Frightfully Fun . . .

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Over my years working on ships, one holiday that I’d yet to experience was Halloween. My contracts have always worked out that I have either been at home or traveling on my own. Looking at photos from other crew members, it always looked so fun with everyone all dressed up. So when this contract was sorted out and I knew I’d be on a ship for Halloween, I started looking for my costume! I seemed way ahead of things, trying to find a costume in September, but I knew that the weeks leading up to Halloween would be chaos with me jumping ships and dry dock and everything else. I’m so glad I found them (yes, I got two!) before I left home because I wouldn’t have been able to get one down here with everything that was going on.

For the two weeks leading up to Halloween, all of the Carnival ships had designated nights for the “Frightfully Fun” events. So we had three different cruises with a Frightfully Fun night. The camp staff had candy hunts, a costume contest and disco for the youngest kids on the ship. The entertainment staff did a big costume contest and party for the adults. Chris and I ran a party and activities for the teens.

We had the two teen groups all gather in my club. We had costume contests, with varying success each cruise, not always having many teens dress up. (Though there were so many great adults and little kids in costume walking around the rest of the ship!) We did some trivia about Halloween and monsters and candies and other related things that I’d put together a couple weeks back. We did a contest to replace apple-bobbing (which I decided would be too messy in the club) where we had them in partners, one holding an apple by a string, the other trying to eat the apple without using their hands. It was pretty funny and a really fun contest - though our last group couldn’t go it for the life of them. We did a music trivia game where they had to name the horror/monster movie by hearing the theme song. That was really fun and so successful I think I may make it a regular activity year-round. Then of course there was the dance contest to “Thriller” and we’d teach them the Time Warp, then left them on their own to dance the rest of the night away. It was fun to have a big theme we could really run with for activities.

Two days before Halloween, we also had a themed crew party. It was fun, seeing everybody all dressed up. Because I finish work so late, I missed any of the events or contests that may (or may not?) have happened. But once I made it there, I got some photos taken and just hung out and chatted.

So my costumes in all of this? The first was a Cheetah costume - a strapless dress in a cheetah print with matching glovelets and ears. I matched it up with fishnets and drew on whiskers. I think it was pretty cute! The second was a Chef costume - a red dress cut like a chef’s jacket and a hat with little devil ears on it. And I wore my knee high black boots with it. So fun!

And that was Halloween!

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