Friday, March 16, 2018- Cruise Day 52; At Sea

Friday, March 16, 2018- Cruise Day 52; At Sea

We had to set our clocks back an hour at bedtime, so we got an extra hour of sleep.  We had breakfast in the dining room and then joined Santa’s Helpers for progressive trivia #4.  We missed two questions that we should have answered correctly but choked under time pressure.  We think we ended up doing pretty poorly, only getting 5/10 correct, although the final score will depend on what the correct posted answers will turn out to be.  The answers and scores were not posted as of 10:00PM.  We crossed the Equator again, but we chose not to participate in the pool deck ceremonies since it was hot and humid, and we had been through it all before heading south. Robbie, who is running the progressive trivia was heavily involved in Neptune ceremony, so the progressive answers will probably be posted tomorrow since he was so busy today.

We had lunch and watched “You Have Mail” with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks on TV, as well as Genius, a biographical movie on Thomas Wolfe, the writer.  Afternoon trivia had a few tough questions including what creature swallowed alive is responsible for 6 deaths every year in South Korea?  Octopus.  And who wrote the lyrics for Elton John?  Bernie Taupin.  DId you also know that Subway has the most stores of any fast food company in the world?  We ended up with 15/20, while there was a 4 way tie for first with 17/20.  The tie breaker was how many stories are in Trump Tower.  FYI, 58.  They won wine bottle stoppers.

This was another formal night, but there was nothing special on the menu. Since this is the 3rd leg of the cruise, the menus have been rotating, and we have had a chance to try everything on the menu.  We opted instead to stay casual and ate in the buffet, which was having a Mexican night with tacos, enchiladas, pork en Mole, and lots of guacamole.  

Unique for tonight was an Escape Room activity for a group of 8.  Most of our Trivia team- Santa’s Helpers- were in but Bob was not available, so Roger’s wife Judy joined us, as well as dinner table mates of Kathy and John, Heather and Matt.  The activity started with a ghost story about a body in the ship’s morgue that was clutching a vase. The vase was placed in a display case, but all sorts of paranormal things happened in association with whenever the vase disappeared.  The narrative was full of room numbers, deck numbers, suit case combinations, numbers on people’s uniforms and references to the occult.  We were then lead into the ship’s chapel where we were locked in and told to watch a video tape.  This hinted that the ship’s magician had disappeared along with the vase, and we had to find the vase to solve the mystery.  In a corner of the chapel was a stack of trunks with an assortment of locks.  Some were combination, while others required keys.  One trunk was unlocked, so that’s were we had to start our search for clues.  Without going into too much detail, there were a lot of red herrings that lead to a lot of wasted time, but with some clues from the puzzle master, we were eventually able to solve the mystery, unlocking trunks to find more clues and red herrings, and eventually unlocking the case containing the vase.  We solved the puzzle with just 2 minutes and 45 seconds to spare out of the 30 minutes allowed.  We learned that 80% of the teams had failed to solve the mystery in the 30 minutes, but one team did manage to solve it in just 18 minutes.  We were just happy to not have failed.  

Tomorrow we arrive in Costa Rica at Puntarenas.  We have a river rafting trip booked.  It’s sad to think this is our second to last port of call, and that our 60 day cruise is rapidly heading towards closure.  Tomorrow is also St. Patricks’ Day.  We were thinking there would be a St. Paddy’s Day trivia, but we will be off on our excursion for that.