20240509 Thursday, May 9, 2024; At Sea
We had earlier discovered that the very aft part of the buffet dining room, which is used for the Planks BBQ and Steamers Seafood casual dining venues in the evenings, has an omelet station during breakfast and although this area has fewer selections than the main buffets farther forward, it is much less crowded. The crew officers and entertainers seem to prefer this area as well. We haven’t had trouble finding places to sit in the for forward parts of the buffet because there are plenty of 2 tops, we had no trouble finding a nice window 2 top in the back.
Our morning warm up trivia kept up its usual habit of eluding us, but we did pick up some interesting trivia. Does the Monopoly Man wear a monocle? While most people believe he does, this is a false memory that is very commonly shared, and there is even something called the Mandella effect that psychologists use to explain this. We also don’t do well on riddles including this morning’s of What is it that the more you take, the more you leave behind? We finished 2 points off the winners who had a tie breaker of in what year was the Big Bang Theory TV show first aired? (2007).
Ben tried to sit in on the Destination lecture for Cobh Ireland, only to find the theater packed to over capacity, so we’ll have to watch that on the on demand video system in our stateroom when we have nothing better to do. So instead, Ben got his steps in around the ship. The buffet had sushi today, which is not something the offer very often on Princess in the Buffet. Sometimes we’ll find sushi at the Elite lounge, but since we don’t have a drink package on this trip and our dinner reservations overlap with the Elite lounge hours, we have generally been skipping them.
Our progressive Trivia team has had to change locations multiple times because people keep taking the spot we were in for the first 3 sessions. While we didn’t repeat our perfect score from yesterday, we did manage our usual 15/20, which we hope will be enough to keep us in the running for a win. Tomorrow is our last sea day and progressive trivia before we arrive in the Azores. There are 3 more sea days after the Azores, so there are probably a total of 4 remaining progressive quizzes that will go into the final scoring. We haven’t gotten an update on team scores since they were first revealed before the third session.
Next we attended a Showtime performance by Kate Gordon, who was the guest soprano for the earlier stage production of Bravo. Instead of an opera gown, she strutted on stage in sequined hot pants and bejeweled Doc Martins. She gave a great performance of popular and show music including a remarkable rendition of what she called the Weema Woppa song, or The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which elevated it to operatic. She also showed off her 4-1/2 octave vocal range with pop and rock songs which were all very competently and powerfully delivered. Her on stage narration surprised us with a tiny squeaky voice which betrays her true vocal power.
The Showtime matinee wrapped up in time for us to do an afternoon trivia where we teamed up with a couple from England named Mike and Margaret who aren’t doing the progressive trivia. It’s a shame because they would have done quite well. We scored 15, missing a win by 2 points. One question that fooled us which utensil (Spoon, Fork, Knife) is used by 30% of the world’s population. Most people guessed spoon since so much of the world uses chop sticks or fingers instead of forks, but people who use chop sticks also use spoons to consume soup, so well over half the world’s population uses spoons, which is over 30%. A funny question was Dr Jan Rolf invented “Rolfing” as what sort of therapy? Apparently vomiting is good deep tissue massage.
Dinner was in the dining room, and so far, there have not been repeats of the menu on this itinerary. Ben had Basa, which is a Vietnamese catfish on asian slaw. The acidity of the slaw really pumped up the flavors of the fish. Janet had a shrimp stir fry which was sort of like Phad Thai without the sauce, but she had her favorite which is the Princess French Onion Soup, and chicken satays to round out her dinner.
The Princess Theater Showtime brought back Shane Hampshier for show of singing songs from the 50’s and a lot of Michael Bublé songs. It was similar to his first show but without any instrumentals on his part. He also did bring his wife Crystal Cimaglia on stage for a duet. At one point, there was a young German couple standing up against a wall because the theater seating was full, so Shane invited them up on stage to sit on the riser in front of the drummer while he sang, and then had them dance. They eventually danced themselves right off the stage. There was also someone in the front rows that many people noticed had the bizarre habit of filming extended selfies of themselves during many of these Showtime performances. During a song, he walked up to them and picked up their phone out of their hand and then sang into it as a selfie as he walked back onto the stage, eventually passing the phone back to the audience to hand back to the impolite selfie shooters. A word of warning- don’t try to sneak out of the theater before the end of his shows or he will follow you out of the theater to embarrass you.
We finished up the evening with a 50’s and 60’s music trivia, which is definitely not our strong suit. There was a woman playing solo who claimed a perfect score, but who declined the champagne prize. Then after the host decided to award the champagne to the second place team, it was again refused, and eventually the third place team relented and accepted the champagne.
Our clocks begin their forward march again tonight, moving another hour forward.
