harryfat1

By the time we made it down to the gangway it was 9:45. Theoretically, it was group 1 to 26 or whatever they were calling at the time but nobody checked our ticket number at the gangway as there was only a short line at the end of the gangway. Just waiting to do the security scan as it’s the first port for people to get out and Newbie cruisers sometimes get confused about what's needed to get off the ship as they don't realize every member of the family needs a sea pass to go ashore thinking it's like hotel on land and just the parents need the sea pass.

As we were ready to grab breakfast, they were already calling group 12. Ok. Whatever. Not getting off the ship hungry. We will get off whenever we get off. Only a couple of quickie photos of Windjammer as we were trying to get out of there fast. Oh, I asked for the salmon again via the "secret handshake/special password" as they didn't have it out in the open. If you don't know the secret handshake, you can also just ask the worker behind the counter directly... Oh, yeah, this guy didn't give it to me on a new plate. He asked me for my plate and just plop it on. So it depends on the worker as to how you might get the salmon. Oh, yeah, it’s Wednesday out there somewhere but to you, it’s Day 3 of the cruise

Made it back to the cabin and by now everyone was awake. As always, tons of people at Windjammer. Was not easy to find a table for the 4 of us. Had to pounce on a table as soon as someone was leaving and requested the server to clean the table. One and only ocean view from the Windjammer the entire cruise as the window seats are hard to get to. For the Voyager class ships, they really tried to pack the maximum number of chairs/seats at the buffet area and it’s hard to get to your table if all the other tables are full as you have to weave and wind your way back to the table every time you get up to get something. Especially with a boatload (pun intended) of kids on these lower-priced short summer cruises, there are strollers and kids playing in the aisle as you try to navigate a clear path between you and the food. Looks like a big family group next to us with light blue colored shirts and family uniforms taking up 2 tables. Somewhat cloudy morning looking at the Aft

The first picture of the day has a time stamp of 8:23 AM. I opened the curtain to see a couple of neighbors across the way on deck 6 were awake already with their blinds opened. On Day 2, the ship dropped off a notice for the tender process in every cabin. As Catalina is a tender-only port with a narrow shallow harbor, the passengers need to get a tender ticket number in order to go ashore. The ship doesn’t want a HUGE line of a couple thousand people standing by the gangway to get off so they are breaking people into smaller groups to get off the ship. Officially they were supposed to start passing out the tender tickets at 8:30 and only one member of the family needed to line up for the tickets to get for the whole family. As we have been slow to wake up family members, it’s not surprising yours truly had to go to deck 5 MDR to get the tickets by myself. The time stamp was 8:30 and there was already a line for the tickets even though they said they would be passing them out at 8:30, but in reality, they were doing it much earlier than that. So if getting off the ship early is important to you if you have a private excursion booked, get to the dining room before 8:15 to ensure an early ticket. Or if you are really anxious due to an early excursion booked and need to get off early, they will allow walk-ups to get off the ship between 8 to 8:30 before they start calling group numbers. Anyway, I got group number 12 by the time I got the tickets. Huh? Assuming each group is 50 people or so, that’s like 600 people ahead of us in getting off the ship slightly before 8:30. So if you want groups 1 to 5, get there early BEFORE the stated 8:30 time slot. We were in no hurry so group 12 was fine as we had no excursions planned for this port.

August 9, (Wednesday) Day 3 - Catalina Island Here is the daily scan and PDF file for anyone who needs a copy Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Day 3.pdf

Thanks for the info. It would make sense to have helpers on site on day 1 as not everyone is tech savvy and if they are forcing people to use their Apps only and not online booking, they need some hands-on helpers in case something isn't working. Guess I will keep an eye out for the Internet Assist vests and of course, take a picture.

I don't think there's much wiggle room for a 4-night cruise as RCI is pretty rigid in their offerings. The 2 nights (Royal Night - Lobster) and Bon Voyage Night are for longer cruises only. So the only substitute would be French night. Since this is a Mexico cruise to Ensenada, I think they felt it was more appropriate to have at least one Mexican theme night.

Awwww, YES! Finally, someone commented on the music. I was starting to wonder if anyone other than @BIBPhotography checked them out as we know he was dancing with the ladies at the Baby Got Back song on boarding day. As for the music, these are just songs from my generation so I remember these songs/lyrics, and sometimes a picture or event will just trigger a “this song would be good” at this time moment. Just like in the movies, they always have music to enhance the proper mood moment. I try to do the same here as well. I don’t know most of the current top songs as I still listen to the “oldies” station in the car so don’t expect any of the top hits from the last 5 years to make it here as I don’t know them like my boys. I have a set of “regular songs” that I use as part of the trip report. For example, I always use “Time to Say Goodbye” on the last day of the cruise. I plan to drop in a ton of the disco song covers when I talk about the 70s dance party at the end of Day 3’s report As for the Cover songs, I just go to YouTube and search for something like – Here Comes the Sun cover – and out comes 5 plus cover bands. I sampled a few and just picked one that I like to share. I really didn’t know about the “cover bands” until the Covid period when we were all working remotely and could listen to background music at home while working which you couldn’t do in a regular office environment previously. Started listening to a couple of them and the software tracks what you watch and keeps recommending more and more of them. Nowadays when I pull up YouTube under my account, I get lots of Cover recommendations. Only now did I realize some cover videos have garnered multi-million views to generate income for artists we never would have ever heard of. Like that Dreams Cover video I provided from post #145. That video has 44 Million views worldwide and got the singer noticed. Some artists cross platforms and those become really interesting. One of my favorites is the 2Cellos. Does everyone think cello playing is boring? You haven’t heard Cellos playing Bon Jovi’s Livin' on a Prayer. These guys swing their necks so much that they will need chiropractor realignment after this video. As a “trailer” for upcoming attractions, I plan to use their Pirates of the Caribbean video in the December trip report as it’s more appropriate than versus the Mexico sailing

No worries. I know you are in Portugal from your signature. No rush to respond as you know I will be here for a while longer. Thanks for all the tips. I will make a mental note of that (or put it in the spreadsheet). Per the RCI website, reserving “The Book” is done via the App or while on board. Yeah, my younger son is a Computer Science major in college so he gets these tasks as I will stick with my Excel spreadsheet. Showgirls look to be the same as they are both displayed on the RCI website but Navigator just had a different set of costumes so it will likely be “new” to us as we will likely not remember the show by December. For the Navigator, I requested the cabin steward to bring the daily compass so I know about that part but we only got them from day 2 onward. Since she didn’t give me the day 1 compass, I just assumed there wasn’t one printed anywhere. Good to know it’s at GS. Another “to do” for the Excel spreadsheet…

Haha, not sure what he was doing. Maybe transiting between Y and C? Somewhere down the road as I graduate from Cheapo Dad to Cheapo Grandpa, for the 70s night, I will have my grandkids take me out to the Royal Promenade in a wheelchair, and at the YMCA dance part, I will just be doing the Y-Y-Y-Y as by then arthritis will have set in and old man arms will be locked in the Y position and can’t change fast enough…

Thanks for the heads up to check at the excursion desk to book the shows in person. I’m not above asking every person in uniform for help if I can’t find what I need. Oh, yeah, spreadsheets. The people in the Finance world would be dead in the waters if we didn’t have our spreadsheets. That’s the first software I pull up daily at work – right after checking my work email. Likely be the last thing I use at work as I save the file and log out of my work laptop. I did a spreadsheet for the Allure cruise back in 2014 as I just took a quick glance at my old trip report on page 1 (post #17) and re-downloaded it to myself as I provided a soft copy to download for anyone who wanted a template to help them get started CC is part of my cloud storage as I can get faster access to my older files than looking for them on my hard drive…🤪 I think I was probably 9.438 on the anal scale back then since Allure was our biggest ship and required the most amount of planning as I colored-coded different categories. Not sure if the new friends here know I’m a big Disney fan but the folks that have been reading my posts from the past know that. Anyway, the reason I brought that up is to show that in preparing for the WDW trip, I was at the height of anality back then (yeah, this is an actual word. Of course I looked it up being anal and all). We were going there with friends and my wife’s brother's family so I was working on the schedule regularly and emailing them frequent updates. I’m sure they probably just rolled their eyes every time a new version came out. It was like software updates. The one version I found was version 4.3. Think the final version was 5? For WDW, you have to reserve your restaurants 180 days out. I was up at the crack of dawn as they opened their dining reservation system at 6 AM EST/3 AM PST daily. I had a backup of backup of backup restaurants if I couldn’t get restaurant A at this date and then use restaurant B instead and move restaurant C to replace… Back then Disney had a limit on the old Fastpass system so I wrote down in order what Fastpass to get when and where. All in all, I think I was at the 9.798 scale at that stage of my life. I know it’s hard to believe that I have actually “mellowed out” since then and dropped down to 9.2 on the scale where I am now as I didn’t do any spreadsheet the past 2 cruises but it sounds like I might need to dust off the old file for just for the Odyssey.

The last picture from Studio B was time-stamped at 11:17 so by the time we made it to the café promenade on deck 5 to get our usual water and hot tea for the night, we didn’t get back to the cabin until after 11:40 and by the time we changed and unwind after a crazy event, it was well after midnight before we went to sleep. I’ll let the Eurythmics close out the night with “Sweet Dreams” This concludes Day 2 of the trip report. As always, thanks to all who have been reading along these past several weeks and contributing to the report. Since this was a short cruise, we are at the halfway point already – probably past halfway point as the report is more front-loaded on Day 1 and 0 with preparation discussion.

Our team didn’t win but it was a lot of fun. Afterward, everyone was invited to go onto the middle area (they covered over the ice rink) and dance to Y-M-C-A

I debated on how many pictures to post from the show as too much info would spoil it and no info goes against my philosophy of taking y’all with me on a cruise. The compromise I decided on is to provide a few pictures and a short video clips without much background. How and what the show is about, you can go see for yourself. Y’all probably know by now I have an odd twisted warp sense of humor so this show works well for us. The 6 of us, yes, including the in-laws attended as they didn’t understand the full English discussions but they liked the action sequences and all of us were laughing over the show afterward for a couple of days. All 6 of us contributed items to try to help our team (#2) win. I contributed my belt so be sure to wear a belt if you attend the event as you might need it. Also, wear socks. Hint: ALL socks have at least one hole. You are welcome… The woman in the black dress and the older guy behind her were our team captains Our team captain 20230808_231213.mp4

10:05 PM, time for the Crazy Quest Game. We had played the PG 13 version of the Quest Game when we were on the Independence back in 2017 as the boys were not old enough to participate in the adult version. In the daily planner (in case anyone actually read it) or probably on the App, it said ages of 18+ but not everyone reads. Some family brought their kids to the show and sat down waiting. Someone in the next row reminded the parents that the show can be raunchy and not meant for kids and the family ran out of there real fast. Oops. Another dude asked us as we were walking in – is this the ice show at 10:15? Ehhh, not exactly… Guess he was thinking it was like the ice show last night. When we told him this was the adult-only Quest show, he had a confused look as he didn’t understand why RCI would have an adult-only Quest game…

Before I wrap up Day 2's events, I saw this news feed on my phone the other day. Felt this is appropriate as we were just talking about food: https://www.sciencealert.com/if-a-fly-lands-in-your-drink-should-you-still-drink-it So the question is if a fly lands in your drink, is it safe to drink it? Yeah, I ask all the difficult questions here in my trip report, don't I? Maybe for some people, it's OK to drink it if they add more alcohol to the drink to wash it down. Maybe add some hot sauce or something?

Thanks for the additional info. So we are back to the handy dandy phone App to book everything. But is there a kiosk or something at the Esplanade or at 270 to talk to a live person? There must be some people out there that are not phone App savvy. I know the folks in the suites can have a concierge help them but those of us staying in the slums area should have a physical location to go and talk to someone to book. I will try to walk around the 270 area after lunch to see if there is a physical location to book the shows.

You will probably be amongst the last 10% of the diners leaving MDR nightly as nowadays RCI rushes you through things by asking you to pre-order your dessert so that saves at least 10 minutes of meal time in presenting you a dessert menu/gives you time to order/taking the time to write down the order/the wait staff dropping off the order. By the time we were done around the 9:40 mark, the MDR was only 1/4 full. So if you are enjoying a more leisurely dinner, you and your group will likely be amongst the last ones there.

What is the "typical" theme night for day 2? French night? So are you saying the typical formal night menu on other sailings is not Mexican night? Here are our 4-night theme dinners: Day 1 - Welcome Night Day 2 - Mexican Night Day 3 - Caribbean Night Day 4 - Italian Night I would feel better if they swapped Day 1 and Day 2 menus as at least I got prime rib (a double portion of meat for some folks) for formal night. It made me feel like I got dressed up for something special. Eating enchilada just felt like I went to a local taqueria and I wondered to myself why I dragged my dress shirt/tie 400 miles for this? If I had a Mexican menu on the first night, with people not fully unpacked and in their casual clothes, the dinner theme corresponds to the attire.

Done with dinner. I was waiting for various family members to wash up as I stepped outside of the same Promenade deck area pre-dinner as it's just right outside of the restroom. Very convenient to take a quick snapshot as now it's totally dark outside of the ship. The time stamp for the picture was 9:42 PM so dinner took less than 90 minutes from when we sat down to when we walked out. T his was RCI’s main “advertised” goal of saving time for the main reason for the switch in the new 2023 menu. Cynics will say the main goal was to cut costs but saving time sounds better as a marketing ploy…

Dessert Time - I think we almost got every dessert listed on the menu minus the basic ice cream...

Enough complaining, here are the food pics. Oh, I lied. One more old man complaint - this is served as a "formal night dinner"? I got dressed up to eat...enchilada/burrito? Tortilla Soup Shrimp Cocktail Carne Asada They called this enchilada but not enough sauce to make it feel that way. It's more like a slightly wet burrito Butter Chicken - via the special Mexican-Indian connection as I ordered my usual extra main dish in the middle for people to share

Alrighty. Day 2 Dinner menu. As I mentioned previously, I’m not a menu photographer as you can find a nice-looking menu online easily. Here’s a copy of the menu from the same website I referenced on Day 1. Tonight’s theme is Mexican night. While I assume the concept of a “theme night” adds something different to the feel of a nightly dinner in reality, there’s nothing special about it. The menu items just do not mesh well. Yes, you have the Mexican theme food here and there on the menu, but you also have escargot next to it. How Mexican is that? Maybe they need to name it as La Escargot and add some salsa/guacamole to the side to make it look/sound more Hispanic? Then there’s the Spaghetti and Indian Butter Chicken as well. It then becomes a big blend of different ethnic food like in the buffet. This isn’t a bad thing but no need to call it a Mexican theme night unless you plan to go more in on the Mexican food like offering Chicken Mole or Chile Relleno or Chimichangas. Especially for the Mexican cruise departing from LA where the locals KNOW their Mexican food. Southern California may not know their Pizzas like the East Coast folks or Philly Cheese steaks but they know Mexican food very well and this menu doesn't hit all the notes. If RCI really wants to do the theme nights, go more ethnic but also bring back the old “Daily Standards” so that way if the ethnic good is too exotic for picky eaters, they can always have the basic daily menu of shrimp cocktail/salmon/chicken nightly. Have the left side of the menu to be all theme nights related and the right side of the menu to be the classic American food that is offered daily like the old days. As currently constructed, it’s just an odd mix

Thanks for the pictures. The costumes looked very colorful compared to our show. We had the weird space cadet-looking thing in silver metallic. Guess we will check out the version of the Odyssey and report back. We only have 3 port days on our sailing and 4 sea days (not counting Day 1) so we need to figure out which of the port days we will do the 2 events that are only free on port days

One major advantage of set dining is dinner time coincides with show time. They always made sure the various shows ended around 7:50 to leave you enough time to use the restrooms afterward and head off to dinner. Walked all the way across deck 4 and the smokey casinos to get to the MDR area. While waiting for everyone to finish washing hands prior to dinner, here are a couple of pictures of the Pacific Ocean. A tad too late for a sunset picture as in August the sun starting to set earlier down south. However, I noticed that Southern CA has an earlier sunset time compared to the SF Bay Area by around 20 minutes as they are more south. If we were still back in the Bay area, we would have caught Sunset before 8 PM that night. Heck, if we were back on the Alaska cruise like last year in Anchorage, it was still bright at 10 PM in August... View of MDR on the left behind the glass window where we will be in just a few minutes I like the well-lid outside Promenade deck with the soon-to-be dark skies background.