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I think they have a book of trivia questions and answers. I know on one of our ships, we were asked how old am I by one of the fun squad. I told that to another one of the Fun Squad who was on his first cruise and also conducting trivia, and he said that question was not in the book.

It was 20 years ago, but Tulum sounds right. We also did Mayan ruins in Belize, IIRC Lamanai. And because I left the port in Belize, the Red Cross would not let me donate blood for a year. When we went to Turkey, parts of the country would disqualify you, but not where we went.

Oh my, good luck, or get out of there now!

We are in NY state and schools do not go back until early September. They do get out late, very late in June.

That is why when we booked our excursion from Cozumel to Mayan ruins, we booked a more expensive tour because it included swimming afterwards. And again, I remember Italy and Turkey being more oppressively warm and humid.

Our second cruise was a Western Caribbean to see Mayan ruins. And because DW was a teacher, it was in the summer, in fact August. And yes, it was hot, but IIRC less than when we were later in Italy and Turkey in August. However, there was a hurricane and our 5 day cruise became 7. And DW ended up missing her first conference day. And we were lucky that there were a lot of Delta flights back then from Fort Lauderdale to JFK so she did not have to miss the second conference day when she needed to set up her art room. (It is truly a relief when you see that you are getting closer on the airline's standby board.)

I never claimed to be anything but unusual .🤣 There is an old song by Paul Butterfield that was the theme song to a movie, Steelyard Blues. The name of the song is "Being Different Ain't Never Been a Crime". I believe in that.

What if you do not have a smartphone?

Wow, up to a little over half what we paid for it. OTOH, some bought it when it was basically twice as much as we paid.

How about not anytime soon?

How about when it comes to safety, we all should not be so complacent.

That works for me. Often when sitting at a red light for a seemingly long time. I say change already. And it changes finally. And I ask myself why didn't I say that earlier. 🤣

Yes, Amsterdam is an amazing city. We have been there twice on land vacations and will now be there on our Prima cruise.

As our resident expert @chengkp75 has explained several times on these boards, the real reason for muster drills (other than of course they are required by law) is training for the crew. It is the only time they get to "herd" (his term) all the passengers. He goes on to say that your requirement as a passenger is to "show up and shut up" (again his term). Others with vast experience like @Heidi13 and @Aquahound have chimed in agreeing with him.

Not everyone, I do not. In fact, I do not even own a smartphone.

We booked a private tour before this was a known issue. The tour provider did say that if the ship does not make the port, we will get a refund. IIRC, it may be less 5% for her handling fee. But that is such a small amount that the loss of it would not bother me. Losing the tour, which both DW and I feel sounds very interesting, would bother me.

On our last NCL cruise, a lot of us signed up for the Meet and Greet, but only 10 showed up. And one of the no shows was the person who organized it! NCL did send officers. The lack of participation by those who signed up was embarrassing. So, I second what you wrote. If you sign up, attend. I know there are those who are not interested, and that is fine, just don't sign up that you will attend.

This is the "good thing" unless a real emergency occurs and there is a need for a real call for a muster. Let us all hope and pray this never happens.

All good advice, however, things have changed so much since Covid that I would take anything written pre-Covid with a grain of salt.

Not for those of us who take trivia seriously.

They have a book with questions and answers. What they need to do is get a new book or an updated version of the one they use.

And it is fun. And I have also found that since the same people seem to play, it is a good way to meet some of the fellow passengers.

And boy do you get even greater service after you tell a crew member that you intend to give them a good write up! On a HAL Boston to Montreal cruise, while sitting in the buffet I noticed the same server was always making sure my lemonade cup was never empty. I motioned her over and told her I wanted to write her up as someone who had made my cruise special, but to do that I needed to know her name. I further went on to say that I did not think it was very polite to stare at her chest to be able to read her nametag. She told me her name, and made sure I knew how to spell it correctly. And after that, not only was my lemonade cup never empty, but as soon as I drank at all, she was there to refill it. And that was July 2018, almost 5 years ago, and I still remember her name, Honeyeyeo. 😊

On one of our Carnival cruises, there was team trivia, the men against the women. There were 4 matches, and the men won every one of them. Only the captain got a ship on a stick, I was the captain on the first match. My teammates tried to elect me again, but were told there had to be a new captain each time. One time I got the answer, but the person running the game would only accept it from the captain, and I had to actually spell the answer for him to be able to say it. As I wrote in the first paragraph, we won every match, but the assistant cruise director (who said that had never happened before) wanted the last match to mean something, so he did not want us up 3-0. And he cheated. We had the question name an NFL team with a horsey name. I forgot whether we said Colts or Broncos, but he would not accept the answer and passed the question on to the women who said whichever one we did not and were given credit for the answer. I still vividly remember this even though it happened back in 2013! And on the plane back, there was a woman and her son sitting directly in front of us who had been on the same cruise. The youngster at one point turned around, looked at me and said "You're the trivia guy." 😊

Actually, this summer we are cruising from London (Southampton) to Iceland including Norway. We also had a Norwegian fjords cruise booked for 2020 that was lost to Covid. And we have cruised to Alaska in August. We have also cruised twice to Canada in the summer, once roundtrip from NYC and once Boston to Montreal.