bobmacliberty

Flight is easily my favorite Royal production show. From the opening weightless floating scene to the flying plane at the end…just spectacular. Glad that you enjoyed it as much as I did.

We also like CK for breakfast. I think that’s their best meal. We’ll do CK for dinner half the time, and the other half will be a mix of specialty dining and WJ. Sometimes, we just want to casually mix a plate of various stuff from the buffet. Their Indian options always seem to taste great. We’ll do CK lunch once or twice but I’m more of a sandwich/burger guy for lunch rather than a plated meal.

Random thoughts… The port of Seattle is busy today. The Eurodam is also at pier 91 with us and the Norwegian Bliss is at pier 66. Warm bread pudding with vanilla sauce is the most consistently good dessert that Royal offers. There are no college football games being show in any ship venue. Only Baylor vs Oklahoma St is on the cabin TV. I don’t see any NFL games listed as being shown tomorrow. Shameful Royal, just shameful.

I “tested positive” for this virus a couple of years ago. Very happy that I did.

Adding my condolences George. May your mother RIP.

We had an enjoyable evening last night. We started in the Music Hall watching Aeromyth, which as you might guess, is an Aerosmith tribute band. They were OK but sounded slightly off. The sound wasn’t mixed well and it was hard to hear the guitars. We mostly got drums, bass, and vocals. Maybe that was because we were behind the glass in the upper deck?? The lead was really into his Steven Tyler act, the time period when Tyler was pretty heavily into drugs. At least I think it was an act. The guitarist in the Joe Perry role seemed very talented but we couldn’t hear his playing very well. We decided to leave after a few songs and check out the Rock the Room game show in the Two70 Lounge. Rock the Room was very entertaining. Its similar to Name that Tune. 5 contestants from the audience compete to quickly name the song title and the artist. Sometimes, bonus points were given if the contestants would sing or dance to the song. Some of the contestants really got into it, which makes it really fun to watch. After Rock the Room, we stayed in the Two70 Lounge to listen to the Switched On band. They were really good, especially the female lead singer. Fantastic voice. The band is from Mexico City and she clearly had a Mexican accent when she talked but almost zero accent when she sang. She did really great versions of Olivia Newton John’s Hopelessly Devoted To You and Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats. We’ll definitely be watching them throughout the week. Music doesn’t always reproduce well in videos, so I hope this clip of Tennessee Whisky does them justice (and is viewable). IMG_9482.MOV

While I have a few minutes, let’s get caught up from yesterday. Sail away from Vancouver was great. I previously posted the video going under the bridge but the views in all directions were spectacular. Beautiful city skyline looking one way, gorgeous mountains looking another way. Royal had a nice Diamond and up sail away celebration in the Solarium. They had a nice selection of hors d’oeuvres and waiters roaming around with trays of drinks. We met several officers who were there and also roaming around, introducing themselves. With the nice views out of the Solarium windows, it was a very enjoyable event. The ship initially started sailing NW toward the Strait of Georgia. For a minute, I thought we might sail around Vancouver Island. That didn’t make much sense and before long, we turned back south again. Since we could have floated to Seattle and still be on time, I think the Captain was just giving everyone a great view of the mountains. Dinner was in Coastal Kitchen. Service wasn’t very good. We waited 5 minutes and no one approached our table. I almost literally grabbed a waiter who was walking by and asked if we could get water and a waiter. He said yes and then disappeared. Five more minutes passed and still no one. I was ready to walk up to the manager when a waiter finally appeared. Drinks took another 10 minutes from there. Food was good…I had the crab and shrimp crusted pollock…but we were pretty full from the sail away celebration. I’ll write the service issues off as typical first night problems. I’m sure things will be better going forward. Back in our cabin, I noticed a nice sunset outside with a crescent moon off to the side. I went about my business getting ready for the evening and about 15 minutes later noticed that the sunset was now a bright orange, maybe the most orange sunset that I’ve seen. Beautiful.

Good morning from Seattle. We are docked at Pier 91 a little north of the downtown area. Rather than finding transportation, and since we were just in Seattle recently, we’ve decided to spend the day on the ship. Our first of many days doing so. Hopefully, we’ll enjoy relatively uncrowded spaces today. More to come…

Thanks John. I appreciate any conversions that you want to do. Did I post the .mov version? I thought I converted and posted a .mp4 version. I’m a few adult beverages in though.

Video of our sail away under the Lions Gate Bridge. The Captain said that we cleared by “a couple of meters” and they we’d have been in trouble if we’d left 5 minutes later. It’s hard to tell, but it looked like less than 10 feet. IMG_9478.MOV

That sounds like something Micheline would really like. She’s a big St Germain girl.

I’m always willing to conduct research when it involves alcohol. What different drink did you enjoy so much on your cruise that you think I should try?

Bad news…I am not able to switch the input on our TV to an external HDMI cable. Switching inputs is disabled from both the remote and the toggle selector switch thing in the back of the set. I asked our room steward and he said that it’s not supported for their system. I saw is that has nothing to do with their system and they’ve chosen to disable this capability. I asked if he could find someone who could enable it for me. He came back later and said he checked but was again told it’s not supported. I’m still deciding if I want to press this further. I’m almost certain that they’ve disabled this ability because too many passengers have messed something up, requiring a tech person to go to the cabin and fix it. Those of us with some tech skills therefore suffer. But no one has told me that yet. I just keep getting the “not supported” corporate BS answer. It bugs me when I’m treated that way. We want to get our Better Call Saul fix and watch the initial episodes of Survivor and Amazing Race. Maybe though, we’re better off unplugging from TV and enjoying the entertainment that the ship has to offer. Lots of good entertainment available and Saul Goodman isn’t going anywhere.

I ordered a Kraken Miami Vice and paid careful attention to the mix that they used. Knowing how consistently inconsistent Royal can be, I decided that one data point was not sufficient to give you a reliable answer, so I ordered a Kraken Colada just to be sure. Here you go:

Haven’t seen it up yet but the cruise is young. I’ll see if it’s running yet.

I haven’t posted any pictures of my daughter’s cat Goose recently. He’s a great cat…very cuddly and lately, a little rambunctious. Teenagers. He too is an indoor cat who likes to watch his “prey” out the window. His latest trick is turning off the lights. Don’t ask me how he figured that one out.

We just talked to our neighbors. No significant damage from Ian in our area. Just some small debris scattered around from the winds. We got lucky. Our little part of Florida, and nearby SE Georgia, has generally had good luck with hurricanes. If you look on a map, you’ll see that the Florida Atlantic coast runs a little west as it goes north, and the coast veers back to the east as it continues up in Georgia. We’re the furthest West Point on the east coast and hurricanes seem to “bounce” out to sea around us. Or at least that’s what I’m told by the locals near us.

We just met Carlington, the Suite Concierge. He seems like a very nice and helpful guy. We learned that the SL on Quantum class does not have beer and wine available from 11-11 like Oasis class. Bummer. That also means we can’t quickly run into the SL for bottles of water. More bummer. He then said that Oasis class is no longer serving beer/wine from 11-11 either. That surprised me as I haven’t seen complaints about that yet. Has anyone experienced this yet on Oasis class?

Very cool that Miami lost, although very scary what happened to Tua. He never should have returned to the Bills game. I hope he doesn’t have permanent damage. We’re in a Grand Suite. Hard to complain about a suite but my initial impression is that I prefer an Oasis Class GS and much prefer the Serenade GS, especially the bathroom (no big side counter to place all of your stuff in this one). Seems like they keep making them smaller and smaller, with less and less counter space (no bar area). Very large balcony though on the hump. Two of our last 3 cruises have been in a CLS. Once you’ve done that, especially with the SL/CK area on deck 17, it’s hard to go back.

Our cruise has officially begun! I’ve had my traditional first day lunch roast beef sandwich, and we’ve been approached about buying specialty dining. 🙄

We are onboard and relaxing in the Two70 Lounge. That has to be the most confusing boarding process that I can ever remember. From the ground floor of the hotel, we walked down 2 flights of steps to the lower level where vehicles drop off people and luggage. We walked past the luggage drop area and took an escalator up to an open area where check in happened for us and the Seabourn Odyssey that is here with us. After check in, we were give a green slip of paper which showed that we had checked in. We needed this because we then walked outside for a bit and back down the same set of escalators that we had come up, ending up at the luggage drop area with people who had not checked in. We were guided from there thru security which went quickly. We were then guided to US Customs and Border Patrol. We said that we were American citizens and were pointed to a long line that wasn’t moving at all…literally. We stood there about 10 minutes until an agent made an announcement about problems with the manifest. The line eventually started moving. Fortunately, I asked if they used Global Entry, and they directed us to a desk with no line. That probably saved us a 10-15 minutes. We proceeded from there to the boarding area which was also confusing. There were some people boarding, some lined up and not boarding, and some sitting. I asked if suites were boarding and was told that they had already boarded and I should get in line. That line wasn’t moving so I asked someone else. That person told me to go around the crowd and sit In the front. That took us near where people were boarding, so we just got in that short line. A few more checks of our boarding pass and we were shortly onboard. Phew. Although we went through a confusing maze and had a brief wait for Customs, it didn’t really take that long. We walked out of our room at 10:30, stopped in the lobby to check out, and were onboard by 11:15. I asked several times if there were separate lines for suite guests. They only place that happened was in the check in area, but there were several open spots there and no waiting for anyone. Our plan was to hang out in the Suite Lounge on deck 12. Since the rooms aren’t open yet, we can’t get to the SL since you need to walk down a deck 12 hallway to get to it.

Oh no. That’s so disappointing. Sorry to hear that. ☹️

She’s waiting for us.

You’ve had a few other things to worry about. Happy that you made it through relatively unscathed.

One other thought on Vancouver. I’m fascinated by the number of sea planes and helicopters that are constantly taking off and landing. I assume this is services to some of the of the smaller towns in BC that are not otherwise easily reachable. I converted the below video from the native iPhone .mov format to the .mp4 format. Let me know if you non-Apple users are able to view it. IMG_9446.MOV