The Dr Who Cruise Part 4

Oct 25, Wednesday, - Cozumel, Mexico

We got up at 7 and had breakfast in the buffet. We had a shore excursion to learn about Mexico’s Day of the Dead. We needed to be on the shore by 8:45 at Station 4. Just before we left the ship, Hubby realized that he had left the camera in the cabin and ran back to get it. Sensory overload hit me as I reached the end of the dock and tried to find the sign for Station 4. I finally found it, hiding behind Station 5, which was hiding behind Station 6. Oberto was our guide, and he had paperwork for me to fill out. I found a table and chairs in the shade and started filling out the paperwork. Hubby showed up, so I started filling out the paperwork for him, and showed him where to sign in.

At 9AM, Oberto gathered us all together and walked us out of the crowded business section to a place where buses and taxis were waiting. He divided us into 4 different groups and put each group into a taxi van. The taxis drove us to Playa Mia, about 10 minutes from the terminal.

At Playa Mia, there was a tour put together by a cacao company, and that was what we were there for. We walked along a wandering path through a small patch of jungle. Along the way, we were shown a ‘typical Mayan hut’ and given a tiny tostada with a daub of filling as our first taste test. We were shown examples of the various spice plants they add to their cocoa drink and given a small wooden spoon with some cacao candy on it for our 2^nd taste test.

 After that, we climbed to the 2^nd floor of the cacao shop and were given a few minutes to decorate an altar for the Day of the Dead. Then we got to cross a bridge to the 2^nd story of the next building. They handed out small wooden skull faces that we could color using sharpies. And when we finished that, they had more things to taste; enchiladas, toquitos, a deep purple water made by boiling a certain type of flower, regular water, and some Mayan cocoa. The food was okay, and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about spicy cocoa made with water and not milk, but I tried it, and it was good.

We were given 20 minutes to shop in the various stores, and there were several in the area. Hubby went down the street far enough to find 2 swimming pools and the shoreline. Then we were put back in taxis and sent back to the terminal

Sensory overload again as we made our way through the first building and its myriad shops. When we came out into the sunlight, I asked Hubby where he wanted to go, and he said ‘to the ship’. I said, “Come on, it’s this way,” and he said, “Go ahead, I’ll catch up.” I thought he wanted to find a bathroom, so I walked forward about a short block, and then waited for him to ‘catch up.’ I must have waited at least half an hour before I decided he was a grown man and the location of the ship was obvious, so I made my way to the dock and walked most of the way to the ship, then paused to sit on a bench and rest for a moment. And that’s where he found me. He was angry that I’d ‘gotten lost’ when he had OBVIOUSLY told me to go ‘back to the ship’. Not the way I remembered it at all.

Having found each other, we went to our cabin for our special tumblers, and then went to the buffet to hydrate and eat some lunch. That’s where we found A, another DW cruiser, so we sat and talked for a while.

Afterwards, we went to our cabin and worked on our stories for the afternoon. I laid down for an hour nap, and Hubby got up and went walk-about a couple times. He’s not one to stay sitting for long periods at a time. I also took a quick shower to wash away the sweat from our shore excursion, but by the time the ship pulled anchor and left Cozumel, I was deep into my writing.

When I decided to go to the group’s social hour, the boat was rocking. I felt like I had lost my sea legs. This was a bit alarming because I ‘lose my balance’ entirely too often, even on dry land. But I got to the Schooner Bar safely and found a seat on the fringe of our big group.

Before long, it was time to go to dinner. We had 2 go down 1 deck, and the elevators were mobbed, so we walked down the stairs, some of us gripping the banister as if our lives depended on it. When we got to our table, we found that Tim and George were the ‘monster’ guests for our table tonight. Tim is very outgoing and lots of fun. George has worked with Tim on lots of DW episodes, but this was his first time on the DW cruise. He seemed to be warming up to the group’s off-beat camaraderie.

We did have a touch of drama during our meal. Apparently, a server somehow dropped a bowl of soup. Some of the soup bounced as high as the ceiling, other splatters landed on 3 of the diners at our table. Hubby had a couple drops land on him. The lady next to him went through two cloth napkins wiping off splatters that hit her. Tim got so much soup on his shirt that he went back to his cabin to get a fresh shirt. Many jokes were made about the incident.

Several members of the table decided to go do the onboard zipline. I don’t know if they got their nighttime zipping done; the ship may have been swaying too much for that activity to be available. If not, they were looking forward to barhopping after that, so I’m sure they had lots of fun. Hubby and I didn’t have a beverage package that included alcohol, so we went back to our cabin to write, but that didn’t last long before we started yawning and decided to go to bed.

The Dr Who Cruise Part 3

Tuesday, Oct 24 – a Day at Sea

This was a day at sea, and we were supposed to sleep in, because all the breakfast venues opened an hour later than usual. We got up at 7 and went to the Main Dining Room for breakfast, only to find they weren’t open yet. So we grabbed an elevator to the 15^th deck, where the buffet was open.

Half an hour later, we headed back to our cabin, and at 9:30, Hubby headed for the conference center for a 10 AM meeting with his writing team.

About an hour later, I went down to see how they were doing. D, the organizer of the cruise, was there and was listing the days and times that he had activities planned. Lo and behold, some of the actors who usually get cast as monsters in DW were giving a presentation at 4 PM THAT DAY on their work, complete with photos, videos and props. I made sure of the presentation time when the meeting broke up, and then Hubby and I went to the card room (there was no library aboard the Wonder) to do some writing.

Around noon we went to the Main Dining Room for lunch, then back to our cabin to relax. We considered going to the hot tub, but opted to stay in our room and write.

At 3:30, we started for the conference center, which should have been an elevator ride straight down 7 decks, but we decided to walk to the aft (back) of the ship to check out a venue on deck 12 we hadn’t seen yet. It turned out to be an expensive restaurant with ‘imaginative cuisine’. So now we knew.

While we were waiting for an elevator, we met up with D (our cruise organizer), who started telling us about some of the hassles of having such a large group. Then we realized we were aft, and the conference center was forward, so we had to beat feet to get there.

The ‘monster review’ was 2 hours long and great fun. Ross, Tim and Jon had photos and videos of various roles they had played, and not only in Dr Who. The photos included them in the make-up chair, usually getting lots of prosthetics put on. The videos included such things as a group of monster actors practicing walking in unison, in whatever strange style had been worked out for them. Tim even brought a mask that fit over his head, and the hands that went with it for one of his monsters.

Before we knew it, it was 6 PM, and since this was a formal night for dining, we needed to return to our cabins and change. I had brought a dress to wear for formal nights, and a pair of heels, two things I hardly ever wear. Halfway to the aft of the ship, I remembered why I hardly ever wear heels; my knees were complaining, my hips weren’t happy, my ankles felt weak and uncertain, and my feet were screaming in pain. I decided right then that on the walk back to our cabin, I would take off the heels and walk in my stocking feet. Unfortunately, when we headed back to our room, we walked through the Promenade deck, which was very crowded. I didn’t dare take off my shoes until we reached deck 10 and the relative emptiness of cabin area hallways.

The Dr Who Cruise Part 2

Monday, Oct 23 – A Day at Cocoa Key.

 

We got up at 7 and went to the buffet for breakfast. The ship had docked at Cocoa Key, but hadn’t given out any newsletters to tell us what to expect. We didn’t know when we could go ashore, or even what deck we needed to go to in order to do that.

Sunday, I had walked 12,250 steps, far more than the 2K I sometimes manage at home. My legs had ached all night and were still ackey, so I took a pain pill. But my legs still bothered me at 10:40 when we left the ship to look around the island. It wasn’t long before I admitted I needed to sit for a while. I found a lounge chair and sat down in the shade. Hubby went off to look around.

 About 1 ½ hours later, when he came back, my legs felt much better, and I was more alert. He was tired from walking almost 10K steps already, so he sat down to rest. I checked my steps, and I had already walked 7K steps. Hubby rested for about 15 minutes, then we walked back to the ship.

We went to Guest Services to ask about internet service. We had brought a laptop for Hubby to work on, but we couldn’t get Word to work because it ‘couldn’t confirm we had an account with Microsoft, so please connect to the internet.’ What a bummer. We don’t usually buy an internet package on a cruise ship because the service is so lousy. But he couldn’t work without Word, so we bought internet service for 1 day to see if that would solve the problem. After all, I had used the laptop for a couple of weeks when my desktop died, and it had worked fine, but it was always connected to the internet during that time.

 We took to our cabin the instructions for signing in, and I sat down to work with the laptop, getting it onto the internet. Hubby laid down on the bed and fell asleep. He almost never takes a daytime nap. He woke up about an hour later and asked how I was doing. I was done, and Word was working perfectly. He rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour. So I changed some color settings to see if he could see the cursor any easier. He had complained how hard it was to see a white cursor on a white background. I played some games, but the color was odd; red cards were black, and black cards were blue.

Hubby awoke about 3, and we went to the pizza place for a bite to eat. After returning to our cabin, he worked on his stories, and I worked on my blog.

About 6 o’clock, we left to explore a section of the ship we hadn’t been to yet, the Boardwalk. It had a carousel, a candy shop, a hot dog stand, a hamburger joint, a sports bar or two and a rock-climbing wall, so it didn’t take us long to explore it.

We still had a ½ hour before meeting the others for social hour. We thought about going to the floating bar and riding it from the 5^th deck to the 8^th deck, but it had already left deck 5 and hadn’t yet reached deck 8. So we returned to our cabin and got the special tumblers that proved we had a beverage package, and then came back for social hour. With a group as large as ours, it’s hard to find enough chairs in any 1 bar, but we did the best we could.

We had a nice dinner with 2 actors who played various monsters on Dr Who. Hubby did his interpretation of a social butterfly, flitting from table to table to talk to members of the talent and some fan writers about some ideas he had for a story. After dinner, we returned to our cabin, worked for about an hour, and then turned in.

The Dr Who Cruise Part 1

About every 15 or 16 months, a friend of ours organizes a Dr Who Cruise. It generally is fairly small, maybe 40 people. This year’s was the largest so far, with 72 guests signing up for it, including about a dozen ‘talents’ and 26 members of one family! The next few blogs will follow Hubby and me as we enjoyed the cruise.

 

Sunday, Oct 22 – We’d been looking forward to this cruise, and now it was time to get to it. First, I got out of bed at 5:20 AM to load the dishwasher, because who wants to come home to a sink full of dirty dishes? Then I cleaned out 3 email boxes and packed my cpap for the trip. About 9:30, we tossed the suitcases into the Toyota, put my car in the garage, and we were off.

 

Getting to the parking lot at Port Canaveral was mostly uneventful, although there had been some confusion when I wanted to mapquest the directions to get there. Turns out there are 2 lots with very similar names, and I had made a reservation at Lot B when I thought I was making a reservation at Lot A. But that got straightened out before we left home, and the directions to get there were simple. However, we didn’t see the sign for the parking lot until we were driving past it, so we made a couple u-turns to get back to it. We arrived about 2 minutes late for our reservation, but we were the first ones on the 11:15 shuttle to the ship. By 11:25. The shuttle was full to the gills and took off.

 

This was a Western Caribbean cruise on the Wonder of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s largest ship. We’d been to the Caribbean several times but traveling with our DW friends was always fun.

 

Once we got to the terminal, it was practically a walk-through to get to the ship. Of course, my artificial knees set off the security alarm, so that slowed us down a bit, but not for long.

 

The first thing to do is to go to our muster station, so we know what to do ‘in case of an emergency’, so we asked how to get there. Our muster station was through the spa area and deep in the fitness area, which seemed a strange place to put it, but we didn’t ask questions. Perhaps there was a nearby exit to the outside deck that I didn’t notice.

 

The buffet is always a madhouse on debarkation day, so we thought we’d try the main dining room, but that had a private event for those passengers who had bought the ‘key’ package, and we hadn’t, so we ended up in the buffet anyway. At least we got to claim our soft-drink package and didn’t have to rely on the buffet’s watered-down juices.

 

By the time we finished lunch, our cabin was ready for us. But we had packed everything in the suitcases except our travel documents and whatever I could stuff in my fanny pack, so there was little we could do there until our suitcases showed up. In the meantime, we explored various decks, looking for ‘quiet spots’ where we’d be able to work. John had brought some short stories to on and edit on the laptop, and I would be writing on my blog and current WiP using pen and paper.

 

We went to the fitness center about 4:30 to see if they drew our names for a spa raffle. We didn’t win anything in the raffle, but we decided to sign up for the Managers Special, which was a 75 minute massage. We made our appointments for Thursday at noon, without knowing what our DW schedule for that day might look like.

 

Our cabin was a surprise. It was pretty much a normal cabin, except it had an extra 7 or 8 feet to it. The ceiling sloped down in that area, and in the middle of the slope was a big picture window looking out over the bow of the ship. Next to the window was a button and a sign asking that we close the curtain in the evenings so as not to disturb those working on the bridge. It took us a minute to figure out that button, which was 3 buttons in one, but we did understood it before night fell.

 

Our group’s dining time was 7:45PM, and those who wanted to could meet at the Schooner Bar at 7:00 for a social hour. At about 7:45, we would all go down to the Main Dining Room and find the table we were assigned to. On the first day, I didn’t realize the Main Dining Room was located on 3 decks, so I went down to deck 4, because that was where I remembered seeing the sign for it. There was a long line to get in, but it moved pretty quickly. When I got to the maître d’ and gave my cabin number, he informed me I was on the wrong floor and sent me up to deck 5. When I got to the deck 5 maitre d’, he started to show me to my table, got distracted by his radio, and told me to ‘look around, your party is around here somewhere.’ I knew a moment of sensory overload; there was a sea of faces around me, and I couldn’t pick out 1 that looked familiar. Then I heard Hubby calling my name, and I was united with the friends who were sharing a table with us.

 

After dinner, those fans who were interested went to the conference center to discuss ‘creative endeavors’ for the cruise. Sometimes the fans write a short DW episode and film it during the cruise, but with only 7 days, that didn’t seem feasible. So it was decided to split the creative fans into groups and let them write stories 5-7 pages long. On the last night of the cruise, the professional talent would read the stories out loud to the group.

 

The gathering was turned over to the creative fans. I couldn’t participate this time because I had deadlines to meet. Hubby was placed in charge of one writing group, and he spent some time talking to the other members about story ideas. Eventually, we crawled off to our cabin and went to bed.