Thursday April 25th – Still another Sea Day

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Hello. We have continued to have our little colds. It isn’t much of a problem except at night when we have some difficulty getting to sleep. After that we are fine again until the next night. So this morning we were a little tired but that was also due to the loss of our last hour before docking in Los Angeles.

We went down to the dining room this morning and discovered they had changed the plan which has been consistently in place since we first sailed. No breakfast but instead brunch from late morning to early afternoon. We had other plans and were disappointed. We had other plans for the morning so we went to the buffet instead. At dinner we expressed our disappointment and were told how sorry they were for how they handled it – we were not the only ones to speak about it.

Janet went to the Knitters Meeting and had a good visit with her friends. She is making progress on her prayer shawl. The consensus of opinion seemed to be that it was sad the cruise was ending but everyone was ready to get back to their regular lives.

David went to a presentation in the theater where they explained how the production shows are developed and put together for performances at sea. They started with some information from several people and then took questions/answers, before giving everyone a chance to come on stage and walk around back stage. We saw the dressing rooms, the prop storage, the control panels, the stage lifts, and other interesting things.

For about 6 weeks, work is done with 3 sets of singers/dancers back in California to learn about 4 shows before they are sent to 3 separate ships. Then another set of performers come and learn a different set of shows and they go to a different set of ships. The groups repeat these shows cruise after cruise for 6 to 8 months until they leave the ship. The supporting scenery is loaded on the ship and used for each repetition of the shows. The costumes are fitted to the performers before they go on the ship and they have to maintain their own costumes and make sure their body size stays the same for their whole contract (no pigging out at the buffet). For our 28 days cruise, the 4 performances were spread out so they didn’t come very often. On a shorter cruise, the shows occur every couple of days. For a very long cruise (like a World Cruise) the performers have to learn 10-12 shows, which they will only do one night (two performances) during the cruise. There was a lot of interesting information about the lighting and sounds, as well as the power systems to move sets on the stage, but it can’t be described well without seeing the actual back stage. Anyway, it was an interesting session.

David returned to the cabin and read his book for a while. When Janet finished with her knitting group today she called and we met on the Lido Deck for lunch. Janet had pepperoni pizza and David had a cheeseburger and fries – the Brink kids probably think that is the best possible lunch. Then we returned to the cabin and watched a movie on the TV – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. We had seen it before but it was a restful way to spend the afternoon. And Janet was able to do needlework between times when the dinosaurs were gobbling up people.

David brought up a little piece of pie for himself and a Carmel Strata Coffee with chocolate powder for Janet. Since this is the last of our formal nights in the dining room, we had some canopies ordered for 4:30. Just before that, David went down to the bar and got Janet a glass of wine and got for himself a Strawberry Daiquiri. Then wearing our fancy outfits we headed off to dinner.

Tonight we had the difficult choice on the menu between a Lobster Tails or Beef Wellington. There was a time many trips back when we might have tried for both and ended up being painfully stuffed. Tonight Janet had the lobster and David had the beef. After finishing the lobster she kindly offered him some of the risotto side dish. David offered her the last bite of beef, but not until she was too full to eat another thing. But then they brought the dessert menu. David had the cheesecake and Janet had Floating Islands.

After dinner we went to the Vista Lounge and listened to the soprano Heather Lundstedt. She did a show exclusively of popular show tunes – Broadway or movies. She has a great voice and Janet was very glad to have gone this time but now was sorry to have missed her first show. Then we returned to the cabin for the night.

The temperature today was only in the mid 60’s as we make continual progress going north. The wind was basically gone except for the 18 knots speed of the ship. But we have left behind the kind of weather where David wants to go to the pool. However the by-product of no wind is that the sea was very smooth all day.

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