harryfat1

By the time I made it out to the open area on deck 5, the dude was already done tying the line. Damn. Couldn’t run any faster while flip-flops and before drinking my coffee. So basically what happens is since the Quantum class ship is very long (the only ship longer is the Oasis class) ship, the Aft (butt part) of the ship sticks out past the anchor area. So they need to use a tug boat to drag the line from the Aft part of the ship to the anchor. Never seen that before as I thought they just throw the line across to a dockside worker.

Going through the secret door on my way down to deck 5 of the café 270, I saw a tug boat on the port side with the dude just hanging out by the side. Huh. Wonder what he’s doing. Then I saw the tug boat backing away with the mooring line. Oh, this is cool. Gotta go take a picture of this. For those who don’t know, I’m a big mooring line fan. I’m Part of the Mooring Line fan appreciation club (some people call us a cult but what do they know) 🤪 Here is a picture of 270 (I was where the arrow was pointing) but no time to chit-chat or get my coffee. Time to run out to the open deckwalkway to see what the tug boat is doing. Priorities, people, priorities.

Day 4 – Curacao This is probably my most anticipated island visit to the Caribbean after Puerto Rico. I wanted to see PR to see its historical forts back in 2017 and for Curaaco, I wanted to see the colorful European-style buildings. Aruba might have prettier beaches but I am more excited for the buildings. No need to worry about time zone changes this morning as ship time is the same as local time. Quiet hallway at 7:19

Two days of sea day is more than enough for me. Had to supplement it with some special events to make it less boring. I’m not a sea day person. Will never do the transatlantic or Hawaii sailing where you spend days and days at sea. I need to go to Europe where there’s a new port daily so I can see different things and take pictures every step of the way… Not sure if the captain is under pressure to speed up so we can get to Curacao on time by 8 AM but here’s a Queen/David Bowie classic to close out the night. One of my favorite shows, the Magicians, has a good rendition of the song. They have a couple of actors that can sing well. The show ran for 5 years and it's an adult version of Harry Potter's School of Magic. This concludes day 3 of the trip report. +++++++++ As always thanks to everyone for reading along. Our sea days are not very exciting so hopefully, we have better pictures for our first port day tomorrow. For comparison purposes, we took more pictures of our one port day at Curacao than 2 sea days combined as we traveled for scenery and not relaxation.

Same view as the previous night. The corner cabin is still displaying its nightly lid balcony area. I wonder if they had to bring those in during the cabin maintenance scheduled for tomorrow? Interestingly now that we are just hours away from Curacao (11;45 PM), the ship is sailing faster at 20 knots whereas earlier we were below 17 knots. Were we running behind schedule and the captain needed to sail faster? The final picture of the night. The newer cabins now have digital readouts so you know exactly how hot/cold is your cabin. On the older ships, it's just some dial you turn and hope it gets to where you find it comfortable as you play with the dial the first couple of days. On the Odyssey, you can set it to 0.1 degrees of your ideal temperature. Yeah, let’s be anal and go for 72.8 degrees. Not 72 or 73, but 72.8….🤪

After the show, the same routine of water and tea at Café Promenade/Esplanade and back to the cabin. There was a big group of dancers from Bolero taking over the Esplanade. You have to squeeze in on both sides if you want to pass through

Tonight’s Headline Entertainers are “Las Vegas Tenors”. Yeah, I never heard of them either but that’s par for the course of these cruise ship guest entertainers. They were OK. Not the best and not the worst of all the entertainers I have seen on various cruises. They will blend in with the rest of them in the fuzzy memory bank. I think I had seen some people’s trip reports of seeing the Beatles impersonators. I would much rather see that than these Las Vegas guys singing some songs that are older than me. Anyway, entertainment is subjective. I’m sure others would like these guys more than the Beatles. Oh, side note. I didn't take a picture of it, but the row of people in front of us took their "chair hog" behavior from the pool deck into the theater. About 8 of them left their drinks and jackets in the first row before the show and took off doing whatever just so they could have the seats for themselves right at showtime. Never seen that practice done at the main theater before. I had seen 1 person at Studio B trying to reserve an entire row for her family/friends but at least they have a live person. This time it was just drinks and jackets and not a single person in sight.

A lot more empty MDR at 9:25 as many people are done eating and are gone As I said in the previous post, we typically get the next day’s menu the night before but tonight we never saw the head waiter so we didn’t get a chance to pre-order, but we weren’t going to order anyway as we were going to go to solarium bistro for dinner the next night. Since we had few moments, it was a quick visit to the uncle in prison. Earlier someone asked about a different photo backdrop for the Odyssey, this was new to me as I had never seen this before.

OK. Let's try to upload some pictures tonight as the CC server wouldn't allow any uploads last night. ++++++++++++ Desserts:

I read in the news some Californias are still without power after 4 days. Incredible. We got hail at work this afternoon before the rain finally stopped. I think we should be done as this was the last part of the storm. Chinese New Year is this weekend so it'll be good to have nice weather as many people are out and about visiting families and friends.

Programming Note: I tried to upload more pictures tonight but I kept getting an error message from CC. So until that is resolved, I can't move forward on the trip report. I believe CC was having issues earlier this morning as I couldn't sign in. Anyway, here's one bit of news on storm messing up "Perfect Day": https://www.cruisehive.com/high-winds-cause-difficulties-for-ships-at-royal-caribbean-island/122820

Escargot - British style (or not)... Oh, by the way, you can tell who took which picture. My pictures are typically "in your face" close-ups (similar to my bad jokes) whereas my wife likes to pull back a little more on her pictures

Huh. How does that work? Did RCI buy the regular Sauvignon Blanc and add in the sugar substitute or was the winemaker being cheap in the process and doctored up their regular wine?

The dinner theme tonight is “UK Night”. I have only been to London once before the kids were born so my knowledge of UK food is pretty limited, especially since we are on the west coast, UK food is not that common in our neck of the woods to say, sushi. Not sure how Escargot is listed under the UK theme but hey, half of the RCI theme menus make no sense. Or the suggested "white" clothing - is that associated with the UK in any way? Just ignore the theming and get whatever you like to eat...

OK, time for dinner. Back to the MDR to “our table”. I like the fact we can just walk in and sit down and not have to talk to anyone at the podium. The Book started at 7 and they timed it so that the late seating folks could just go directly from the show to the MDR. However, we took a slight detour in going back to our cabins via the “secret entrance” as we were already on deck 6 from the show. Fewer people left the show from there and no line to go back to our cabins to use the restroom in our cabin. View of MDR behind me at 8:06 as I just need to turn my back to take this picture. Originally I had thought people would dress up for Christmas night dinner so I brought along 3 ties – 2 formal nights plus 1 Christmas night but the RCI theme for the day was “white” so no need to whip out the suit so wore my “whiteish” Hawaiian shirt for dinner as that was as white of a shirt as I brought. If RCI wants people to dress up for these non-formal theme nights, they should at least show it on the app so people know ahead of time. I had no idea there would be a “white” night.

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A few more pictures and videos of "The Book" and we are done with the show.

We didn’t have any noise problem but we don’t go to sleep until around midnight at which time I think they are mostly done. The port side at the aft is right above Giovanni’s and Café 270 kitchen area. I think if you go to sleep early or want to sleep in late, that might bother you. There could be some noise from Giovanni below that might keep you up late as they clean the kitchen for the night or Café 270 is cooking the burritos and sandwiches in the morning might wake people up. Here's the deck plan for people to follow in case they are not sure what we are talking about. The red arrow is right over the kitchen which could be the noise some cruisers have complained I want to say I might have heard some noise below us on one of the nights/early morning but it wasn’t severe enough for me to remember it to want to include it as part of my trip report. But it could be the time of the day and people’s sensitivity to noise. If you are at all concerned, maybe you can change your cabin location to the starboard side as those cabins are over the Next cruise and the art gallery and those areas have no traffic to speak of late at night or early in the morning.

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20231225_191624.mp4 Trying to just have one video as a stand-alone in case some people can't play it on their tablets

Let's try to upload a few pictures of "The Book" before I call it a night. ++++++++++++++ Showtime at 7 PM. As with the Effectors, skip the next several posts if you don’t want the spoiler info. For those who want more, you can go to YouTube and watch the entire show from home as I have seen people upload videos of the entire show. I will give you enough for the sound and feel of the show but not all the details. The show is called “The Book”. It’s composed of 7 chapters with each chapter around 6 minutes of song and dance as each segment is supposed to represent a chapter within the book. Before sailing, I read some reviews on this show and some people didn’t like it because it lacked a cohesive storyline. As much as you can criticize the Effectors for having too short/too simple of a story, at least each of their segments connects. From my untrained non-artistic eyes, the Book is just 7 unconnected “chapters” of a mysterious book. I don’t know what book that may be but it’s certainly not a fiction book with a central character(s) going from chapter to chapter. I couldn’t make any connections between the chapters. If someone can/has read somewhere on the connection, please leave a comment. If this was a real book, it would be like a reference book or an encyclopedia. Those folks who read my Navigator report will know I’m a big fan of the Cirque Du Soliel franchise having watched their permanent shows in Orlando/Las Vegas as well as various traveling shows as I upload photos from attending the Corteo performance in SF in that report. For me, the Book is similar to that type of vibe of a Cirque show whereby you have singers singing songs you never heard of and acrobats perform gymnastic stunts on the side with various weird costumes and backdrop props. Ok, there are 2 songs from the Book some people might know but unless your music knowledge is extremely diverse, it’s unlikely you will know most of the songs. The Book checks all those boxes that make Cirque so great. So if you are someone like me who likes the Cirque show basics, then you should find the Book enjoyable. For those who want a Broadway-type musical with a straightforward storyline and not the Cirque-type weird mystical vibe, you may not like the show. Like food, entertainment is subjective. Not everyone will be pleased with all the entertainment options.