Full disclosure – on sunny days in the Caribbean, my daytime onboard activity is reclining in a lounger by or near a pool or hot tub reading my Kindle. I did take time out of my lounging one day to win at Putt-Putt.
However, according to the daily activity program, I could have participated in trivia, corn hole, learned the “Thriller” dance, perused the shops, Built a Bear, gotten a massage, sang Karaoke, bid in the art auction, learned how to create a towel animal, or exercised in the gym (which I should have). Those are just the activities I remember seeing in the program. I am sure there were more.
Naturally, sea days have more activities than port days. And the pool and hot tub areas are very crowded on sea days. On one port day, I looked up from my book and realized that I was the only one in all the loungers around the pool and nobody was even in the pool. Never experienced that before. But that is one reason we like staying on the ship on port days.
On one port day; however, the ship closed one section of the pool, and they had lifeguard training for a while. Chuck offered to play the part of a drowning victim, but the coach politely declined his offer. It was interesting to watch the training.
Once each cruise, the Lido pool area was the stage of the towel animal invasion. It was fun to watch the kids get excited to see the animals all over the place.
During the second cruise, the ship decorated for Christmas and sponsored different holiday activities. The highlight – Children got to visit Santa. We attended the caroling in the atrium and watched it snow but we did not participate in the ugly sweater contest.
We enjoyed the music venues. Caribbean music or Christmas music played outside mid-ship. The Magic Motion band played at nights near the Casino. The Latin band played in Leonardo’s lounge. The guitarist played in the Atrium bar area.
We went to the comedy club in the Queens Mary Lounge to watch the 18 and over shows. The first show for the first comedian on the night of embarkation did not go well. He started getting heckled almost immediately which he handled okay. Then a woman, who I have to assume was drunk or just an obnoxious person, came up on stage and grabbed for the microphone to sing Karaoke. She had to be escorted away by the Comedy Club manager who then scolded all of us at the end of the show. Rough.
I didn’t make it to the second week comedy shows with different comedians. Chuck said they were just OK in his opinion.
We saw three main stage shows performed by the Carnival singers and dancers. I thought they were all very well done. In fact, we went back the second week to see the Epic Rock show again. I didn’t take any video because I thought taping was not allowed. Turns out I was wrong. You can tape them as long as you don’t use any flash. Not all cruise lines allow this practice.
I did find some You Tube videos posted of the 2022 Epic Rock show.
We did not attend the Deal or No Deal game show or the Love and Marriage show.
We did have a lot of fun in the casino. For a small casino, it had several fun slot machines and more table games than I would have thought. After 9:00, the casino would be jammed packed, and you would be lucky to find a seat at any game.
We tried to go to the Rex nightclub, but we got carded and turned away – Nobody over 30 allowed. (I’m kidding). But it was definitely a young person’s venue.
All in all, we were as entertained as we wanted to be. And if we wanted tranquility, the Serenity pool area was always available for those over 21.
Fondest Travel Memories 