SweetPea

This means a lot. Thank you

Hey, this might be out of the blue, but ... whatever happened to the blind guy your mom randomly invited on one of your cruises?

Reminder to myself: - Bridge tour briefing - Coastal Kitchen shenanigans-lite? Maybe? Details to follow. I may be texting @asquared17 later on this one to get a private call. Was Natalie Portman involved? This is all becoming too much. - St Kitts decision - Stage 5 Clingers Shift Hold me to that if i get off track. I admitted my ADHD to you. Go with it. Now let's talk about The Effectors. BUT first, a back story (apologies). Picture it. March 2003. Our first cruise. Ever. On HAL's Zuiderdam (don't ask how we ended up there). Bottom line, when you're a naive and first time cruiser, you go to nearly every single show, right? Well, one show on Holland America's ZDM was a tribute to movie tunes. The very first act? A solo performer coming up through a lift at the bottom of the stage wearing a purple cape, with his back to the audience. Now picture a cloud of smoke, following him up from the floor of the stage. All the while the brief musical intro to Purple Rain is blasting through the audience. Next imagine him dramatically turning towards the audience while spinning his purple cape, with his blonde hair slicked back like Dracula, and he starts singing the first line to Purple Rain by Prince. My BIL and i took one look at each other and tried to hide our hysterics. We were both laughing so hard at the melodrama, we tried to hide it, but the more we looked at each other, the more ridiculous the act seemed and we nearly had to leave. The performer (who we would later learn was named Geoffrey) got through about half the song before the entire show was canceled due to rocky seas, thankfully, because BIL and I were laughing so hard we were literally crying. What you also don't know is that in his earlier days, Batman was not only smoker, but was metro and a gay magnet (not that there's anything wrong with that). So later after the canceled show, we're in the Zuiderdam casino bar where Batman grabbed a cig, and one of the other staff ship dancers who was crazy into Batman asked to bum a cig. I was amused at the whole thing, and told this dancer how much i was disappointed that the Movie tunes show was canceled and how much i love the song Purple Rain. The dancer said in all seriousness, "Geoffrey was so brave. So brave. Very brave," while shaking his head. And then went into a diatribe about how difficult it was for Geoffrey to perform that song in those seas because he had to ride the stage lift to start the song. From henceforth and evermore, Batman, our BIL, Batman's sister, and i cannot listen to Purple Rain without looking at each other, shaking our heads, giving a long blink, and muttering "so brave. So brave." Now on to the Effectors. We told one of the bartenders in the pub, no, we're good on drinks, we're going to see the Effectors. He said, ok, I'll see you back here in 10 minutes. We should have listened. First, you hold hope, because your very first memory of "I Need a Hero" is not necessarily Footloose, but of Mickey ziplining between smokestacks on the Disney Magic (or Wonder) during Pirate Night, and you cried tears of happiness. Now that that memory is out of the way, i need you to scrunch your eyebrows. Now scrunch your nose and purse your lips. Now raise your eyebrows and open your mouth. Now think WTH. Now you're hearing Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, and Batman and you turn to each other at the same time while shaking your heads and say .... SO BRAVE. SO BRAVE. Because the Purple Rain sentiment is there, and you still have no idea what the story line is or WTH you just watched. But you couldn't leave because you waited for it to make sense.

I checked the whole store and this is in its place now

OMG, there's a million things i need to catch you up on. But Firstly, THE $15K PURSE IS GONE.

So is that saying, get tested, or don't worry, this is just an FYI?

When you are not loyal to a single cruise line, sometimes lines blur. I'm reminded of what Haven does better in their rooms: always a note pad and Haven pens, better dressing station, cotton balls and qtips, and in our opinion, better balcony furniture and better bathrooms. I need to build my own cruise line when I'm president and meld the best of both worlds.

We are back from the bridge tour, where ultimately, I'm glad we went. This was leaps and bounds over any other bridge tour we've ever done, all thanks to Captain Marek. More on that later. He's charming and gracious, and the whole thing was soooo informative. My only regret is that today the weather was gorgeous (perfect!), and we really could've used a full day of sunning and relaxing, and between the NSI (here on out, the North Star Incident) at 11:40 and then the bridge at 3 and now dinner at 7 ... These would have been great for a cooler weather day. Now we start our 4 consecutive port days. So while both experiences were memorable, i just wished we could've done them on the first or second cooler sea days, but the weather wasn't cooperative. If it were a clear but cold day, this would've been a perfect day.

I'm so happy they called you, even though it's probably just a dangling carrot. I plan on doing the same. I mean obviously we are having a great time, but the shoreside Genie nonsense is insane and the escalating prices in conjuction with decreased perks makes booking another extremely hard to justify. We have nothing on the books, and won't reconsider unless they reverse course on the UDP garbage they are touting now. I plan on telling them that if I'm to be nickeled and dimed, we'll just stick with Norwegian Haven, because as it stands, that's a lot better value and you at least get your own part of the ship.

I feel you, friend. I feel you.

No fun! Hope she's healing well! Hey, it was a new car in 1994. A Saturn. I wound up giving it away to my sister (7 years younger) for her senior year of college to have on campus. Re: North Star. I honestly had no idea we were stuck until the operator made (received?) a call and let us know. I was already warm. And it was getting hot in there. The operator assured us we were safe and they could get us down manually. If not, we could zipline down. I was not exactly happy with that prospect, so I'm relieved they were able to do it manually. I told Batman that i was going to message Rafa and tell him if we don't see him again, that it's been fun. We were with another SC family (there were 10 of us total with the operator), and she thought that was funny so did the same to her Genie, Hailey. Hailey responded with . Rafa responded with a selfie of him and Hailey and said We're waiting for you! The initial jolt down took me by surprise as i was trying to stand in the middle, under the vent, and i wasn't holding on to anything. At that point, i told Batman i changed my mind about my DNR as i quickly made my way back to the railing. The operator informed us we would be refunded for the trip. I asked, for our suites? She didn't get my joke, but the other SC family did.

Marked safe from North Star. More later.

I'm going to catch up in a bit, but we're currently stuck 300 feet in the air on North Star and they are trying to get us down manually.

Yes, if you're down to salsa, i definitely suggest Boleros over MH. I've done more recon, and it's not well attended. Maybe it's just this cruise? Boleros has been busy. And I'm sorry, the closest we've gotten to 270 was when Rafa checked us in for muster.

I know I'm a lot. Please lmk when you're tired of me. Honestly. I'm still in bed. He was on the balcony. Now you know I'm serious about him complaining that this is too early for us. (11:40a, to reiterate) Now he's got a catchy GITCC tune going. I'm thinking of uploading it to iTunes to help fund our retirement.

Let me backtrack here. Because I'm awake but not up and Batman is downstairs. Last night, we braved the Schooner Bar, which we both hate. However, we thought we were going to the show and needed a pick-me-up. That's code for Espresso Martini, and apparently the Schooner is the only place to get those. So we grab seats outside and we're overlooking a shop with some handbags. I noticed one straight away and pointed it out to Batman. He agreed it was a lovely bag. 1) The Espresso Martinis were not good. We've never had any so frothy. 2) Batman stopped by the store later on, thinking he would buy me that lovely bag as a surprise. But he came back to me and asked (laughing), do you want to know how much your bag costs? $1k? No I stopped guessing at 5k. He said the price tag was turned over and he casually flipped it so he could see. A sales person immediately started gunning for him and so he quickly left. I managed to spot a Hermès. It was $15k. I think my first car was $16k. Since i never want to work again, I'm thinking @Curt From Canada will have a chance to buy it for his soulmate next cruise. But honestly, this a family mainstream cruise line. There is nothing high-end about Royal, as much as they'd like to think they are. What is a $15k handbag doing for sale there? Seems like wasted real estate to me, but what do i know?

For this cruise, if you can control your bodily functions while in public, you're not vintage!

We called it an "early night" because we're legit "overscheduled" for tomorrow. I guess 12:30am isn't an early night for most. Shut up. This is the first time we're doing extended North Star at Sea (we've only done it previously in port in Bermuda). It's at 11:40a. This means that Batman, the love of my life, has his alarm set for 9:30, and he's not happy about it. (Yeah @InmyElement, I'm looking at you, Mr. Up at the Buttcrack Runner). Then we have a bridge tour at 3pm. We told Rafa we would likely pass on that since we retired from that wheelhouse, but he argued that Captain takes pride in giving Odyssey bridge tours himself and we shouldn't miss it. (If you don't know, on Oasis and Symphony at least, the bridge tour was conducted by a Genie. Captain was not present). Then it's formal night, and dinner at the ungodly early hour again of 7pm. Pray for me tomorrow.

The sea of farts is just for this board. Rafa is blissfully unaware of the farting pandemic. You're welcome.

You KNOW i get this reference and i love you for it.

We planned to go to the show but the 10pm show was canceled as the singer lost her voice. Batman is thrilled. I'll give you one guess where we are now. And update re: Izumi. We let Rafa know what happened, and he spoke with the Izumi manager. Our waiter was new and didn't understand Star Class. We were his first SC guests. All good.

It's embarrassing how well you know me.

Ok, frenz Tonight's dinner was at Izumi, and let's just say I'm glad we didn't go hungry. We were done in 45 minutes and were given the whole prix fixe spiel, which we all know should not be applying to Star Class guests who booked prior to 11/1/24. I didn't argue, but I'm going to let Rafa know. Izumi here is not my fave. I didn't bother with food pics because, honestly, it wasn't worth it. We each had a small plate and one large plate (if you want to call 4 pieces a large plate) and called it a night. However, i swear to you that I'm not making this up. You know how the setup is odd there, almost like you're sitting in a food court. No walls, just slats and you can see everyone walking the upper Esplanade. No lie. A white hair walks by outside the restaurant, right outside our table, and let's out a giant LOUD fart, says, "whoops," and keeps on walking. I'm sad to say that was the highlight of our dinner. We have no plans for Izumi Part 2. We should've gone to CK.

I forgot to review Jason Bishop, last night's performer. We've seen him before (on Disney? Maybe Oasis). I share a similar sense of humor, so we loved it! Though, we didn't really get what his assistant did. We also didn't get his last trick. Batman asked ... do you know what's happening here? I said, no, i just really like this song ... #par4thecourse

I gave the thumbs down sign after about 46 seconds. Batman has video. I honestly don't want to see it. Poor Rafa thinks i think he tried to kill me. Everyone was gracious. If you haven't figured out yet, I'm ADHD and i was really overwhelmed. I don't like to try new things in public places and i needed a lot more instruction and made them review the hand signals 3x and i still wasn't confident. I was too confused by the operator giving instruction as well as the instructor trying to guide me, which at one point i thought was conflicting. It was too much for me! I was done! They all tried to tell me i did well, and wanted me to try again, but all i wanted was out of there. Never again.