6. Shows
Each night of the cruise, there was a big show, and the nightly show was by far one of my favorite thing about the vacation. On the first night, the show was sort of an intro to cruise entertainment, emceed by our cruise director Noonan. Noonan was very funny and had a dry wit. There was a game played with people on the cruise ship, and his comments to each of the contestants were very funny. That first show also featured a few brief numbers by the dancers and singers as well as a brief stand-up bit by a comedian. On another night, there was stand-up by two other comedians.
But the best shows in my opinion were the ones with the singing and dancing. One show was sort of a French nightclub sort of thing in which all the dancers were practically naked. The other show was singing and dancing to nightclub standards from around the world. Just watching those shows once exhausted me, but I can’t imagine performing them twice. That is an awful lot of costume changes. To do all that AND help with Bingo games during the day?!?! The dancers have a pretty big workload, it seems to me. We also watched one adorable dancer teach the cha-cha to some cruisers. I could not be a dancer on a cruise ship, because it is just too much work and too much nudity.
7. Karaoke
One cruise ship job that I wouldn’t mind is running the karaoke bar, which is a place where my family spent quite a bit of time. The first night we just watched and got a feel for it. By the end of the evening, Dad had the karaoke bug and told me he would sing if I did. The next day, he was a man possessed, thinking about his song and racing off for the lounge as soon as dinner was over. Before the place got too crowded, I karaoked my way through “Werewolves of London.” When Dad took the stage, though, the place had many more people, including a raucous bachelorette party. However, he absolutely nailed his song, a George Jones number known as “White Lightning.” It’s a fast song with a lot of words, and the whole time I was watching I couldn’t believe that that was my dad up there. He was really really good. After he finished and sat down, this lady came out of nowhere and gave him a big kiss on the cheek and told him how awesome he was. We plotted our karaoke encores the next day, having learned about what was successful in the karaoke bar. But the greatest heartbreak of the trip may have been that the karaoke bar was closed the next night, which was also the last night, for a public event. Stardom foiled!
8. On Deck for the Cure
Carnival has this thing where you can make a small donation and do a mini-walk for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. The walk was held on our day at sea and Mom and I decided to do it, since we really needed to get some exercise after all that eating and it was a pretty cool opportunity all around. Carnival has raised tons of money for breast cancer this way. We did a mile on the ship’s jogging track as part of the walk, and then we did another mile just on our own. Maybe if we had discovered that jogging track earlier on in the trip my jeans would fit better now, but frankly that’s unlikely. I just would have eaten more. But anyways, walking on the 10th level of a ship is pretty cool….very pretty, great view of the water.
9. Read
This one sounds a little boring and obvious, I guess, but it was so nice to have some time to read. I read Catch-22 (review on the way). The last day, the day at sea, I read mostly on the deck, but my comfy little bunk and some couches overlooking the water were also nice places to read. The only bad thing about reading on the deck was the pressure of chair wars. A lot of people would put their things on a deck chair and then just disappear for 5 hours, which hindered the other people who just wanted to sit in the sun. It was very uncomfortable. Apparently there were fights. The last day they put a notice in the cruise newspaper that people shouldn’t save a deck chair if they were going to be gone for more than 30 minutes. The last day we sat next to some claimed chairs for like three hours and we never saw the people who had claimed them. Meanwhile people are passing behind the chairs, all sad that there’s nowhere to sit. As I said, very uncomfortable.
10. Towel Animals!
Each night, while you’re off gallivanting about the ship, the steward comes in and turns down the bed and leaves an animal made out of a towel! It’s the most wonderful thing ever! Here is an elephant we received, as well as a creature that I think is a pig. It's hard to tell cause I think you make pigs and dogs the same way.
On the last day, Mom and I went to a class to learn how to make towel animals from the stewards. I just looked back over the pictures of the ones I made, and I don’t want to post them next to the professional examples. I learned how to make an elephant and a dog. If stewards didn’t also have to make beds and tidy rooms, I would want to be a room steward so I could bring joy to all the people with my towel animals.
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