Escape From Miami - Kinda, Sorta "Live From" - October 7-14, 2017

[grandmarnnurse]

Poohby Joe is definitely tagging along. He’s a little upset he won’t have a cabana this time around but is excited about the prospect of a “Glow Party”

 

 

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Glow Party is awesome!

 

 

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[grandmarnnurse]

Rumor has it that O'Sheehans has it. I'll definitely keep an eye out for it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, poutine is Quebec's contribution to the science of the hangover prevention. It's French fries topped with cheese curds and brown gravy. As my wife would say, Yum!

 

 

 

I don’t recall any poutine in O’Sheehans on my last cruise. Sorry.

 

 

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[POA1]

We had lunch at Pincho y Tapas this afternoon. I'll post the menu later. Meanwhile, let me subject you to some food pix. It was just DW and I, so we had no one to veto our food photos.

 

[POA1]

I'm doing a terrible job of captioning my food pix. Tapatalk puts them all together. The only way to caption them is to edit the post, and quite frankly, I'm too lazy.

[Wizpharm2]

I'm doing a terrible job of captioning my food pix. Tapatalk puts them all together. The only way to caption them is to edit the post, and quite frankly, I'm too lazy.

 

 

 

Well.....you ARE on vacation!

 

 

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[POA1]

More from Pincho.

 

 

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that two extra glasses of wine have just showed up. The title of that photo is, "Reinforcements Have Arrived."

 

I'm going to have to get better at ordering wine. When I say, "For white, we'll have X and for red, we'll have Y," they seem to think we want one glass each. Why?

[summer slope]

Thanks for the laugh out loud review. Love your posts.

[POA1]

This question comes from the inquisitive mind of Les Cheatham of Tightwad, Missouri. He asks, "Since they already charge you a daily service charge and 18% on your drinks and specialty dining, do you think it's appropriate to tip extra?"

 

 

Excellent question, Les!

 

 

Now go away.

 

 

Feel free to start yet another tipping thread somewhere else.

 

 

We're waist deep in experiments here and we really don't have time to wade into the quagmire that is gratuities. We're trying to do important investigative work here.

[POA1]

...

 

Regarding your mini-bar/fridge. It's likely that the person before you requested that the mini-bar be locked and the steward never unlocked it. You can leave a note for your steward to empty the mini-bar if you'd like. That's what we always have them do.

 

Thanks for the sage advice, Brookie! We have achieved mini fridge jailbreak and now have place to store 5 liters of water.

 

Huskerchick is on a power nap so that we're ready for "After Midnight" at 10pm.

[POA1]

Day 2 - Sea Day

 

 

The Drink of the Day is Long Island Iced Tea: Don Julio Blanco Tequila, Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, Tanqueray Gin, Smirnoff Vodka, Triple Sec, Fresh Lemon Juice,**Simple Syrup, and Pepsi.

 

 

This is a slight variation on the traditional Long Island Iced Tea in that it has spiced rum in place of the normal white rum. It's also got Pepsi instead of the more traditional Coke.

 

I'll be interested to see if today's Drink of the Day results in a lot of Drunks of the Day. I think it has potential.

 

 

 

 

I really don't trust sweet mixed drinks. They go down too fast. Give me a drink, like whiskey, with a built-in signaling mechanism: the old straight bourbon whiskey burn to the back of the throat if you drink too fast. When the burn disappears, and you can slurp down straight whiskey like it's water, that's a sign to apply the brakes. You don't always see the sign, but at least the sign is there.

[POA1]

Clearly an anti Canuck bias. If we did not have an excursion planned tomorrow, I would mount an enormous protest, with free Timmy Horton's Maple Dip donuts for all the angry, yet unfailingly polite protesters.

[POA1]

Huskerchick has set a goal of trying a signature cocktail at every specialty restaurant we try. Last night, she had the Negroni at at Cagney’s. If I had to guess, she’ll be having the Classic Caipirinha at Moderno. It’s close enough to a Mojito, so that should be a good choice.

 

While we're on the subject, the drink is pronounced Kai-Pee-Reen-Ya. The cocktail is made with Cachaça which is pronounced Ku-Shah-Suh. I'll probably be having bourbon on the rocks, which is pronounced A-Nuth-Er Pleez.

 

In some cases, the specialty restaurants have more than one signature cocktail. In those cases, DW will probably get the one she thinks will be the best. I'll get whatever the back up choice is. If there are more than two, I'm not exactly sure how we'l handle it, although skipping something is out of the question.

[POA1]

I'm just now getting to see my breakfast photos from O'Sheehans. Sorry for how out of focus they are. Clearly a quality control issue on the part of the Division of Keeping Greasy Fingerprints Off The Camera Lens.

 

The offending parties have been sacked.

[POA1]

Rejected Banner Concepts: Journey – Escape Cover

 

 

Original Cover:

 

 

Deep in their secret underground bunker, the Institute’s Department of Theming Things with Graphics developed a number of concepts to accompany this thread. You’ve obviously seen the one that was chosen, “Escape from Miami.” The department also created a banner concept keyed off of Journey’s 1981 9x Platinum-certified album, “Escape.” For this concept, our accomplished, yet grossly underpaid team of graphics professionals started with the album’s original cover art. The original shows a scarab beetle (Journey’s logo) busting out, or escaping, from some sort of a spherical object.

 

Our clever designers removed the beetle, flipped the image and made it look like the Escape was shooting out of the sphere. They also had to flip the text part of the album cover back, so that it wouldn’t be mirrored. After that, they high-fived and took a short nap.

 

Upon waking, they realized that they needed to put a cruise-specific tagline onto the banner. The department in charge of Writing Things for the Department of Theming Things with Graphics came up with “Lovin’, Touchin’ & Squeezing with Open Arms Cruise.” This title had the advantage of (a) combing two Journey song titles* and (b) being absolutely nonsensical. Try to imagine two people with outstretched arms, loving, touching, and squeezing each other. It would just be awkward bumping. The graphics people are really pleased because after a painstaking search lasting well over 7 minutes, they were able to locate and secure the ESC4P3 font that was used on the album cover.

 

Ultimately, this concept lost out to “Escape from Miami” because the winning concept had (a) the Miami skyline, (b) a serious weapon, © helicopter gunships, (d) a bad@ss Kurt Russell, and (e) Pitbull. Truth be told, it was mostly Pitbull. After spending some serious time on hold with NCL support reserving show tickets, we have Pitbull on the brain. They play snippets of “Freedom” on a reeeeally regular basis. You’re free to do what you want and have a good time. I get it. Answer the friggin’ phone.

 

The Department of Actually Writing Stuff was seriously chafed by this decision not to use the Journey “Escape” concept, because they felt that the Journey singles catalog had a ton of potential. They drafted a strongly worded internal memo defending the “Journey Escape” concept. Presented here is a cleaned up version in case small children are reading this. (Go away, wee ones! Just because there were Oompa Loompas in this thread doesn’t mean that we have candy.)

 

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

 

To: National Institute of Cheer Management Team

 

From: Department of Actually Writing Stuff

 

We strongly urge you to reconsider your banner graphic decision. In our opinion, using “Journey’s Escape” album would be much better. We were just spitballing for 15 minutes and we came up with these ideas that would incorporate actual song titles from Billboard-charting Journey singles. Everyone was completely sober. Imagine what we could do once we start on the idea juice. Here are the song titles and the topics for which we’d use them:

 

"Wheel in the Sky" - 1978 - Ropes Course, Aqua Park

"Lights" - 1978 - Glow Party

"Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" - 1979 - We'd find something, Use your imagination. Hint: Think groping.

"Any Way You Want It" - 1980 - Mini Golf, because this song was in Caddyshack

"Walks Like a Lady" - 1980 - Again, this practically writes itself.

"The Party's Over" - 1981 – Goes with pictures of drunk people.

"Who's Crying Now" - 1981 - Again, drunks.

"Stone in Love" - 1981 - See Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin', above. Although it would also work if we have some photos of stoners. It’s a pretty versatile song.

"Don't Stop Believin'"- 1981 - 80s Party

"Separate Ways" - 1983 - This would have been awesome for use with that photo of luggage in the hall the last night.

"Faithfully" - 1983 - Something to do with Latitudes program. Our research associates who are Platinum are developing a few ideas.

"Girl Can't Help It" - 1986 - We're thinking drunks once again. Seriously, you guys suck for picking the stupid sci-fi, action movie.

 

Please re-evaluate your decision. We’re missing out on comedy gold here

 

Sincerely,

 

The Department of Actually Writing Stuff

 

* - Yes, we know the real song title is “Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'” and not what shows on the graphic. We’re professionals. We have researchers. This was done intentionally.

[POA1]

Our entire party, except for AlexandNessa, have reservations for "After Midnight" at 10:00 PM tonight. If you've ever seen the TV Show "Designated Survivior" with Kiefer Sutherland, you'll understand why we can't all attend the show together. Should there be some sort of tap dance or jazz-related tragedy, one of us has to be able to carry on our scholarly mission.

 

Whether or not DFIL attends the show is somewhat up in the air. The 10 PM show time is a little late for his tastes. If he bails, then my brother-in-law will probably skip "After Midnight."

 

 

Hopefully, AlexandNessa will be able to report on Norwegian's Night Out Dance Party which will be going on while we're at the show.

[SSMcruises]

Please report on the quality of the Moscow Mule. Praying for a good quality ginger beer.

 

Thank you, ❤️ [emoji1063]

 

 

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[wdw1972]

Wonderful to see another of your fabulous and educational reports!

 

Sue/WDW1972

[Langham1865]

Long time fan(well since you started this review), first time commenter here.... great review so far.

 

I would be willing to wager if your see Clarence AKA "The Chocolate Cowboy" at the 5 O'clock Somewhere bar on the Waterfront, he could make a Wang Wang... thought he might not know it by that name. If you do see him, ask him if he will still be on in December, as I am sailing the Escape then and would love to visit him.

 

Happy sailing

[TheDougOut]

Wonderful to see another of your fabulous and educational reports!

 

 

 

Sue/WDW1972

 

 

Uh, is this who I think it is?!? Did you used to post regularly on RADP? That used to be my old stomping ground. If it is you - we once crossed paths at AK, on the gorilla bridge, yet I was too star-stuck to say Hi. Too funny. I hope all is well with you!

[POA1]

It is with a heavy heart that I must report that I am once again abandoned by my travel companions. But press on I must.

 

At O'Sheehans to lay in supplies.

 

Groove Addiction in the Atrium. Hoping to go full on Doug tonight and see what's open after my late feeding. Turned off my phone's automatic time, so I should be able to stay on ship's time. This is important because we have sloths and monkeys in the AM.

 

Wish me luck.

 

If anyone knows the magic words to get a full size bourbon, please let me know. I know that Mr. Lincoln is not the password, nor are the Washington twins.

[POA1]

Uh, is this who I think it is?!? Did you used to post regularly on RADP? That used to be my old stomping ground. If it is you - we once crossed paths at AK, on the gorilla bridge, yet I was too star-stuck to say Hi. Too funny. I hope all is well with you!

Doug! Thanks for posting the District Brew House list. We're doing our best to double check your work. Nothing personal. We just want to be thorough.

[POA1]

Long time fan(well since you started this review), first time commenter here.... great review so far.

 

I would be willing to wager if your see Clarence AKA "The Chocolate Cowboy" at the 5 O'clock Somewhere bar on the Waterfront, he could make a Wang Wang... thought he might not know it by that name. If you do see him, ask him if he will still be on in December, as I am sailing the Escape then and would love to visit him.

 

Happy sailing

We'll check tomorrow. For the record, I really don't like the Wang Wang. We order it simply for a photo op.

 

However, if we ask Clarense (correct spelling) for a Wang Wang and he drops trou, it's on you.

[POA1]

Wonderful to see another of your fabulous and educational reports!

 

Sue/WDW1972

Thanks, Sue!

[POA1]

Please report on the quality of the Moscow Mule. Praying for a good quality ginger beer.

 

Thank you, [emoji173]️ [emoji1063]

 

 

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Will do. The Mule has been a DOtD all season, so there's a pretty good chance we'll get to it. My has enthusiastically volunteered for Mule Duty, regardless of whether or not it shows up on the drink of the day list.

[POA1]

Skyline looks like the only game in town. I suppose everyone is trying to rest up because Sloths!