Everything Goes South (Sea Day #1)

 6 November, 2024

Sea Day #1 

As regular readers will know, our sea days are wildly uneventful. We wind down, enjoy a drink, chat with random people, and keep ourselves busy doing things that are absolutely not required in daily life. Thursday we started with breakfast, continuing our poached egg marathon in the form of Eggs Benedict. The chef came out fighting and delivered four of the most perfectly poached eggs I’ve ever seen (Lourie had poached eggs on toast.) I was absolutely giddy, but had no one to share my excitement with as the head waiter from our previous cruise is not aboard this cruise. 

After lunch we gathered our bags and headed to Two70 to find a comfortable spot to begin full-scale decompression, fueled by Goombay Smashes, Rum Punches, Blue Hawaiians, and Chocolate Martinis. The dress code for the evening was changed up at the last minute, so it turned out to be a formal 70’s night. Lots of tie-dye and suits, but no tie-dye suits and a disappointing lack of leisure suits and wide lapels. Perhaps I need a leisure suite with a wild-colored ruffled shirt so I can channel Mike Brady on the next cruise. We were entertained by line dancing classes and met several people and chatted about all things travel and life-related. (A pair of sisters who emigrated from Cuba in the late 1960's were absolutely delightful.) A T-Rex made an appearance, but there were no unicorns or frogs to be found. (Apparently ICE agents and pepper spray only appear in the presence of frogs these days, but my sample size is admittedly restrictively small.

T-Rex at sea! 

The evening production show was The Effectors – a band of superheroes who possess the powers of digital effects who work together to thwart the evil villain Crash. My summary review is that the show exceeded my expectations by a significant measure. I started with expectations so low that they might not even be classified as expectations at all. We met a couple just before the show who attended the earlier production, and they reported that it was much better than they anticipated. The husband (who originally didn’t even want to see the show) confessed that as an avionics/simulation engineer he was impressed – which intrigued me. Lourie wanted to see the show as a scouting exercise for our upcoming 2026-2027 New Year’s cruise, to gauge what our grandson might think. I find myself generally of two minds when watching production shows. I often end up in a bit of an anxious state, ready for things to come to an end. This happens any time my brain detects a familiar rhythm to the production and starts predicting the ultimate outcome. The show has already concluded in my brain at that point, so my subconscious is ready to move on. I’ve only become aware of this in the past few months, not realizing that it was unusual. This show has excellent effects, strong talent, a narrative that flows well (it is thankfully devoid of gratuitous redundancy) and well-executed costumes. It’s just juvenile enough to keep the kids engaged, but with talent to keep the adults entertained – and the length is perfect. It was unpredictable in that it didn’t follow the usual tug-of-war battle between good and evil, which I enjoyed. Definitely worth seeing, pretty much mandatory if you have children between the ages of 5-12. 

We wrapped up the evening with a chocolate martini in the Schooner Bar as we listened to piano tunes, which is always a good way to close things out as far as we’re concerned.