Monday, March 11, 2019- Princess Cay, Eleuthera Island, The Bahamas

Monday, March 11, 2019- Princess Cay, Eleuthera Island, The Bahamas

Ben awoke to the sounds of the Regal Princesses anchor and chain being dropped from the bow.  It was bright and sunny with scattered clouds in the deep blue sky. We went ashore and had a relaxed morning, snorkeling around the snorkel beach and having brunch at the buffet set up on the island.  There is a small coral reef off the breakwater with a variety of brightly colored fish, and a few live corals.  The water temperature and conditions were great for just swimming and splashing around in the sun, but after having snorkeled so much in the Galápagos Islands, it’s hard to be impressed by sea life anywhere else. Janet did have a bit of fun with some hot dog bun and corn leftover from lunch, which she fed to some fish as she snorkeled, but one fish was aggressive enough that it bit the knuckle on her other hand, thinking she might have some more food in it after she was done feeding the fish with what she brought out.  

As it got hotter in the afternoon, we retreated back to the ship and had tea, followed by afternoon trivia.  We paired up with couples from Florida and W. Virginia.  We were in the hunt with 19/21, but one team had us outscored with 20/21.  We didn’t know Lake Eyre is the lowest  point in Australia, and guessed wrongly that Coolidge was the first President on TV- It was FDR.  

The Elite lounge had sushi again, so we went down there with glasses of wine, which finished off the bottle we brought on board, and had sushi for dinner.  We rested up in the room for a bit and then started our evening with Nick Names Trivia.  We paired up with a couple from SW Florida Bob and Mary, and Jenny and Steve from Charlottesville VA.  Bob was super at the Nick Names.  Most were sports celebrities including boxers and golfers, whom we had no clue about.  We ended up with second place scoring 18/20 with the winners coming up with a perfect score.

Next, we participated in a “Majority Rules” game where each team submits an answer to a question, and which ever answer is the most frequently submitted wins.  It was an interesting and fun game.  We didn’t win, but we couldn’t tell how well we did because only the Cruise Staff knew the scores of all the teams.  They announced the winner, but not the score.  An example question was “What is an embarrassing item to buy at the store?”  The most common answer was “Condom”.  And the answer for “What can you only use once?” was also “Condom”.  You can tell the mind of this audience was in the gutter.

Our last event was the new comedian Robbie Printz, who also pretty funny with a standup act.  As we exited the theater, we noticed that Club 6 was packed with dancers at 10:45PM.  We had a second dinner at the International Cafe at 11:00PM, and the Piazza was crowded with people dancing, drinking and eating.  The Spring Break effect is certainly getting into full gear.  

Tomorrow is a day at sea.  We’ll skip the morning trivia to see if we can snag some good prizes at the shopping seminar, as suggested by the couple we had tea with earlier in the week.

Sunday, March 10, 2019, Re-Embarkation Fort Lauderdale

Sunday, March 10, 2019, Re-Embarkation Fort Lauderdale

The transition between the two cruise segments was a bit of a jumble. We ended up saying our farewells to the people we had met on the first segment, and had the ship to ourselves (the 350 continuing passengers) for an hour.  We ended up sitting in the Princess theatre while all the other exiting passengers cleared customs and immigrations. Then we filed into a room and held out our Passports for a customs agent to walk down the line and visually confirm our faces matched our pictures.  That was pretty much the extent of the customs process.  We then filed back on board.  We went up to the pool and found prime deck chairs and an uncrowded pool deck with just a handful of like minded continuing passengers.  It didn’t take long for newly arriving passengers to start filling up the decks and buffet, and as the sun came overhead, it heated up, so we headed inside to use the gym.  We rested up and attended our second muster drill, which we were smart enough this time to sneak into the very back of the theater so we could sneak out first.  

We enjoyed some wine on our balcony while we watched all the crazy boating traffic in Port Everglades as 8 cruise ships and hundreds of private vessels all vied for the channel.  There were several Broward County Sheriff’s boats, Port Everglades pilot boats, and Coast Guard fast boats speeding around directing traffic, reminding boaters to stay in the navigational channel and to maintain the perimeter around all the cruise ships.  When a cruise ship pushed off its mooring, they had to stop all the small boat traffic while the cruise ship pivoted around in the center of the harbor, and made its way out through the main channel. The Celebrity Edge got first clearance, followed by a Carnival ship that must have passed within 50 feet of our bow as it pushed out of its berth.  We could see a lot of shirtless guys and bikini‘d girls on the decks of that boat- quite a different demographic from our ship.  Then it was our turn to go.  When each ship pushes back, it sounds its horn with 5 quick blasts to say good bye.  Ben really loves it that the Regal Princess, and her Royal Class sister ships, have custom tuned fog horns that can blast out the theme to the TV Show “The Love Boat”.  

We hit the main restaurant right at opening, and were able to get seated right away.  It was apparent, looking around, that this contingent of passengers is significantly different than the last batch.  This one looks considerably younger, and is accompanied by lots more school aged children- must be spring break now.  It did take a long time for the food to come out, but Ben had a nice prime rib.  Janet’s pasta ended undercooked, so most of that went uneaten, but she did have a couple of appetizers that had filled her up.  

For our first trivia of this segment of the cruise we teamed up with a couple from W Virginia and another couple from Massachusetts.  We managed 20/24 while the winners got 22.  We didn’t know that Sir Thomas Moore created a fictional island named Utopia, and didn’t know the Byker Grove children’s TV show was hosted by Ant and Dec (We still have no idea who Ant and Dec are, or anything about that show, although at least one trivia team came up with that).  

Next was another Motown Trivia.  They had managed to come up with some more obscure songs and also played several segments from the middles of the songs, rather than the beginnings.  We ended up teaming up with a woman who started off sitting alone who was very attractive and dressed up to the 9’s like a model.  Well, it turned out that she is married to Dr. Byron Lichtenberg, who was an Air Force pilot with 138 combat sorties over Vietnam and two Space Shuttle flights under his belt as a mission payload specialist.  He also happens to be a MIT alumnus.  That was a pretty funny circumstance.  Tamera, his second wife, was a college cheerleader and beauty queen.  They had an adopted teenage daughter from China with them.  Despite the glamour and credentials they brought to the game, they weren’t particularly good at Motown, except for Tamera certainly had her Lionel Ritchie down solid.  We finished with a solidly mediocre score.  Then they had an urban legends trivia that was all True or False, and amazingly, two teams got perfect scores on that.  The tie breaker was how many years ago did Honduras gain it’s independence from Spain.  That was good for wine bottle stoppers.

We had planned on seeing the “Born to Dance” show again, but the late performance was canceled due to technical problems with one of the flying set pieces that was unstable.  We had a snack at the international cafe and saw that the Piazza was pretty crowded with lots of people still out and about at 10PM.  That’s uncharacteristic for our prior Princess cruise experiences, and is probably reflective of the Spring Break effect.  

Tomorrow we return to Princess Cay where we anticipate a relaxing day of snorkeling and eating.  

Saturday, March 9, 2019. At Sea En Route to Fort Lauderdale

Saturday, March 9, 2019.  At Sea En Route to Fort Lauderdale

This was a more relaxed morning since there were no mandatory meetings to attend.  We met two nice couples at breakfast.  One was from New Jersey and the other was from Michigan.  Both were getting off the ship tomorrow in Fort Lauderdale, but both were envious that we were staying on for another week.  

We teamed up with David and Jackie from St. Louis, and Keith and Lila from Idaho for the morning Trivia.  Keith actually lived in Anacortes before they moved to Idaho.  We won that trivia, largely thanks to Keith knowing that the hundred folds in a head chef’s hat represent the hundred ways a head chef must know to prepare eggs.  Os did throw in a few trick questions including “on the Regal Princess, which side of the boat would you find lifeboat #20 on?  Correct answer= neither because the Regal Princess only has 16 life boats. One of the more obscure points of trivia was what auto maker is named after the Persian god of Light?  Mazda. We got Regal Princess silicone coasters as a prize.

Earlier in the cruise, we stopped by a seminar on Larimar, which is a semiprecious gemstone mined in the Dominican Republic with beautiful pale blue and white structure.  At the end of the seminar, we got a ticket to go to their shop to have free ear-rings made for us, so we stopped by and got to pick out small polished beads of Larimar that were then made into ear-rings as we watched.  Since neither of us has pierced ears, they will go into the gift file.  They also gave us coupons for free pendants at the Effy shop, so we picked up some pendants with tiny colored zirconium stones that the Effy shop was all to happy to upgrade to a larger stone for just $10.  We didn’t bite on that one.  

After lunch and a nap, we hit the afternoon trivia, where we teamed up with David and Jackie from St. Louis again, and the young lawyers Chas and Jenn again.  And after a false alarm, we ended up winning another trivia because the team that had thought they won, had an incorrectly totaled score.  That was good for a bottle of champagne, which nobody really wanted, but we ended up with it because Chas and Jenn had left, and we were going to be continuing another week.  

We had stopped by the customer service desk because we had noticed that our Ocean Medallions weren’t working very well.  When we first started this cruise, the medallions would be detected by our door about 20’ down the hall, and would unlock the door as we approached.  The detection range then steadily decreased to the point where we had to physically tap the medallion on the display plate on the doorway to open.  Then today, they stopped working altogether.  We learned that the medallions don’t simply contain a RFID chip, but actually have an internal battery, which sometimes gets depleted towards the end of a cruise, and since we had received our medallions a week or two in advance of the cruise, the desk clerk thought they simply needed new batteries.  However, replacing the batteries did not fix them. So we were stuck in our rooms, while they figured out the problem.  This gave us time to nap and get some reading done.  

Just in time for dinner, we got not only our Medallions back, but also old school printed key cards that can work with the door’s sensor by tapping it on the pad. The room cards still have a magnetic stripe, but they also appear to have an RFID chip imbedded as well.  

Dinner featured New York steaks and Baked Alaska- American themed night.  We participated in a “One Hit Wonders” music trivia, which we bombed.  There were several disco era and 80’s songs that we figured out like Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry, and Ring My Bell by Anita Ward, but more that’s half of the songs were songs we have never listened to from the rap and grunge eras, or pop songs from the 70’s and 80’s that were truly one hit wonders where even if the song was familiar, the artist was obscure.  

The Princess Theater featured a second show by comedian Steve Caouette, and it was standing room only.  He was very entertaining, doing standup with sound effect impressions.  We watched a gameshow called Holly Would You?  They had two teams of 3 volunteers get up on stage and it was kind of like family feud where a trivia question would come up on the screen and each team had to sound a buzzer when they were ready to answer.  If they got the answer correct, they got a point, but if not, the question would be passed to the other team to try to answer.  There were several general movie trivia questions, followed by movie themes, and then a segment where each team had to pantomime a movie poster to have the audience guess what movie they were portraying.  

We arrived late to a game called “The Gift of Gab” where word jumbles are presented for you to try to guess the meaning.  For example Mile Hip Czars Healed= My Lips are Sealed.  It was very challenging and we were glad we weren’t in it to compete at this point.  

Most of the ship is disembarking tomorrow morning.  Earlier in the evening, we passed lots of suitcases lining the hallways on the way to our activities.  It always makes us a bit sad at the end of a cruise, but we get to stay on another week.  It’s too bad all of our good trivia partners are leaving the ship, just as we figured out who was good at what.  It will be interesting to see what it is like to be on the ship with only 350 other passengers during the day in Fort Lauderdale.  

Friday, March 8, 2019. At Sea En Route to Fort Lauderdale

Friday, March 8, 2019.  At Sea En Route to Fort Lauderdale

Even though this was a sea day, we had to set an alarm to get up for an 8:30AM meeting involving all passengers who are going to be staying on the Regal Princess for the next cruise segment once the ship gets back to Fort Lauderdale.  They call this being “In Transit”.  There are supposedly about 500 passengers who will be staying aboard like us.  There are some who have been aboard for several weeks.  Apparently the ship does slightly different ports of call as it alternates Eastern and Western Caribbean routes.  Everyone has to get off the ship to clear US Customs and Immigrations, but for those who wish to stay aboard, they have an expedited procedure, but it requires 100% of passengers to be accounted for.  Apparently during a recent transition, one couple failed to report to the theater, and were apparently found by the ship’s crew in one of the pools.  All the other several hundred transit passengers had to wait in the theatre for over 2 hours while the ship’s crew searched for the 2 missing passengers.  They were dragged through customs and immigrations in their swim suits.  You don’t want to be THOSE passengers. 

We had lunch in the dining room and met a nice couple from Michigan who had a nice Princess tote bag- much nicer than the one we received when we boarded. We found out that there was a shopping seminar at the beginning of the cruise, and that all participants received the fancy zippered and lined tote, as well as a big coupon book.  We also learned that many free prizes like t-Shirts and other trinkets were tossed into the audience, so for the next segment of the cruise, we will have to plan on attending that seminar and take a seat in the center of the theater about 4 rows back to try to catch some freebies.

Morning trivia was well attended.  We teamed up with the young lawyers, and a couple from St. Louis that we had previously teamed up with.  There were a couple of trick questions like “According to the Bible, how many of each animal did Moses put on the Ark?  Then answer is zero because it was Noah, not Moses.  And which US President is on the US $100 dollar bill?  Answer: None because Ben Franklin was never a US President. A bizarre question was what animal has fingerprints that are indistinguishable from humans? The answer was Koala.  There were two bonus questions worth 5 points each:  1) What baby girl was born in Feb. 26, 10,000 BC?  Answer=Pebbles Flintstone.  2) What seat was always reserved for the Phantom of the Opera?  Box 5.  We only managed 16 out of 30 possible points with the bonus questions.

We watched “First Man”, a biographical movie about Neil Armstrong, on the on-demand video.  The ship has been going through scattered rain showers and moderate cloud cover, so it seemed like a good day to see some of the movies that were featured in this years’ Academy awards.  While historically interesting, it was no where near as captivating as Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 was.  But now all the people in denial of the moon landing can point to this movie as proof that Hollywood faked the whole thing since Spielberg just faked it all over again.

Afternoon trivia was also well attended. We did OK, but were just one point out of the lead, mostly because Ben thought the host was pitching a trick question of What is the last sense to go as people get older.  Ben thought it was the “Sense of Humor”, but the correct answer was taste.  The other question that tripped him up was how many US Presidents were involved in the construction of the Panama Canal.  Ben thought it was just one- Theodore Roosevelt, because he was the only US President to actually visit the canal and physically take part in construction when he took a swipe at the canal in a giant steam shovel, as famously captured in photos.  However, there were 3 US Presidents who resided in office between when the canal was bought from the French to its completion, even though none of the other presidents actually visited the site during construction.  There was a 3 way tie for first place with just 1 point more than our score.  Their tie breaker questions were “Who was the only man to knock out Mohammad Ali? (Larry Holmes) and What is the name of the newest Princess Cruise ship to be launched?  Sky Princess.  

There was a Captain’s Circle reception, which actually had to be broken up into two sessions because so many people on the ship have platinum and elite status.  There are over 800 Platinum and 400 Elite passengers, although we have noticed a lot of first time Princess passengers on board (you can tell by looking at the door tags, which indicate Captain’s Circle status), and by the color of the Ocean Medallions that are used as room keys.  The most experienced cruisers on this particular sailing have 1300 days at sea under their belts.  We have a long ways to catch up to them.  We got free cocktails of our choice for this reception.  Ben had a Manhattan, while Janet had a Moscow mule (not in a copper mug though).  

This was the cruises’ second and last formal night for this segment.  Dinner featured broiled lobster.  There was also oysters Rockefeller instead of escargot on the appetizers, which were actual whole oysters on the half shell.  In the past, we had been served chopped up oysters in a tiny scalloped edged dish.  This was much nicer, and better tasting- just like what we recently had at home with our own fresh oyster harvest.  It was unusual for us to be able to enjoy New England broiled lobster tails more than once during a cruise, and both times it was excellent.  And we had a wonderful Chocolate Journey pistachio mousse dessert.  

The Princess Theater featured their “Bravo” production show, which is an excellent show with popular theatrical and operatic songs. They had a guest soprano, although one of the lead female singers in this production team is an especially talented soprano, who was probably at least as talented, if not a little better than the guest soprano.  The talent of the singers and dancers on the Regal Princess are really top notch.

The ship has a water fountain designed by the same company that does the water show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and we finally caught one of its shows tonight.  It is set up between the main pools, and features jumping and climbing colored water jets synchronized to music and animations on the Movies Under The Stars Jumbotron.  While it was entertaining, it was ten minutes long and underwhelming, and not something you would need to plan your evening around, but we were glad to have seen it finally.  

Thursday, March 7, 2019. St. Maarten

Thursday, March 7, 2019. St. Maarten

The Regal Princess was the first of four cruise ships to arrive at St. Maarten, just a bit after sunrise at 6:30AM.  We could see the VIking Sun waiting behind us as Regal Princess backed into its birth.  We ha breakfast as we were joined by the Viking Sun, Celebrity Solace, and the Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas.  Since we had toured the entire island on ATV’s last time we were on St. Maarten, we elected to walk into town, which was just a 20 minute walk from the Philipsburg cruise ship pier.  We didn’t have a chance to see the beach along the Great Bay last time.  We were able to get off the ship by 7:30AM, while it was still a comfortable 76 degrees and sunny.  As we prepared to leave the Regal Princess, the Celebrity Solace had tied up across the pier from us, and we saw a most unusual thing, as they unloaded about 20 Harley Davidson motorcycles from a hold on the ship onto the dock. It appeared that they had a specialty cruise with a Harley Davidson theme going on.  

It was an easy, but not very scenic walk to the boardwalk, but once we did get to the boardwalk, the beachfront of St. Maarten was indeed very beautiful with a flawless white sand beach, beach chairs, and a few smaller palm trees scattered about.  Most of the big ones had been destroyed by Hurricane Irma in 2017, and there were still the wrecked hulks of a few hotels and other buildings visible if you looked closely enough.  However, the waterfront boardwalk was wide, clean and surprisingly uncrowded considering there were 4 cruise ships in town.  Perhaps, it was because most passengers were on organized ship excursions during the early part of the day, and the boardwalk would get crowded after those excursions ended.  We spotted the historic courthouse near the center of boardwalk, and ran into the Harley Davidson riders just pulling out of the downtown area in a caravan.  One gal, unfortunately, had motor trouble, and ended up getting a push start from a couple of locals.  She was presumably rescued by someone from the company that had organized the tour, and was circling around the court house to pick her up.  

We walked back to the ship and cooled off for a bit in the air conditioning before heading off to attend the morning Trivia.  This was better attended than we would have imagined because we were in a port of call, but like us, many passengers on this cruise have been to some of these ports of call on multiple occasions.  We teamed up with a couple from Georgia and a woman from Toronto, whose husband doesn’t do trivia.  This trivia was in the Vista Lounge, and did not use the video monitors.  There were 20 questions, but there was a bonus question worth 8 points which was Who are the 4 kings in a deck of cards representing?  2 Points for each correct king.  We had no idea, but one team apparently did.  They were Julius Caesar, King David, Charlemagne and Alexander the Great.  We scored 14, while the winning team had 20.  Two other questions had notable answers. One was what did Albert Einstein predict would be the weapons used in WW 4- Sticks and stones, or slingshots.  And what was the first man made object to break the sound barrier- the whip.

This was our planned pool day, so we found some deck chairs in the shade and relaxed by the pool.  We figured with most of the passengers enjoying their shore excursions, the pool deck would be less crowded, and it was pleasant.  Ben didn’t even have to swim through much traffic in the pool to swim laps.  The poolside grill was one of the things that Viking Ocean does better than Princess, although Princess’ pizza is better. We managed to get through some reading and get some naps in during our pool day.  

During afternoon tea we met a couple from Bainbridge Island, and were seated with them and a couple from Florida, although the gentleman was from Columbia and his wife was from New York originally.  They were a very nice and energetic couple.  

Afternoon trivia turned up a few trick questions and riddles, which were clever.  The questions were all verbal with nothing on the video monitor, and one question was “What is the average wait for a newborn baby”, but what most people heard was “What is the average weight for a newborn baby.  So the answer was not 7 pounds, but 9 months.  Another clever one was what do you get for free the first two times, but the third time costs a lot of money?  Answer= Teeth! And another killer bonus question that we missed, but the winning team got for 5 extra points- What is the only word that has all the vowels including Y in the English language?  Answer= FACETIOUSLY (and the vowels are also all in alphabetical order!).  So we didn’t win, but we learned some very useful nonsense.

The Elite and Platinum lounge was offering sushi, which worked out well because we had a late dinner reservation at the Crab Shack.  Normally, you have to pay extra for sushi at a dedicated sushi bar in the Piazza.  We were spoiled by the sushi on the Viking Star, which was in the buffet every night.

We watched “8 Days A Week”, a Beatles documentary by Ron Howard on TV.  We should have watched that before the Beatles trivia.  It was an interesting documentary about the touring years of the Beatles, and had been on PBS, but we had missed it.  Most of the Academy Award winning movies are available on demand for free in the rooms this cruise, but we really haven’t had much time to sit and watch the TV in our room, but maybe we’ll take advantage of that when we return to Fort Lauderdale between our East and West legs.

Our second specialty dining voucher was used tonight at The Crab Shack, which on the Regal Princess is not a dedicated venue, but rather a corner of the upstairs buffet is converted into the casual sea food restaurant in the evenings.  The tables are covered in butcher paper, and they tie a big “Crab Shack” bib around you before they seat you.  Appetizer consisted of giant popcorn shrimp and hush puppies. Both were delicious. Soup was Manhattan clam chowder which tasted like Campbell’s vegetable beef soup. They served up a bowl with king crab legs, prawns, boiled potato, and corn on the cob with drawn butter.  Ben ordered something different, a bowl with snow crab, kielbasa and mussels, but the waiter brought out two king crab leg bowls by mistake, so Ben ended up getting both dinners, which would have normally been $10 extra.  While this is unique for Princess, Viking Ocean cruises had the king crab legs and prawns available on their buffet with no extra cost any night.  But we have discovered that the availability of fresh Dungeness crab at home pretty much ruins frozen king and snow crab for us. Ironically, they served up Penn Cove Blue Mussels from Whidbey Island.  

The evening’s entertainment was a singer and dancer Solomon Jaye from Houston, TX, who put on a high energy show with songs from R&B, Motown, and Pop, along with some tap dancing.  He did a great Michael Jackson Song and dance with glittered glove and all the moves. He was backed by the Princess Band, which is a great professional band.  

Tomorrow is a day at sea as the Regal Princess makes a beeline back to Fort Lauderdale over the next two days.  

Wednesday, March 6, 2019. St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

Wednesday, March 6, 2019.  St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

The Regal Princess arrived in St. Thomas mid morning, so there was plenty of time to have a sit-down breakfast, but we went to the buffet instead so that we could pick up some pool towels for use during our excursion.  We signed up for an introduction to scuba course, which look us to a shipwreck in 35 feet of water, about 25 minutes from the cruise port by power catamaran.  The weather was beautiful with scattered puffy clouds and a temperature of just under 80 degrees with 56% humidity.  

There was time after breakfast to do a trivia game.  We teamed up with a couple from Georgia, and managed to do OK, but didn’t win because we didn’t know CNBC stands for Consumer News and Business Channel.  That question was worth 4 points (1 for each letter correctly associated with the right word).  

We grabbed some Rueben sandwiches from the buffet for a quick lunch, and then headed off the ship for our scuba lesson.  We walked a short distance to the scuba boats and boarded.  The breeze on the boat was welcome.  We had a very brief didactic lecture on the way out about basic dive physiology and how scuba equipment works.  The 24 passengers were divided into two groups. We were group two and would get trained later. Almost 2.5 hours later, we got to start. We were then fitted with weight belts, scuba gear, masks, snorkels and fins.  We then jumped in and had an equally brief didactic session in the water to prove that we could clear our masks, descend, recover and clear our regulators. Then we were off to swim through a ship wreck of a freighter that had been used by some drug smugglers after WWII.  It had been abandoned, and then wrecked by two hurricanes.  It was very interesting eerie to swim through the wreck, coupled with the novelty of using the scuba gear for the first time.  The hardest part was keeping our ears equalized as we descended.  Just about the time we were comfortable with the scuba gear and enjoying the exploration, it was time to head back up to the surface.  Again, group 1 got a lot more time in the water. 

After returning to the ship, we had dinner in the main dining room, which featured Surf and Turf with Filet Mignon and Tiger Prawns.  It was very good, but there was no Chocolate Journey dessert tonight.  We had to settle for rhubarb Napoleon and cheese cake. 

Janet went to watch the comedian, Steve Caouette, who she said was very funny.  He joked about how Princess had to charter a small plane to get him to this booking, and how they nearly dived into the water to get him on board- funny since we had just fished two plane crash victims out of the water and made the national news.  

Since the ship was not going to cast off until 9:00PM, and we hadn’t really had a chance to walk around the town, Ben went for a walk, but found that most of the shops in the large tourist mall were closed, aside from one gift shop and a few bars and restaurants. He did end up walking out a nearby supermarket following quite a few crew members from the Regal Princess.  The crew members like to stock up on things like snacks when they can go into ports of call.  There were also a few in a nearby Wendy’s.  

We rendezvoused in the stateroom and then went to the 1980’s music trivia.  We teamed up with a couple from Georgia and a gal who came in at the last moment from St. Louis.  We managed a win- actually a 2 way tie out of 12 or so teams, and the host was feeling generous so there was no tie breaker question.  We all won Princess wine bottle stoppers. 

The Princess singers and dancers did a little number on the Lido Deck for a Caribbean sail away party, which was nice.  The dancers and singers on the Regal Princess are a step up from the entertainment on even other Princess ships.  Janet noticed that it seemed like all of them had custom fitted costumes that were all in top condition, while on prior cruises, you could notice some ill fitting, or tattered bits and pieces if you looked closely.

Tomorrow we arrive at St. Maarten, a port that we have been to before.  

Tuesday, March 5, 2019. At Sea with Rescue at Sea En Route to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

Tuesday, March 5, 2019.  At Sea en route to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

It was hard to believe that it was 9:15AM when we squinted at the brilliant sunlight coming in through the curtains to our balcony.  Our clocks were turned forward last night, but we were plenty tired still.  We barely made it to the dining room in time for a nice sit down breakfast.  Janet went to check out a new activity called Quilling, which was a paper craft activity for making post cards, while Ben got on an elliptical in the fitness center.  We rendezvoused at Trivia at 11:30AM, where we teamed up with Jeff, from Minneapolis.  This ended up a pretty hard trivia for us.  We scored only 17/29, but the winning team had managed 28/29.  There are many people on this cruise who are doing serial cruises, so they may be recycling some of these trivia quizzes on this ship in the Caribbean.

An announcement was made during the Trivia that the ship was being detoured to take part in a rescue.  Apparently, a small plane went down, and two people were in the water.  We were just north of the Dominican Republic and east of Turks and Caicos at the time.  A US Coast Guard C-130 was orbiting the crash site and there were two men in a life raft.  Janet and I were in Alfredo’s having lunch when the ship came to a stop and launched a rescue boat.  Ben was able to watch it bring the two men from the life raft back to the ship.  They appeared to be in pretty good condition, although one of the men looked a bit sea-sick.  They were transferred to the ship’s medical center through a boarding door near the waterline.  That must be where they transfer pilots during ship to ship transfers as well.  The rescue boat then ran back out to the life raft and towed it back to the ship, so that it wouldn’t be left as pollution.  This rescue made the national news that night.  

For afternoon trivia, we were joined by the two lawyers we had been seated with for our first dinner, and we were also joined by an older single woman, who happened to have been on the winning team during the morning trivia, although at the time, we didn’t know that.  We ended up pulling off a win with 19/22. There were bonus points for the model of Tesla that was launched into space (Roadster) and for the name of the astronaut mannequin (Starman).  That was good for Princess string bags.

Tonight was our first formal night, so we got dressed up and headed to the main dining room where we were seated on a 2 top without waiting.  Janet went for prawns while Ben had leg of lamb.  Both were good, and the Chocolate Journey Hazelnut bar was dessert.  We finished up with time to spare so we changed into casual clothes and participated in the 7:00PM “Where in the World Am I” trivia, which we won after teaming up with two Canadian couples, Bob and Sher from Vancouver, and Ed and Mary from New Foundland.  That was good for a shared bottle of champagne, which was consumed while waiting for the next Trivia, which was Movie Posters.  We didn’t do nearly as well, scoring 11/20 with the winning team getting 15/20.  We didn’t do well with identifying the titles of several of the serial movies with multiple sequels.  For that, we teamed up with Ed and Mary, as well as Mike and Jamie from North Carolina.

The Liar’s club was next.  In this game show, 4 words are presented and audience teams present cards to vote for who gives the most convincing definition for the unusual words.  However, the winner is now simply the Cruise Director Staff member who gets the most votes.  There is no audience winning team, and no prize awarded for getting the words correct.  We managed to guess 3 out of 4 correctly, although we really only knew one word for sure, which was fartlek (Swedish for “Speed Play”, but used to describe interval training in athletic training).  The other words were Gink (a consistently annoying person), Bumclock (a junebug), and Futtock (the ribs of a wooden boat).  The most memorable line from the show was a joke: How do you get an old lady to say the “F” word?  Get another old lady to say “BINGO!”

We finished up the night with the Princess Theater production show “Born to Dance”.  We had seen this before on our Baltic cruise, and it was excellent.  Unlike most other shows that show case the lead singers, this one featured the dancers up front, and explored the culture and history of Broadway dancers and choreography.  Each of the Princess Dancers actually was given title credit at the end of the show, which was a very nice touch.  

The Beatlemaniacs were featured in the Piazza, which was crowded like we have never seen a Princess Cruise after 10PM.  This itinerary seems to have managed to attract a slightly younger and more active demographic that doesn’t mind staying up late.  We watched a bit as we grabbed a snack at the International Cafe before retiring for the night.  

We arrive at St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands tomorrow after breakfast, that is if we can get up early enough to have breakfast.