Saturday, March 30, 2019. Oahu, Hawaii

Saturday, March 30, 2019. Oahu, Hawaii

This cruise has gone from one extreme to the other with the transition from sea days to excursion days. We had to set an alarm to get us up early enough to ready for our excursion to the Polynesian Cultural Center. 

The ship docked near downtown Honolulu by the Aloha Tower.  This time, disembarking was smooth with no long lines or waiting, and it wasn’t long before we boarded a bus driven by our driver/guide.  His commentary started off with “I don’t know why they have your out here so early because the PCC (Polynesian Cultural Center) doesn’t open until Noon (actually it opens at 11:45AM).  Even the Dole Pinapple Store doesn’t open until 10:00AM (It was 8:20AM when we were told to meet the tour in the terminal)”.  Then he somewhat reluctantly boarded everyone and started us off on our trip.  He did point out landmarks around Honolulu as we headed off to the PCC, but about 20 minutes into the drive everyone noticed that the floor heaters were pumping out heat, and within 10 minutes the bus was over 90 degrees inside.  The driver insisted he had never turned on the heat, and that there must have been something wrong with the automatic climate control.  One passenger even walked up to the cab to investigate.  We ended up having a mutiny and he was forced to pull over to troubleshoot.  He ended up going outside and fiddled with something in the luggage compartment in the undercarriage, and then the passenger who had gone up to the cockpit fiddled with the temperature control.  He and the driver discovered that when the knob was turned all the way to max cold, there was a detent that actually clicked the system OFF.  That seemed to have done the trick as the temperature stopped climbing, and the bus started to cool off. Interestingly enough, someone else we ran into later in the evening said the same thing happened on their bus, and they ended up abandoning the bus and standing on the side of the road waiting a half hour for a replacement bus.  Their driver and passengers weren’t able to troubleshoot the same problem, apparently.

We ended up arriving at the Dole Pineapple Store about 10 minutes before opening time, and there were people lined up to go in.  We lucked out again on the weather because it was partly cloudy and in the 70’s, with no rain in the forecast.  This too had changed at the last minute because earlier in the week, rain had been forecast.  Our guide explained that pineapple production in Hawaii has virtually ceased, and that the vast majority of Dole Pineapples sold in the US are actually grown in Costa Rica.  However, this operation was continued on a small scale for the tourism industry, and produces pineapples for sale and consumption basically just in Hawaii.  While the cost of labor was one of the drivers of the shift of pineapple production from Hawaii to Costa Rica, the lack of land for further expansion was also a primary driver because demand worldwide for pineapples was exceeding what could be produced in Hawaii.  We got lucky in the store which features “Pick your Pearl” where you pick a key out of a bowl, and if it opens a treasure chest, you can pick a prize slip out of it.  Ben’s key fit and his prize slip was a free Pick-a-Pearl worth $14.  You pick an oyster out of a tray and they open it to find a pearl.  All of the oysters have been seeded so each one should contain a cultured pearl, but you can’t predict if it will be white, black or pink.  Ben’s yielded a cute pink pearl.  Then just before it was time to go, Janet had a second to at it, but picked a dud key.  But she got to pick a consolation prize out of a basket, and pulled out another coupon for a free Pick-a-Pearl.  She picked an oyster with a white pearl.  Of course, the girls at the sales counter offered to swap it for another pink one and have the two pearls mounted into ear rings, which is where they make their money, but we declined and just have a pink and white pearl souvenirs of our visit to Oahu this time.

We drove along some surfing beaches and actually pulled over to take some pictures at Sunset Beach, which was beautiful. There were locals out working the surf all along the beach.  We also stopped at the Mormon temple adjacent to the PCC, which has beautifully landscaped gardens and buildings.  

We arrived at the PCC just as the park was opening, and our first stop was the buffet for a Hawaiian BBQ lunch, featuring pork ribs and teriyaki chicken.  This buffet also had a variety of desserts including miniature pineapple upside down cakes, gooey coconut lemon bars and a jello cheesecake- was was better than it sounds.

We then headed as a group to the Samoan village where they demonstrated coconut husking, cracking, and coconut milk extraction.  The main demonstrator was a man we recognized from our last visit to the PCC years ago.  He was very entertaining and his crew put on a fun, educational and entertaining show.  The show ends with someone scrambling up a tall coconut tree.

Next, we headed to the show lagoon where they do a pageant on canoes.  A little Chinese girl sat next to us who was about 10 years old was super excited because there were all sorts of Polynesian references in the Disney movie Moana that she recognized. We had front row seats and it was also a nice production with live music and dancing highlighting Polynesian culture through the years.

Then we headed to Tonga for a drum beating seminar/performance where volunteers from the audience were brought on stage for some fun, and finally over to Tahiti for a traditional wedding ceremony.

We had seen a little less than half the park, but it was time to go back to the ship.  Our driver took an alternate route back to Honolulu that took us through the rainiest valley on the island and saw some beautiful towering green mountains reaching into the cloud bank on one side of the bus, and the surf on the other.  We also drove through China Town and past the mini-Walmart.  It has become a running joke that people from the cruise ships come all the way across the Pacific Ocean so they can scramble to the Walmarts in Hawaii to buy potato chips and souvenirs.  True enough, and they have free Walmart shuttles from the Cruise ship terminal in Honolulu.  

We made it back to the ship in time to enjoy some sushi for dinner at the Elite and Platinum lounge.  Then we were off for our evening’s entertainment starting with a win at Flag trivia.  We managed a perfect score this time.  There was a flag enthusiast next to us who had missed just one, mixing up Iceland for Norway, but they didn’t put up any obscure flags, so it was pretty easy.  

Our regular trivia team showed up for Famous Faces trivia, but there were a few we didn’t know.  Then we had to leave part way through “Finish the Lyrics” trivia to see the local folkloric show they had brought on the ship, which was a local Hula school.  They put on a great show.  Hula is such an expressive and beautiful art.  It is wonderful that the Hawaiians embrace and cherish this. They start Hula classes as early as 3 years of age.  These performers looked like they ranged from about 9 years old to late teens or early 20’s.  There were all very graceful.

We have to set our alarm clock again for tomorrow’s early start in Kauai.  We have an excursion to see the Waimea Canyon and Fern Grotto with a Wailua river cruise.

Thursday, March 28, 2019. At Sea

Thursday, March 28, 2019. At Sea

Our last day at sea has finally arrived before we reach the Hawaiian Islands. We attended the enrichment lectures on Maui and Sea Turtles.  The destination expert calls himself Tiki Dave. He is actually from Boston, but has lived in Hawaii for a long time. The naturalist Mark Harris comes across as a surfer dude who happened to learn some biology when he wasn’t smoking dope in the 70’s.  Both are good speakers and gave interesting talks.  Hearing about the turtles around Hawaii gave us a better appreciation for how special it was to have seen so many sea turtles in the Galapagos.  

We had a lot of trivia contests today starting with a morning general trivia, mid-day progressive trivia, afternoon Beetles music trivia, evening “Before they were Famous” and evening Rock and Roll music trivia.  We finally saw our progressive scores and it looks like we are in 4th or 5th place out of more than 25 teams, so we are doing OK, but have left ourselves room for improvement on the return leg of the trip.  We tied for a win on the Beetles music trivia where 5 teams all got perfect scores, but we lost it on the third tie breaker because we didn’t know the year that Hey Jude was released.  

We had breakfast in the dining room, but the rest of the day, we hit the various casual venues to grab bites on the go with all the shows and activities.  

The Princess Theater production show was new to us. It as called “The Colors of the World” and it combined costumes and dances from several parts of the world with modern and hints of classical pop music.  The opening number was bollywoodesque with very interesting choreography and Indian pop music.  There were nods to the Japanese/ Chinese, Argentinians (Tango dancers), Brazilian, ancient and not so ancient Greek and American cultures.  While not quite up to the level of the troupe we recently saw on the Regal Princess, this troupe did put on a great show. We also saw an encore performance by the Soul Diva “Teacake” in the more intimate venue of the Explorer’s lounge. That was also enjoyable.  

The weather has turned noticeably warmer and the air is more humid.  The excitement around the ship is nearly palpable as we will arrive in Hilo tomorrow morning.  We are booked on a day long tour including a helicopter ride, visit to the Volcanos National Park and a winery.  We also need to set our clocks to Honolulu time tonight.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019. At Sea

Wednesday, March 27, 2019. At Sea

We had to move our clocks forward another hour.  Unfortunately, all our devices (iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches) need the user to enter in a city in order to set the time zone if you aren’t connected to the internet through a cell phone provider.  While that’s no big deal when you’re in a country, it’s not intuitive when you’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  We ultimately found out that we had to enter a city called Rikitea in French Polynesia in order to get our time zone set correctly.  It would have been so much easier if they just let the user click on a map of the world.  That’s our suggestion to Apple for future updates of the iOS operating system.  Definitely a first world problem.  

A destination and enrichment lecture we attended informed us that we have passed out of the Californian current and entered into the main Pacific gyrus, which is a huge counterclockwise current that originates in equatorial waters and carries warmer waters.  This has been reflected by a increase in temperatures into the 70’s today.  We also learned that we might run into schools of flying fish, flying squid, and may even see signs of the giant Pacific garbage patch. So far, we haven’t seen any of those three items yet.  

We did our usual morning trivia and missed winning by 1 point.  We guessed the wrong meaning for the word nubile, as well as what two trees are mentioned most frequently in the Bible.  Then we had our second installment of the progressive cruise long trivia.  The questions seem to be drawn from a more select pool of harder questions. We managed 6/10.  We knew of at least one team that managed to get 8/10.  They were the only team that knew that Queen did the theme music for the movie Highlander.  We don’t know how our team is doing relative to the other 25 teams because no cumulative score has yet been posted, but we were told to expect to see a running tally starting tomorrow. 

After lunch we watched “Juliette Naked”, which featured Chris O’Dowd from the TV Show The IT Crowd- one of Janet’s favorite comedy shows.  Contrary to the title, there was no nudity as the title referred to an unreleased rock album which nerdy super fan played by Chris O’Dowd comes across while mediating a fan site on the internet.  It ended up being a somewhat lame romantic comedy, but it’s a movie checked off the “to be watched” list.

The Princess Theater featured a Black comedian who really worked hard at playing the race card for this largely white audience, although relative to most other Princess cruises we have been on, there are actually quite a few black families and couples on board.  The comedian acknowledged this by saying that looking around the audience, he could see just enough black faces scattered around the audience that he could feel safe.  He commented it’s no wonder there are so few blacks on cruise ships because black people don’t have a good history when it comes to traveling by ships, alluding to slave ships.  Most of the act was a little close to being a little too racist, but he said he could get away with just about anything because he represented an oppressed race and if a white person ever tried to do something to hurt him, it would be a hate crime ala the Jessie Smollet fiasco.  The few black couples seated near us didn’t seem to be laughing all that much, but he did keep us entertained for the duration of the show.  

Dinner turned out pretty good with prime rib and prawns the size of small lobster tails.  No surprises on the menu, but the menu remains quite extensive with at least 6-8 choices for each course of the meal.  We sat next to a couple who spoke Cantonese to each other, but were fluent in English, albeit with an accent, with the waiter and other passengers. Ben could tell it wasn’t Mandarin, and we learned it was Hong Kong Cantonese.  

Tomorrow will be our last day at sea before we arrive at Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Looks like another big trivia day with morning, progressive, Beatles trivia, afternoon trivia and evening Rock-N-Roll music trivia.  

Monday, March 25, 2019. At Sea En Route to Hawaii

Monday, March 25, 2019.  At Sea

The weather was overcast with a temperature in the lower 60’s when we woke up.  There continues to be a gentle rocking and rolling due to a long period swell despite what appears to be calm seas with minimal wind.  These swells travel thousands of miles across the Pacific, so I guess they should be expected.  

We had breakfast in the restaurant and met a nice couple from Ontario who are on their second Princess cruise.  Their preferred cruise line has been Celebrity, and they have sailed primarily in the Caribbean.  They said they preferred Celebrity’s version of anytime dining because they could sit at the same table with the same people every night with the same waitstaff, and they complained that there was no wine steward in the dining room, which is odd because there are several wine stewards who are more than happy to walk you through their recommended wines each night, if you let them know you are interested, and their dining preference sounds more like fixed dining than “anytime dining”.  They did admit that last night’s Magic To Do show blew them away as being significantly better than the usual showtime fare on Celebrity.  

We teamed up with the two couples from Kansas City Missouri for the morning trivia, and put in a decent showing, but fell short of winning by just one point.  

Janet and I explored the ship a bit and tried to find a photographer that was supposedly taking people’s portraits with the ship’s wake on the stern, but we never found them.

We had lunch in the dining room with a couple from Sacramento, who were doing this California to Hawaii cruise for the third time.  The last time they did it, they started in San Francisco, and said that sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge during the sail-away was a real highlight.  

After lunch, we had free time to relax. Janet got some reading done while Ben hit the fitness center for an hour.  The equipment on the Ruby Princess is a bit older than the Regal’s Princess, but still in good working condition.  The fitness center is situated over the bridge with a great view, but it is also subject to a lot of the ship’s pitching and rolling since it is all the way forward and near the top of the ship.  The movement adds a new dimension to cardio.  There were very few people in the fitness center after lunch when most people were probably having their siestas.

We teamed up with a couple from Las Vegas for the afternoon trivia and were 3 points short of winning, but we did have fun. We could only come up with one of the 3 Tenors and thought a baby jaguar should be called a cub, rather than a kitten. We also didn’t know John Wesley founded the Methodist religion.  

We had a specialty dining voucher courtesy of AAA that we used to dine at a new venue called Share, by Curtis Stone.  It features modern cuisine by Curtis Stone with a six course meal with 2 or 3 choices for each course.  It did end up being a nice dinner.  The Share part came with the main meat course, which was a large plate loaded with a huge pork chop with ribs that is shared.  The food is well prepared and very fresh, but made with very little added salt- a nod to healthier cuisine, but we did end up asking for some salt, which we thought really improved the food’s taste.  They also had excellent artisan mini loaves for rolls.  

Our regular partners from Kansas City turned up for Movie Poster Trivia, which we won in a 2 way tie.  We let the other team have the bottle of champagne, while we preferred to walk out with Ruby Princess silicone coasters.  

We finished the evening with the Princess Theater’s musician Craig Richard, who had toured with Kenny G playing alto and soprano saxophones, piano and singing.  Oddly enough, his resume also includes appearances on American Ninja warriors and “I Should Have Died”- a TV show that highlights stories of survival.  He is an avid rock climber, and had a serious fall in which he shattered his right leg, and then had to crawl 18 hours with his shattered leg to get to help.  He is an excellent musician and entertainer, although we find it hard to resist resting our eyes, especially after a big dinner, during some of these evening instrumental shows. 

Tomorrow is our first Formal night. Our tour package includes one 6x9 print, so we’ll actually have them shoot some poses for us to choose from.

Sunday, March 24, 2019. Embarkation Los Angeles for Roundtrip Hawaii Cruise

20190324-0408 Ruby Princess Los Angeles to Hawaii Round Trip Cruise

Sunday, March 24, 2019.  Embarkation in Los Angeles

It seems like we hardly had time to unpack and get our laundry done from our Regal Princess Caribbean cruise when we had to repack and head off for our next cruise.  We hadn’t originally planned it this way.  We had booked a 15 day Los Angeles to Hawaii cruise for October, but then we got a promotional email that knocked a thousand dollars off the price to do the same cruise in late March, so here we are.  We were surprised that there was no penalty of any sort for us to rebook it at the reduced price.  We did have to book our balcony on a guaranty, meaning we wouldn’t know exactly what balcony we would be in, but were paying for a BF category balcony, which is typically situated either at the bow or stern of the ship.  These areas are subject to more movement from swells and waves because they are further from the ship’s center of gravity, but we have not had troubles with sea sickness.  Just a few days before departure, we found out we were assigned stateroom A428, which is actually a significant upgrade because it is right at the center of the ship and is a category BA, which is the highest regular balcony.  There are also deluxe balconies with larger decks.  These are nice, and we have sailed in them before, but the regular balconies offer a better value for the money if you don’t plan on doing a lot of sunbathing on the deck, which we typically don’t.  

This itinerary leaves Los Angeles and crosses the Pacific to Hawaii.  It takes 4 full days at sea to get to the Hawaiian Islands.  Once we are there, we spend a full day at each of the Big Island (Hilo), Oahu (Honolulu), Maui (Lahaina)  and Kauai (Nawiliwili).  Then it’s another 5 full days at sea to return to Ensenada for the obligatory non-US port of call, and then back to Los Angeles.  

Departing from the West coast has its advantages for us.  We only have to get up at 5:30AM to get to Los Angeles in time to board the cruise ship.

Our trip begins with a ferry ride from Whidbey Island to Mukilteo.  Nice to have a ferry ride during daylight hours for a change.

We ended up flying Delta Airlines in Comfort Plus class, which is their version of premium economy.  You end up with similar leg room to first class, as well as snacks and alcoholic beverages, but sit 6 across, so you’re still shoulder to shoulder.  But we found that the amenities in Delta’s Comfort Plus were nicer than American Airline’s First Class, and at a significantly lower price.  We ended up with 4 little bottles of whiskey and rum to smuggle onto the Ruby Princess.  

The Princess transfers are really nice in that they eliminate all of the anxiety that is associated with getting from the airport to your ship on time, and they do treat us like Princesses.  Embarkation was seamless aside from having to take our bottle of wine out of our suitcase and putting it in our carry on backpacks.  We had no trouble smuggling the little liquor bottles in our back packs, which were loaded with cell phone charges and cables, so picking out the tiny bottle caps on X-ray must worth their trouble to flag them.  

The Ruby Princess does seem to show some of it’s age externally as there is more noticeable rust visible on the exterior.  However, Princess had done a good job of maintaining the interiors.  There are new carpets and the ship still looks very elegant and regal. While it is signicantly smaller than the Regal Princess, it is well appointed.  There have been upgrades to the poolside grill and pizza restaurants.  It’s funny that one suggestion I wrote on my Princess post cruise evaluation form for the Regal Princess Caribbean itinerary was to expand loaded fries offerings in the poolside grill, and sure enough, the Ruby Princess poolside grill offers loaded fries with cheese and bacon, or cheese and chili everyday.  You can also get a chili cheese dog any day.  The pizza counter also offers Stromboli and focaccias.  We explored those menus for lunch.  

We sat with a nice couple from Michigan for the muster drill who reported that it had warmed up to 15 degrees by the time they left for this trip.  They were looking forward to going back to Hawaii, having done this same itinerary about 3 years ago.  They are Platinum Captain’s Circle members like us, although after we finish this cruise, we move up to Elite status, which will get us free laundry and minibars, among other benefits.

The dining room is elegant and intimate, although it was busy.  We were surprised by the variety offered on the menu.  On most other Princess cruises we have done in the past, the left half of the menu has items that remain the same for the whole trip, while the right half has specials of the day.  Typically there are 3 or 4 choices for appetizers and main dishes.  This menu had 6-8 choices for appetizers and 6-8 choices for the main dishes, and the waiter said that the menus do change every day.  That makes it harder to decide which main dish to have at each meal, but that’s not a back thing.  It’s just different.  

We finished dinner in time to attend the 7PM Welcome aboard trivia.  We paired up with another couple who wandered in just before the game started.  They were from Colorado.  We made a decent showing scoring 15/20.  Two teams tied for first with 16 points.  We left before the tie breaker because we wanted to catch the Princess Theater production of Magic To Do,  which is another Stephen Schwartz number.  Ben really likes this show, which combines magic, puppetry and other stage effects with music from Stephen Schwartz musicals including Pippen, Wicked, Godspell and Pocahontas.  This production troupe is good, but not nearly as good looking or refined as the troupe on the Regal Princess.  There must be a pecking order for talent in the Princess line, and the Royal Class ships get first pick.  

We finished the night with the first music trivia, which was TV and Movie themes.  This time, we teamed up with two couples who had been sitting behind us.  It turns out that the women are sisters traveling with their husbands from Missouri.  It was fun playing with them, and we managed a solid win, out scoring second place by 5 points.  

There will be a lot of time changes on this cruise.  Tonight, our clocks go back an hour as we head west.  The weather was nice with a high in the upper 60’s today.  In the evening, temperatures outside dropped into the 50’s, so it’s cold out on deck.  There isn’t much wind, but there is a surprising amount of rocking and pitching by the ship due to the open ocean swells even in our midship cabin.  We’ll be rocked to sleep tonight.

Wrap-up: Regal Princess 14d East/West Caribbean Cruise

Wrap up report

Saturday, March 16, 2019- At Sea En Route to Fort Lauderdale

Saturday, March 16, 2019- At Sea En Route to Fort Lauderdale

Our clocks sprang forward last night so we awoke pretty late.  We grabbed a quick bite at the International cafe, which has donuts in the morning, and then headed to our last morning trivia.  Our team came up 2 points short of the win.  We got stumped on what German word for satellite is also a make of car? Trabant (an East German make), and who invented the ball point pen? Laszlo Biro.  It’s hard to imagine how the winning team managed to get those, other than by previously encountering these oddball questions.

We got in one last workout in the fitness center, and then the rest of our luggage packed, keeping out just the clothes we will wear to travel, and our toothbrush bag.

We had lunch in the buffet which was offering SE American fare including BBQ, crawdads and oyster shooters.  We were surprised to see how many people were walking around with a plate full of raw oysters.  The crayfish reminded us of New Orleans, but these “mud bugs” tasted better than what we had remembered (they tasted like mud in the Big Easy).  

Our last afternoon trivia game turned out to be more challenging.  We scored 11/20 while the winners managed 15/20.  Do you know what healed Jack’s crown after he came tumbling down in the nursery rhyme? Or who did laundry in Beatrix Potter’s children’s stories?  

We watched the movie “Green Book” with the on demand video in our room with captions, and can see why it got the Academy Award for best picture.  

Our final dinner was New York strip steak and chicken Alfredo and our final activity on this cruise was a music trivia, which we had a 3 way tie for first on.  We teamed up with a younger couple who came in halfway through, but sat next to us.  The tie breaker was what year did Billie Jean hit #1 in the US, without going over.  We guessed 1982, but it was 1983, which one of the other teams hit right on the head.

We’ll have to set an alarm to get up in the morning because we’ll have to have breakfast and disembark by 7:50AM for our Princess airport transfer.

Friday, March 15, 2019- Cozumel, Mexico

Friday, March 15, 2019- Cozumel, Mexico

Cozumel appears to be well developed for the cruise ship industry.  As we approached the island, we could already see several cruise ships berthed at several piers.  One appeared to be a Norwegian Breakaway class ship, alongside a similarly sized Celebrity cruise ship.  The Carnival Vista and Carnival Dream shared a pier next to ours, while the New Statendam was on the next pier down with the Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas.  

We arrived relatively late to Cozumel so there was time for a relaxed breakfast in the main restaurant, and a morning trivia game. We came in second by only one point teaming up with two couples we have played with before.

All the passengers coming off our piers were funneled through a very long and narrow air conditioned duty free mall before opening onto a shopping plaza filled with shops, restaurants and bars.  

Our excursion only required a short taxi ride down the street to the Discover Mexico Park. The Discover Mexico Park has miniature replicas of Mexican landmarks with some static displays, and a movie theater that plays informative movies, but our tour largely ignored all that and started with a small garden out front where some blue agave plants were.  Our guide walked us through the history of Tequila, starting with mescale, an indigenous beverage made from fermenting the pineapple from the blue agave plant.  The Spaniards further refined this by distilling it. The beverage we now know as Tequila uses the recipe from the city of Tequila in Jalisco state.  

We then went into a tasting room which was set up with a nice arrangement of special tasting glasses containing 3 different tequilas.  There were also a few things that were used for preparing and cleansing the palate to best appreciate the characteristics of the different tequilas. This reminded us of a Scotch and Chocolate tour we did in Scotland.  

We were walked through the proper technique of observing, smelling and tasting tequila like professional tequila aficionados.  We started with a White tequila, which spends 15 days in a stainless steel tank after double distillation before bottling.  The next was a “Rested” tequila, which is left at least 2 months in wooden casks.  The final was an aged tequila which spends at least a year in wooden casks.  We used lime zest to prime our olfactory nerves, coffee beans, and cinnamon bark to clear the nasal passages and crackers to cleanse the palate between samples, and some dark chocolate to boost the effect of the aged tequila.  

By the time we were done with the sampling seminar, we were inebriated.  Next we wandered through the gift shop, and then hit the margarita stand where we learned how to make authentic margaritas, and sampled their margarita of the day, which was a passion fruit margarita.  The margarita glasses were coated with taijin chili seasoning and it was delicious. 

We watched some indigenous Mayans do a ceremony where they descend spinning upside down on ropes from the top of a tall tower like a crazy carnival ride.  The Indian fliers had to inherit their jobs from their parents. 

Then we had some tacos with hand made tortillas, washed down with your choice of beverage.  That ended up being a very relaxing, fun, and interesting excursion, even though the Discover Mexico park itself was pretty rinky dink.

We got back to the ship in time for a local Mexican dance groups show followed by dinner - surf and turf.  The Princess Theater featured “Born to Dance” again.  We chose instead to get through “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the TV.

We played a Movie Quotes trivia where we had to name the movie, character, and actor.  We teamed up with a gal from Chicago, whom we have noticed towards the back of the room, and a new gal from NYC who was actually on the ship on a work assignment.  Her company is involved in the Ocean Medallion technology, and a group had been on the ship filming a commercial.  While most of the film crew had gotten off the ship in Jamaica, she and a few other people had decided to remain on the ship and disembark in Fort Lauderdale.  This was the first trivia she had actually gotten to play.  We thought we had done quite well, but we came in second again by a few points.  If we were to give our team a name, it should be the bridesmaids because we always come in second.   

Tomorrow is a full day at sea, and time to get our things packed up in preparation for disembarkation.  It’s hard to believe our cruise is nearly over.

Thursday, March 14, 2019- Grand Cayman

Thursday, March 14, 2019- Grand Cayman

The Regal Princess arrived at Grand Cayman with plenty of company.  We had breakfast in the buffet as the ship dropped anchor, along with 4 other cruise ships including the Celebrity Equinox, Holland American New Statendam, Carnival Vista and Carnival Sensation.  Once we got ashore via the tenders, the cruise port was a zoo full of passengers trying to find their excursions and tour providers.  We were booked on a Segway tour with 8 other Regal Princess passengers.  It turned out that there were also 8 people from one of the Carnival ships that were also doing the tour.  

Since we had done a prior Segway Tour in Seattle, we were looking forward to zooming around Grand Cayman to see the sights.  Unfortunately, all we really did was drive along the Main Street in a van as the driver pointed out the oldest church, and the beach resort that we would be stopping at later.  Then we pulled into a strip mall where we suited up (helmets, sweaty knee and elbow pads) and received basic instructions in riding the Segways.  Then we lined up and played follow the leader behind one of the guides.  There were Vox box transmitters and receivers so we could have received commentary about sights to be seen, but all we heard was “watch out for the shrubs on your right and lean left as you go down this driveway...”.  We basically just drove the Segways a mile down the sidewalk, then across a street to a newer commercial development with a pedestrian mall and office tower.  We dismounted and went up the “tower”, which was 4 stories tall, with a view around the island.  There was some very nice tile mural work on the walls of the tower depicting underwater scenes and wildlife.  Then we remounted the Segways and reversed course.  

We did take the Segways down a public beach access, where we encountered a parking lot of beach lounge chairs covering nearly every square inch of the beach, including the supposed right of way that the Segway’s are supposed to have access to.  It took a long time to find a route through that obstacle course.  The tour operator had initial given up on letting us ride the Segways on the beach because of the access trouble, but Janet and I, who were in the lead, managed to work around a beach umbrella and chair that had been planted in the middle of the right of way, and then could run the Segways a few hundred yards up the beach and back for some pictures.  Running the Segways on the beach was fun, but very limited by the tremendous crowd and all the holes dug in the sand by children that were like Segway traps.  But at least we got to ride them on a little of the beach. We would have been extremely disappointed if all we got to do was drive them up and down a sidewalk.  

After we got off the Segways, the tour operator took us to a private beach resort, which had free wifi, but everything else was $$.  We managed to find a little shade next to a private beach cabana where we could sit and not have to pay extra. Ben went for a bit of snorkeling.  The water and sand were nice for splashing around and swimming, but all the coral was dead, and there wasn’t much in the way of fish to see.  

Getting back to the ship took a very long time with a long line to board the tenders.  We got back in time to get cleaned up and have afternoon tea.  

This was our last formal night.  Even though there is another sea day ahead, it will occur as we head to our disembarkation at Fort Lauderdale, so all luggage will have to be out in the hallway by dinner time.  We did manage to attend an afternoon trivia, which we came in second place again with.  We also attended a Beatles trivia.  Another team beat us by 2 points, but the host neglected to notice there were 9 people on that team when the maximum is 6 per team.  But the prize was a bottle of ship champagne, which we really don’t care for.

We attended another Captain’s Circle reception and met the woman with 1900 days on Princess.  Janet managed to get the waitress to bring her two Ultimate Cosmopolitan cocktails, but she concluded that she preferred Moscow Mules.  Ben just managed to get one Manhattan before the wait staff disappeared, ending the free cocktails. 

We attended another showing of Beatle Mania, this time getting good seats in the middle of the theatre.  The later shows seem to be much easier to get into than the early shows. There was still a large crowd of passengers in the Piazza at 11PM for the balloon drop and dance party.  We’re not used to seeing so many people out and about after 10PM on our prior Princess cruises.  Usually, everyone is in bed by 10PM, so this Spring Break effect has really altered our experience on this cruise.  

Tomorrow is our last port of call before the end of our cruise.  We have never been to Cozumel, Mexico before, although many years ago, we did do a family vacation on the Yucatán Peninsula, staying at Chichen Itza for several days.  Most of the ship’s excursions head to the mainland (a 50 minute ferry ride each direction).  The ship does offer a Chichen Itza excursion for $169 per person, but you spend 6.5hrs on a bus getting there and back, and only 1 hour on the actual Chichen Itza site.  We’re glad we did a land based tour for that.  

Wednesday, March 13, 2019- Falmouth, Jamaica

Wednesday, March 13, 2019- Falmouth, Jamaica

The Regal Princess arrived off Falmouth, Jamaica in the early morning, and backed into it’s slip.  We had breakfast in the buffet and watched the Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas backing into the slip across the pier from us.  There is a huge twisting multi-story waterslide off the stern of the ship that looks like a giant angler fish.  The Harmony of the Seas is one of the Oasis class cruise ships with a central open mall.  The balconies looked just barely wide enough to place two chairs side by side with a small coffee table between them.  

Falmouth was recently redeveloped into a cruise port  for large cruise ships.  There is a very large, modern terminal building opening onto a large and modern open air mall with lots of restaurants, bars and stores.  There are also buildings housing tour operators with shaded waiting areas.  

The cruise port areas seemed to be able to handle the Regal Princess and Harmony of the Seas without trouble.  There are a lot of fast food restaurants that would make American tourists feel right at home like Dairy Queen and Nathan’s Hot Dogs.  There are no end to the jewelry stores and Jamaican merchandise stores festooned with the Green, Yellow and Black cruciate Jamaican flag.  It was all very clean and festive, but there was a noticeable absence of a live steel drum band to welcome all the passengers coming off these two huge cruise ships.  Instead, there was canned pop and rock music coming from the various bars and lounges.  

We made our way to the Chuka tour building where our horseback riding tour was meeting up.  We met with other couples who had come off the Regal Princess and were doing the tour with us.  We were shortly joined by hoards of people coming off the Harmony of the Seas.  Most of them were much younger and had children of all ages in tow.  This was definitely now a fully Spring Break passenger manifest.  

There were 30 Regal Princess passengers in our excursion.  We took up a little more than half a 65 passenger bus, so we had room to spread out a bit.  The bus had AC, but it was pretty warm (85 degrees at 9:30AM), and the AC was just barely adequate.  It took about 30 minutes to drive along the northern coastline of Jamaica to the horse riding site.  We drove by a large bay with an industrial dock opposite a giant domed structure that looked like a UFO had landed on the island. This was a bauxite mine and transfer station.  There was also a large limestone quarry and processing plant along the way.  Jamaica had previously been an important sugar cane plantation island, but after abolition of slavery, economics changed the agricultural production towards fruits and coconuts, which reach maturity quicker than sugar cane, and are much less labor intensive. 

The horse riding ranch was quite a large operation, with over 200 horses.  There appeared to be several acres of lightly wooded scrub brush along the ocean shore, as well as a small private bay associated with the property.  It took a while to get riders paired with horses. They had a mounting station where you climbed some stairs to a horse height platform, mounted the horse, and then an assistant adjusted the stirrups and bridle to the rider.  We walked around in a circle for a while as the wranglers got the horses and riders organized so that people who were in the same family groups were together.  This was for the purpose of taking pictures of riders at various points along the trail, for separate purchase after the ride.  The guides were cheerful and helpful for the most part.  There was a boss that did seem to yell at a few of the hands that were just standing around rather than hustling to get horses ready for the growing cue of cruise ship passengers who were arriving by the bus load.  Our group of 30 from the Regal Princess seemed much more manageable than what looked like a group of 100 from the Harmony of the Seas.  

We did a trail ride for about a half hour, which required little horse riding skill.  You just needed to make sure your horse didn’t ride up onto the horse ahead and nip it in the rear, which would provoke a kick at the nipper.  Apparently, that’s what these horses like to do to each other.  We did ride along some pretty scenery along the coast, but it was hard to juggle the reins and an iPhone at the same time.  Texting while riding can lead to a horse doing unpredictable things.  

After our trail ride was over, we then had an opportunity to buy a lunch and shop for souvenirs while we waited to do the second part of our ride, which was to ride into the water, and swim across the small bay on horseback.  That was a first for both of us, and frankly as scary as it was exhilarating.  The horses make this crazy chuffing sound as they swim through the water with you on their backs, and it was tricky to stay centered on the horse as it swam with you on its back.  There was a special saddle which was more like a big sponge than a saddle.  It felt like you were sitting right on the horse’s spine.  We were in our swim suits, and the water was quite comfortable, but we did end up riding and swimming past floating horse dung.  Boy, were we glad we weren’t putting our heads in that water.  After we got back to the ship, we took long thorough showers.  We had fun, but don’t feel the need to do that again, not at least for quite a while.  I suspect the next ride will involve either elephants or camels, but I still prefer ATV’s.  

We rejuvenated ourselves with afternoon tea, and then joined in on the afternoon trivia game.  We teamed up with a couple from W. Virginia and a couple from Tennessee, both of whom we had teamed up with before.  We ended up bridesmaids again.  We didn’t know how many hurdles are in a 400m hurdle race, or that CS in CS Lewis stands for Clive Staples.  We also didn’t know what color a Canadian $10 bill was (purple).  

We had dinner in the main dining room, and marveled at how nice it was to be waited on with such fine service, and be freed from menu planning, meal preparation, and clean up on these cruises.  We could just live on cruise ships from here on out, if we could afford that.  

We joined a young Canadian family for the Disney Trivia.  They had an 8 year old daughter and 10 year old son who was super excited to be doing Disney Trivia.  Their wife was also very good at the Disney trivia.  We ended up with 20/23 possible, and were beat by one team with 22/23.  It would have been so fun to have won some prizes for those kids, but they were terribly thrilled none-the-less to have scored so well.  

The Princess Theater production of Fiera was simply amazing.  We have seen the show before, but the dance troupe and singers on this cruise are really terrific.  It had no trouble bringing the audience to their feet for a standing ovation. 

Janet retired to the stateroom to work on getting through a James Patterson book from the ship’s library, while Ben made a snack run, and watched the Liar’s Club to see what words they would come up with. He recognized 2 of the 4 words.  It’s amazing how Princess can come up with so many crazy words.  The four words were pogonophobia, cockatouche, wisteria and Baldersnatch.  We’ll leave it up to your imaginations or Wikipedia to figure out what they mean.

Tomorrow we arrive at Grand Cayman, where we have a Segway tour booked.  This will be our second call on Grand Cayman as it was on our very first Panama Canal cruise back in 2015 on the Coral Princess.  During our first visit, we visited Stingray beach and got to pet stingrays.  Nobody got killed or injured like Steve Irwin.  

Tuesday, March 12, 2019- At Sea En Route to Jamaica

Tuesday, March 12, 2019- At Sea En Route to Jamaica

Today we decided to forgo the morning trivia to attend a shopping seminar, so we started off the day going up to the pool.  Unfortunately, contrary to the rules of polite behavior, all of the deck chairs around the pool were “claimed” with books and towels, without accompanying bodies.  We had breakfast, and then went for a swim.  At first, there weren’t too many people using the pool because they thought it was too cold.  Ben was able to get in 440 yds in before they started playing the movie “The Greatest Showman” on the big screen.  Then the pool suddenly filled up with kids and adults who wanted to watch the movie while hanging on the edge of the pool, making it impossible to swim laps.  Janet discovered after swimming that her right ear was draining continuously for a very long time after she got out, and she has noticed and complained about her right ear not hearing as well.  So it appears that she ruptured her right ear drum while we were SCUBA diving.  That would explain the bloody discharge from her nose and her complaints that salt water was getting into her mouth.  She thought her regulator might have been leaking, but it was probably salt water getting into her ear and then draining down her eustation tube into her nasopharynx.  It had started to get hot outside by then, so we went to the fitness center and worked off some of our guilt.

The shopping seminar was well attended.  Apparently a lot of other people had heard about the free gifts, and were strategically positioned to try to catch gifts. They threw a bunch of Effy pendants that are given out free with a coupon in our general direction, but they landed in a clump right in a gentleman’s lap two seats over from us.  They threw a T-Shirt our direction, but the man’s wife, who was seated the row ahead of him intercepted it.  They drew raffle tickets for other prizes but we didn’t end up with anything besides the Effy Tote bag, but the tote bags were much nicer than the Princess tote bags that they give out to everyone.  That was a nicer take home item than a trivia gift (coaster, string bag, notebook etc), but sitting through a hour of high pressure sales was pretty annoying.  We probably won’t bother doing that again, but might try sneaking in during the last 5 minutes to snag the free tote bag on future cruises.

Our old habits got the better of us as we fell back into the afternoon trivia.  We teamed up with some prior partners, but didn’t manage a win.  We did better during the evening’s 70’s music trivia where we teamed up with one of the couples from the afternoon trivia, and a pair of young women who were sitting alone.  We won that trivia.  We let the women have the champagne and got little blue notebooks for the rest of our team.  We ended up giving our little blue notebooks away since we have a bunch, and don’t really use them.  We wound up the evening with a Movie Poster Trivia, teaming up with the astronaut, his beautiful wife and their adopted Chinese daughter, who had managed to get herself a pretty good sun burn on Princess Cay.  We haven’t done very well on movie posters on this cruise, ending up with just an average score.  

We had cut out of dinner early to make it to the 7PM Trivia.  We had requested that the Chocolate Journey dessert be sent up to our room.  We were told it would be about 8:30PM before they would be delivered.  We got back to our room at 9PM, but there was no dessert, so we headed back to the dining room and had our dessert.  It was their hazelnut bar, which is quite fancy and good.  Then we returned back to our room, and found that they had indeed delivered two more desserts.  That worked out to our benefit.  We chose to forego the Princess Theater production of Bravo since we had just seen that last week.  We were hoping to watch Bohemian Rhapsody on the TV, but they took it down off the list of on demand movies. It is scheduled to be played on the Movies under the Stars tomorrow, so hopefully, it will come back to the On Demand menu after that.  We prefer to watch movies in our cabin with subtitles.

Tomorrow we arrive at Falmouth, Jamaica, where we are booked on a horseback ride.  We snagged some apples from the buffet this morning that we hope to be able to bribe the horses into being nice to us with.