Awoke to a rocking ship. We slept OK but many haven't apparently. Lots of creaking noises etc.. but throughout the morning it wasn't too bad. The outside decks are no go zones but the Neptune pool area has its roof back on so can be used but those using the pool could end up with a broken arm - we've seen a few passengers with them so goodness knows what they have been doing.
Let's get the ship section out of the way first. Yesterday we were at Cafe Vivvo on deck 3 and there is a door from there to the screening room which is the onboard cinema. So we will do that now.
As you can see it is very small but very comfy. The seats can be reserved by reception and they show the same film about 4 times a day. We've only used it once so far.
The day didn’t start well with the letter all passengers received telling us that we had to all go through US immigration again because the ship had docked in Jamaica and Mexico since our last Fort Lauderdale visit. This is contrary to what we were told before as we all had a non tamper proof sticker added to our cruise card to prevent this - looks just like a sticker to me but as Pam says whatever it is, it is all bollocks as we will have to go through the whole process again. She is very annoyed today.
We need to queue for a ticket (from 8am) to then be called and as it was chaos and took hours last time, we can only pray it is better this time. We will need to join the queue early to get the 1st tickets. We have an independent excursion booked in which we need to pick up a coach at a Waikiki Hotel at 10:30am. Based on Arcadia company and US Immigration’s track record to date this doesn’t seem likely and may lead to a costly backup plan tomorrow. Homesickness and annoyance has left a dark cloud above Pamela. Mark is just trying not to think about it and will tackle it tomorrow.
Anyway, our day proper started in the Palladium theatre with Ben McBean (and hundreds of others obviously as we didn’t corner him or anything). This was a question and answer session in which the deputy entertainment manager interviewed him and then opened it up to general questions. The talk just illustrated what a generally decent man Ben is whose thoughts are to serve country and his fellow man before anything else. He also explained his ambition to climb Kilimanjaro and if he wrote a book it would be a kids book to explain his story to his son and would be very supportive if his son (who is currently 5 years old) ever wanted to join the marines like his dad in the future. Pam was emotional again because he was so brave and handled his situation so well.
After the talk we had a big breakfast and made use of our 24hr internet pass to post blogs and get up to date plus call home. The ship was busy with all the sun worshippers inside though we did see a few people venturing out on the promenade deck which is protected unlike the open decks high up. We toyed with the idea of the morning quiz but it was packed in the rising sun and we honestly felt a little quizzed out and couldn’t be bothered. We went back to our balcony cabin and read, relaxed and watched the waves roll outside the window as we were rhythmically rocked side to side - it was very effective as Mark napped for 2hrs.
The afternoon was spent with Janet back in the Intermezzo bar which has become a games and card area with many of the tables being used for all sorts of these activities. We finished our Canasta game in which Pamela was pleased to win - we miss the old rules even if they were wrong but it may be because we were playing as 3 singles and not the usual pairs variety.
Then it was back to the room to prepare everything for tomorrow and ready ourselves for a 6pm dinner as we missed lunch.
Dinner in the Meridian restaurant was very nice. We both had venison casserole for main and it was very rich and tasty. Much better than the previous night’s buffet disaster. We were assigned a table of 6 and all were new to us. It included a couple very much into amateur dramatics so we had a lot of theatre stories to talk about.
Then it was off to the globe to see Pulse’s 1st set on best of British music. They played some cracking tunes but after 45mins it was over far too soon. They had later shows but we had other plans. We joined our quiz team mates for our single quiz of the day and were of course beaten by the eggheads. It was on Movie taglines but they are hard. We ended the night with the theatre show and the return of Ukebox. Maurice Gibb was all over the place again and needed nail gunning in place. They played party hits and songs like uptown funk and take on me in banjo, ukulele and cazoo is… different. Mark found it hilarious when they performed a 7min mashup of 90s music - the blank faces around the room as S Club 7, Backstreet Boys and Bewitched et al were played was a sight. At least they seemed to know the spice girls but the audience didn’t seem keen to zigazig-ah.
Off to bed with hot chocolate ready for tomorrow when we hope someone is smiling favourably on us.
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