buses to take them to hotels on the country's main island of Mahe.

One woman was rushed into an ambulance and another had to be supported as she walked off the ship.

The passengers, including four children, are from 25 nations. The largest contingents are 127 from France and 126 from Italy. There were also 38 Germans, 31 Britons, 13 Canadians and eight Americans.

The Costa Allegra left Diego Suarez in Madagascar on Saturday and, sailing northeast, had been due to dock in Mahe on Tuesday. While 376 passengers opted to stay on in the Seychelles, others had had enough

"I am no longer in the mood for a holiday. I want to go home as soon as I can," said another passenger.

(Editing by David Clarke and Karolina Tagaris)

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Agawa Canyon Snow Train takes a round-trip journey to stillness

AGAWA CANYON, Ontario, Canada -- There are no animals, no birds, not one moving creature, except for a man on a lake who raises his hand as we pass. It is overcast. Sky the color of cotton wool muffles the harsh rocky landscape; the snow and hills blend into a black-and-white panorama dotted with the drab loden of the pines. Snow falls in fits and starts. It is already more than 2 feet deep. Let spring come somewhere else; winter has settled here, as always.

Last year, the Agawa Canyon Snow Train did not run. This year, it has $11 million worth of new equipment, upgraded coaches and splendid new burgundy paint. It has a warm dining car with good service and hearty food. It is running each Saturday through March 10.

The question is: Does anyone have the patience to ride the Snow Train anymore?

"We used to do 25 coaches, two dining cars, two dome cars and five or six engines; we were a mile long," says Craig (Smitty) Smith of EJM Catering, who has worked the train for 17 years. "We would have 1,600 to 1,800 passengers a day. Then, along came 9/11."

That's when everything changed. The Agawa Canyon tour trains, which run in winter, summer and fall, saw business plummet when passports became a requirement to cross the U.S.-Canada border. Gas prices rose and Michigan's economy tanked, damaging the train's busiest source of customers. The value of the U.S. dollar shrank against the Canadian dollar.

Then, a whole generation of travelers who thought Agawa Canyon was the most exotic place in the world passed on, leaving restless younger folks who demand active, not passive experiences.

Now the Snow Train runs just six coaches, one dining car and two engines. This day, it has about 100 passengers spread through three of the cars. The other cars are empty.

Its route? Chug from downtown Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, to scenic Agawa Canyon 114 miles north, then return.

In summer, passengers can hike and picnic in the canyon. But in winter, they must stay on board the train the whole trip -- nine hours straight. There's no opening the windows. No smoking. No cell phone service.

And that's exactly what railroad fans love about the Snow Train. They love the silence. They love the feeling of being far, far away in an earlier time. They love the stubborn simplicity of it all.

"Years ago, I came on this train with my parents. Then, when Suzanne and I started dating, we came here again. Now, we've brought our daughter," says David Bergeson of Flat Rock, Mich., who wears a sweatshirt with a picture of a train on it, as do his wife, Suzanne, and 5-year-old daughter, Barbara. They ride trains all over the country.

Even Bergeson, 45, wasn't sure whether the Snow Train was still in business, and he was thrilled to find it was.

"It's a combination of a weekend getaway in the middle of winter and a chance to see some snow since we don't have any in Detroit," he says.

A bit of history. There has been a railway up here since 1899 for freight and passengers. The regular "Hearst" train (also called the Algoma Central Railway Tour of the Line) runs 296 miles from busy Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, (population 75,000) up to tiny Hearst, Ontario (population 5,000). Many fishing camps and cottages lie along the remote route, so passengers can flag down the train to stop at any point.

Sharing the rails is the more famous Agawa Canyon tour train, which is called the Snow Train in the winter. Since 1972, the tour train has carried more than 3 million passengers to the canyon and back.

Two years ago, owner Canadian National Railway decided the 1940s equipment was too decrepit. It bought a 1968-era ski train from Colorado with 16 coaches and three locomotives and sent most of it away to be rehabbed and repainted. The new tour train has enlarged windows with tinted glass on nine of the 14 coaches and new carpet and seating. It has new GPS-tripped narration explaining the history of the line and the features of the stern Algoma region of northern Ontario.

Coaches also have new flat-screen TVs to show the engineer's view ahead of the train, a feature available only in summer and fall (last summer, some lucky passengers saw a moose).

In winter, the view out the side windows is what you will remember.

Approaching Agawa Canyon, the train has been running downhill for 12 miles. The tracks are smooth, with their good Canadian maintenance.

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United Airlines booking system to erase Continental this weekend

The public face of Continental Airlines will vanish for good this weekend when the carrier and United Airlines adopt a single passenger reservation system, a step that -- at least in the public eye -- will finally cement their 2010 merger.

The move to a unified platform is by far the most significant change customers will experience since the merger of United and Continental to form the world's largest airline, known as United Airlines and owned by United Continental Holdings Inc.

"This, from the customer perspective, is probably the biggest thing that they will see," Martin Hand, United's senior vice president of customer experience, said on Wednesday.

"This truly brings the two carriers together from the customer side," he said.

Hand said United Airlines has adopted the reservation platform of the former Continental Airlines and has spent months training about 15,000 employees -- including reservations agents -- on the software.

United has already moved millions of passenger records to the Continental platform and has notified its frequent flyers of the upcoming change.

"That will come to a culmination overnight Friday night to Saturday morning," Hand said.

Early Saturday morning, the Continental.com website will disappear in favor of the United branded site.

Hand said the company chose the Continental platform over United partly because it offered more flexibility to users making reservations on the site.

He declined to disclose the cost of migrating to the single platform.

United and Continental closed their $3.17 billion merger more than a year ago. Former Continental Chief Executive Jeff Smisek leads the combined carrier.

The new United Continental spent much of 2011 rebranding itself and combining some of its customer service functions to slowly erase the line separating the two airlines. The company won government approval last year to operate as a single carrier.

United Continental has painted most of the old Continental planes in the United livery and is finishing the rest.

Out of public view, however, United Continental faces the tall order of blending its separate unionized work forces and achieving joint labor contracts.

Migration to a single reservation system comes with risk, as US Airways Group learned in 2007 when it attempted to combine the reservation systems of the former America West Airlines and US Airways. The two airlines merged in 2005.

A glitch in their combined system caused the self-service kiosks to fail, forcing passengers to stand in extraordinarily long lines and check in with ticket agents. Thousands of travelers waited in the lines and about 500 travelers at the Charlotte, N.C., hub missed their flights.

Hand said United consulted US Airways, its partner in the global Star Alliance, about the pitfalls of moving to a single reservation system.

Delta Air Lines had a much smoother transition to a single reservation system following its 2008 merger with Northwest Airlines.

"Whenever you combine different technology there's risk," said Ray Neidl, an aerospace analyst at Maxim Group.

"In the case of United, they have done a lot of planning. But you never can tell," he said. "At the last minute, there's always likely to be some bugs that pop up."

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A golden spirit stills shines in Randsburg, Calif.

Reporting from Randsburg, Calif.—

I half-expected to hear someone shout, "There's gold in them thar hills," as I rolled into Randsburg, Calif., which sits just off Highway 395 in the Mojave Desert south of Ridgecrest. The discovery of that precious metal gave birth to the town in 1896 when John Singleton, F. M. Mooers and Charlie Burcham filed a claim they called "The Rand." Within a few months, a saloon, barber shop, general store and even an opera house had sprung up to form what was known as Rand Camp. By 1897 it was called Randsburg, a boomtown of almost 4,000 people.

More than 110 years later, the Rand Mining Co. still operates 24 hours a day and employs about 80 workers. One miner I approached refused to confirm the rumor that 300 pounds of gold are taken from the mine each month. He just smiled when I asked him, but I noticed that he had a small golden nugget on his watch chain.

As the number of mining claims dwindled, so did the population, but not Randsburg's spirit. Many hardy souls who had founded the town stayed on, and today there are about 80 full-time residents, occupying houses as eclectic as their owners. One house is made entirely from garage doors and another only from windows, with trees in the front yard made from cast-off soda bottles. Almost every building is colorfully painted, and there are more than a few outhouses.

Butte Avenue, the main drag, is home to the White House and the Joint, authentic saloons complete with boot rails and spittoons. No liquor is served, but you can get a shot of spiced sarsaparilla. The barber shop, with its traditional striped pole, advertises baths and cigars, and the opera house opens from time to time for special events.

I followed the hitching posts that line the wooden boardwalk to discover the wonderful little Rand Desert Museum, a natural history museum manned by town volunteers in period costume eager to spend an afternoon sharing local lore with visitors.

On the edge of town a mule tethered to a hitching post tried to lick my camera, and I passed a weathered tortoise out for a leisurely stroll. Randsburgians love their tortoises; these desert tanks are treated as valued pets and claim protected status. Residents make a point of telling visitors that tortoises do not handle stress easily, as it causes them to pass water, making them vulnerable to the desert heat.

Residents also love their town and have gone to great lengths to keep it as it was a century ago. The wall outside the Rand Mining Co. sports a faded sign that reads, "Everything for Blasting" and "Explosives, caps and fuses," while the local post office has a sign over the door that proclaims "End of the trail."

As I ambled through town, it realized how apt that sign was. Time has truly stood still at the end of the trail in Randsburg.

travel@latimes.com

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Disneyland celebrates Leap Day with late-night entertainment

Disneyland will celebrate Leap Day on Wednesday by offering late-night shows, music, food and character meet-and-greets while keeping the Anaheim theme park open for 24 hours straight.

RELATED: 7 tips for tackling Disneyland in a day

As part of the One More Disney Day marketing campaign, both Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom in Florida will open at 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday and operate until 6 a.m. Thursday.

Here are the highlights planned for Disneyland on Leap Day:

> Free limited-edition mouse hats handed out to the first 2,000 visitors entering the park at 6 a.m. (Lineups begin at 10 p.m. Tuesday).

> Free Leap Day button for every visitor while supplies last.

> An additional showing of Mickey's Soundsational Parade at 10 p.m.

> Special showing of Fantasmic on the Rivers of America at 1 a.m. (Let's hope the fireworks don't wake the neighbors in Anaheim.)

> Performances by Billy Hill and the Hillbillies at the Golden Horseshoe restaurant from 11:15 p.m. until 4:45 a.m.

> DJ playing dance music at Tomorrowland Terrace stage from 8:30 p.m. until 4 a.m.

> Meet-and-greets with Disney characters decked out in pajamas at Carnation Plaza Gardens and Darth Vader and his stormtroopers in Tomorrowland (Will Darth Vader show up in his PJs?)

> Free midnight snack at Big Thunder Ranch Barbecue from 11:45 p.m. until 12:45 a.m. for first 200 visitors. (Lineups begin at 10 p.m. Wednesday)

> Most restaurants will offer specialty food items from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m. (A few places will close earlier.)

> Commemorative Leap Day merchandise will be sold at the Mad Hatter, New Century Jewelry and other shops.

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