16 Hours In
I'm here on the boat. After a long flight down from Philly (made longer by the airline's inexplicable decision to delay the plane 45 minutes so some group of badly-dressed and loud vacationers could clear security and get on board), a short and fairly pleasant bus trip, and all the required document checking and card stamping, we made it on board by about 3 pm yesterday. Unfortunately by the time that we actually dumped all of our stuff off in the room, it was too late to get into any of the fancy-schmancy stuff that you can only sign up for while on board. Bad timing. If I were to ever do this again (and that decision currently remains on hold), I'd get here a lot earlier. The important thing is that Emma got signed up for all the cool kids stuff (I wish I could go!) and is happier than a pig at a tea party being fed premium corn and fanned with palm fronds.
Currently its raining like crazy as we head towards Key West, though the Tropical Storm Tracker says we're in the clear. You gotta wonder when the storm tracker is the first thing bookmarked on the Web browsers here.
And speaking of Web browsers, yes, they do have Internet access in a suprisingly stylish little internet cafe (without the actual "cafe" part). The downside is that this freakin' access is costing me ninety bucks for the week. Erk! Their TV's use Direct TV, so I'm sure that the connection is probably just a satellite one so it seems a bit steep, but I really couldn't resist spending the money so that I'd have soemthing to do other than irritate my family at 5 AM.
The money. Ha! That's one of the other funny parts. Rather than actually use real money on the boat, we're all assigned a "Key to the World" card which we can use to pay for absolutely everything from drinks to crap in the shops. This system has two effects: one, you don't have to carry a lot of stuff with you and 2) you have no conception of how much you're spending. "Grey Goose instead of rail swill in my G&T? But of course, my good man! Here's my card! That diamond tiara my daughter's been oogling? But of course! Here's my card! A three hour massage by four fingered mouse-suited massuses in my own private cabana on the upper deck? Why not!" I'm sure that coming back to reality is going to be pretty expensive.
Yesterday after dropping our caryons off in the room (and doing a bit of nail-chewing waiting for our bags to show up), we went to the "Bon Voyage" party on the upper deck. It was unstoppably, relentlessly cheery and after seeing a bunch of 40-something parents "waving their hands in the air" as if they didn't care, I was ready to go and so were Lorna and Emma. We have our limits. We did get to snag a few frozen drinks (not in coconuts. Bad!) and a couple of more cocktails before we left. Mission accomplished.
The dinner times are pre-set when you get on board and ours wasn't until 8:30 so I spent the next couple of hours lounging around and reading (Harlan Ellison's Slippage...a very dark and cynical choice for the journey) while L&E prowled the shops and snagged character autographs. We regrouped, got dressed, and headed out for dinner.
Dinner as at The Animator's Palate, one of the theme-y restaurants aboard and a choice imposed on us by the masters behind the scenes who set shedules. The food was actually pretty decent and a lot more interesting than I anticipated (duck and goat cheese flatbread, butternut squash soup, and a pretty passable vegetable curry for me), but the "show" was fairly lame. We sat at a big table with a couple of other families, one which said nothing to us and the other composed of 2 older parents (easily mid 40's) with a blond 4 year old whose eating habits seem to be as horrible as my own daughter's. We exchanged a few words -- the wife seemed far more willing to talk than the husband-- but didn't exactly engage in the kind of dinner conversation one might find in a Victorian novel. The two parents (we never even got their names) were battling seasickness, so I'm hoping that when things calm down and we coax them into a couple of drinks later on, they'll be more entertaining company. We're stuck with them at dinner for the rest of the cruise.
After Emma literally fell asleep into her Mickey Mouse icecream bar (it was about 10 at this point), we headed off to our "Stateroom" (gaak! A little too grandiose for me) and went to sleep. No Beat Street for us last night. I think I'm going to have to be a lot drunker before I venture down there.
Off to Key West!
Currently its raining like crazy as we head towards Key West, though the Tropical Storm Tracker says we're in the clear. You gotta wonder when the storm tracker is the first thing bookmarked on the Web browsers here.
And speaking of Web browsers, yes, they do have Internet access in a suprisingly stylish little internet cafe (without the actual "cafe" part). The downside is that this freakin' access is costing me ninety bucks for the week. Erk! Their TV's use Direct TV, so I'm sure that the connection is probably just a satellite one so it seems a bit steep, but I really couldn't resist spending the money so that I'd have soemthing to do other than irritate my family at 5 AM.
The money. Ha! That's one of the other funny parts. Rather than actually use real money on the boat, we're all assigned a "Key to the World" card which we can use to pay for absolutely everything from drinks to crap in the shops. This system has two effects: one, you don't have to carry a lot of stuff with you and 2) you have no conception of how much you're spending. "Grey Goose instead of rail swill in my G&T? But of course, my good man! Here's my card! That diamond tiara my daughter's been oogling? But of course! Here's my card! A three hour massage by four fingered mouse-suited massuses in my own private cabana on the upper deck? Why not!" I'm sure that coming back to reality is going to be pretty expensive.
Yesterday after dropping our caryons off in the room (and doing a bit of nail-chewing waiting for our bags to show up), we went to the "Bon Voyage" party on the upper deck. It was unstoppably, relentlessly cheery and after seeing a bunch of 40-something parents "waving their hands in the air" as if they didn't care, I was ready to go and so were Lorna and Emma. We have our limits. We did get to snag a few frozen drinks (not in coconuts. Bad!) and a couple of more cocktails before we left. Mission accomplished.
The dinner times are pre-set when you get on board and ours wasn't until 8:30 so I spent the next couple of hours lounging around and reading (Harlan Ellison's Slippage...a very dark and cynical choice for the journey) while L&E prowled the shops and snagged character autographs. We regrouped, got dressed, and headed out for dinner.
Dinner as at The Animator's Palate, one of the theme-y restaurants aboard and a choice imposed on us by the masters behind the scenes who set shedules. The food was actually pretty decent and a lot more interesting than I anticipated (duck and goat cheese flatbread, butternut squash soup, and a pretty passable vegetable curry for me), but the "show" was fairly lame. We sat at a big table with a couple of other families, one which said nothing to us and the other composed of 2 older parents (easily mid 40's) with a blond 4 year old whose eating habits seem to be as horrible as my own daughter's. We exchanged a few words -- the wife seemed far more willing to talk than the husband-- but didn't exactly engage in the kind of dinner conversation one might find in a Victorian novel. The two parents (we never even got their names) were battling seasickness, so I'm hoping that when things calm down and we coax them into a couple of drinks later on, they'll be more entertaining company. We're stuck with them at dinner for the rest of the cruise.
After Emma literally fell asleep into her Mickey Mouse icecream bar (it was about 10 at this point), we headed off to our "Stateroom" (gaak! A little too grandiose for me) and went to sleep. No Beat Street for us last night. I think I'm going to have to be a lot drunker before I venture down there.
Off to Key West!
posted by Sean at 3:48 AM
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