Friday, January 31, 2020; At Sea, Cabo San Lucas to Los Angeles
It’s always sad to start packing up at the end of a cruise. It was nice that there was a full day at sea between Cabo San Lucas and our disembarkation in Los Angeles to transition us from being in Cruising mode to getting ready to head home.
We met for breakfast in the dining room and then attended an Escape room activity in the chapel that George had signed us up for earlier in the cruise. The sign up was for groups of 8 and the cost was $5 per person, which is a change from the Escape room we did on our 60 day South America cruise. So in addition to our family, there was a couple from California that joined us in solving the puzzles.
The set up was that we were supposed to meet with a ship’s magician in the Chapel who would lead us through the activity. They started off with a safety video explaining ground rules for the activity, which was interrupted by an announcement that an antique vase had disappeared from near the ship’s bridge, along with the Magician. We were supposed to figure out what happened to the Magician and vase by examining the Magician’s luggage, which was on a table in the middle of the room.
There were several trunks in the room. One was unlocked, while others were locked with a variety of locking devices including keyed padlocks, numeric combination locks with 3 and 4 digits, and a 5 digit alphanumeric tumbler lock. The unlocked trunk contained many seemingly random items, but we had focused on finding clues that could solve each type of locking device, and we were ultimately able to solve all the puzzles and unlock all the boxes in about 15 minutes, which was pretty good. There was a 30 minute time limit, and most groups only manage to open the last trunk revealing the missing vase in closer to 20-30 minutes. The host is allowed to give hints if a group seems to be struggling, but we only needed one clue.
From there, Ben and Janet attended a Wine Tasting activity that is one of the perks of being Elite members. This featured wines from New Zealand, The Columbia River Valley, Napa Valley, Chile and Italy.
We had our last lunch in the dining room and then let Betty take a nap to rest while Ben and Dave did a 70’s and 80’s TV trivia game with a couple from California, and won a bottle of champagne, which was given to the other couple since we already had one in our refrigerator that we plan on giving to our room steward.
We then watched the final for the Voice of the Ocean, featuring 6 very talented passengers.
Ben and Janet teamed up with 3 passengers from Sweden to do the afternoon trivia, which was an all new trivia, and lost by 2 points. We had missed the point value for the bullseye on a dart board, most winning Formula One racing driver, and what marine animal has remained unchanged over the last 700 Million years.
We met up with the family for our last dinner in the dining room and said our farewells to Ronaldo, our waiter, who was sweet and very kind in accommodating Betty’s special needs. They concluded the dinner with the traditional parade of the Baked Alaska dessert.
After dinner, Ben and Janet joined up with Millie, Melissa and OJ from prior trivia games to do the Disney trivia. We missed winning it by just one point. Do you know the name of the Prince that kisses Sleeping Beauty or how many pups Lady and the Tramp had?
We finished the evening and our cruise with the second show of comedian Carlos Oscar, who has a unique contemporary style of delivery with his Puerto Rican background and ability to do Hispanic ethnic jokes without racial repercussions. He even poked a little fun at Marcus and Filipinos.
We did get most of our things packed back into our suitcases, leaving out just what we need to get through the night and pack into our back packs. We do gain an hour because the clocks go back to Pacific time overnight, but we will have to get up early to grab breakfast before our disembarkation transfers. We’re hoping our transfer back to LAX goes as smoothly as our transfer to the ship with Betty was.
