Part 3

You can see the rafts and chutes repacked and ready to be stowed back on the ship. The crane lifted them into place...that's why the ship had to be turned at the dock, to allow the crane access to the side of the ship from which the rafts had been deployed.
At some point during this process, the tarps in which each chute/raft combination were wrapped prior to being put in large white drums for storage on the ship had to be retrieved from the water where they laid. In what I'm sure was an unsanctioned move, a dockworker climbed out on a bumper to try to pull them in. All they'd need is for someone to be hurt during a safety drill!
The intent of these chutes and rafts is that they could be deployed when the ship tilted so much to one side (as with the Concordia) so that the life boats become unlaunchable. They basically provide redundancy in evacuating people from a sinking ship. The Concordia surely had these same rafts; why they weren't deployed is anyone's guess.

The emergency chutes: part 2

In the first photo, you can see a deflated raft and the gas tanks that are used to quickly inflate it. After this exercise, these tanks had to be refilled before the units were stored away again.
The second photo shows the emergency rafts being lifted out of the water prior to being deflated and repacked. You can judge the size of each one relative to the crane. They were pretty big.

Day 81: Turnaround day in Fort Lauderdale

Wow. This day was just one more reason we never tire of "living" on a ship. First, the weather in Fort Lauderdale was hot and sunny. The cold, dreary turnarounds we had last January seem to have occurred in another city. The high for today, in the low 80s, is about 30 degrees higher than some we experienced in January 2011. It's always nicer to have a warm, sunny sailaway from Fort Lauderdale.

Second, we had been informed last night that turnaround would be different than any we'd previously seen, and that the evacuation chutes on one side of the ship would be deployed for training purposes. Speculation abounds; one passenger said that this is a requirement every six years, but some of us wonder if its timing is related to the Costa Concordia disaster. Either way, it was one of those "first time for us" events we didn't want to miss.

We "in transit" passengers (those staying on for another cruise) were assembled earlier than usual, at 8:45am instead of 10am, to pass through immigration. This really compressed disembarkation for all the other passengers. Things didn't run entirely on schedule, but it wasn't too bad.

Once back on the ship, we could see the evacuation chutes and evacuation rafts being reassembled near the dock. This was a huge operation. Before any new passengers were boarded, the lines were released and the Emerald Princess moved away from the dock and into the channel at Port Everglades, where the ship turned 180 degrees and was docked on its the other side (the port side). Now the ship was facing the 17th Street drawbridge, and the loading of food, supplies and new passengers continued...on the other side of the ship. This must have made things very interesting down in the food stores area!

If you look closely at the second photo, you can see the collapsed chutes on top of each evacuation raft. The intent (I think) is that passengers would slide down the chute to the top of the raft, crawl over to the hole in the roof and drop down inside of the raft.