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.