Carnival Pride - Day 3 - Sea Day (Part 2)

After spending a bit of time using our social internet plan to let our families back home know that we'd be going to Nassau instead of Grand Turk, we started to make our way down to dinner. As we came out of the corridor at the elevator bank, we ran into a couple sweet ladies standing there who looked totally confused. It turns out that they couldn't tell where their dining room was and were completely lost about where to go. We helped them check their sea pass cards to see where their assigned dining room was listed and gave them directions on how to get to the dining room. After we had parted ways, I wondered aloud to Joni about what those ladies must have done the first two nights if they were questioning now on the 3rd night where to find the dining room. 

When we got off the elevator right next to the Normandie dining room, there was a huge gap in the line to get into the dining room with the next group of people too busy talking to notice everyone had moved up about 20 feet. Joni dubbed herself the hole finder and we slipped right into the gap before anyone noticed and moved up. 

Thankfully tonight we were led to a table that wasn't tough to get into but I did notice a couple freestanding tables for 2 scattered about away from the railing during our walk to our table. We were never led to these tables but if you have the same concerns, I advise specifically asking for a two top away from the railing. One thing I liked about each night's dining service is that the wait staff would use our cabin check in to greet us by name. Then several times when placing our orders, they'd ask for our names to include them on their pads with our order. I hope this measure was for them to be able to verify that what you're choosing to order isn't on a restricted list for your reported food allergies. 

Tonight as we were seated, the waiter only handed us one menu before walking away. Rationing out the menus along with the melted butter now? I ordered a Diet Coke and this was the first time I'd been brought the can and had it left with me at the table. 

The head waiter came by to take our order and was confused when he saw we only had one menu. When we explained that we'd only been handed one, he reprimanded the first waiter and sent him to fetch another menu. This was also the first night I noticed they started putting the cards on the tables with the names of your table's wait staff.

With the rocking of the boat and the lack of entrée choices that Joni liked, she chose to keep it simple and ordered 3 appetizers instead. I forget exactly what they were but I'm guessing one was the shrimp cocktail. Selvin brought out 2 of her appetizers with my one appetizer of the Vegetable Spring Rolls.

Side note - if you've read my past reviews, you know of my desperation for soft dinner rolls. Happy to say that the mix of bread offered each night at dinner did include a couple soft choices. A few days into the cruise, I noticed my go to roll went to a darker wheat color and eventually started having seeds in it. The cut up slices of baguette worked just as well after that. 

On my 2nd ever Carnival cruise, I had a great stuffed mushroom dish that was served as these little button mushrooms in an escargot style dish and I was really hoping to see that on the menu again now that we were back on Carnival. So tonight I jumped at the sight of Crisp Portobello Mushrooms on the entrée menu. I also ordered the Baked Ziti just in case I didn't like the mushrooms. Selvin brought out Joni's third appetizer of the Greek Salad at the same time as my entrees. 

Greek Salad - immediate veto because Joni didn't realize it had olives

Baked Ziti - a safe bet

My sought after stuffed mushrooms - well this was not it. I gave it the old college try and then I flunked it out of school.

It took around 20 minutes to have our finished plates cleared. The delay became even greater because tonight we were in the restaurant at the right time for the dancing waiter performance. 

It's fun to watch the waiters that really get into the performance. One of the waiters on the lower level was so expressive he started grinding his body against the podium in between the choreographed moves. Pictured above is not him but our Team Waiter Pratama. 

I finally had to catch the eye of Selvin working behind the booths to get a dessert menu. Pratama came by to take our dessert order within seconds of being handed it. Meanwhile, our entrée plates still sat on the table. Joni asked about the ice cream choices to go with the Carnival Melting Chocolate Cake and Pratama said it "usually comes with vanilla." For lack of anything better sounding, I went with "if all else looks bad" choice of Apple Pie. Finally 10 minutes later someone came to take away our dinner plates. We sat there for the longest time waiting our dessert to arrive. Joni stopped Selvin as he rushed by to ask for coffee. He brought it but disappeared again right away. After watching several tables on the lower level being brought bowls of multiple kinds of ice cream, Joni stopped Selvin again to ask about the other ice cream choices. As soon as he listed her favorite of Butter Pecan, Joni asked to have some brought with her dessert. Selvin confirmed and rushed away again. Our apple pie and chocolate melting cake with vanilla ice cream finally arrive. Neither of us liked our choices tonight.

We waited another 10 minutes more to see if Joni's order of butter pecan ice cream would show up and it never did. Eventually Joni was tired of waiting and by now we were already 20 minutes late to go see the Getaway Island performance in the theater. This was a brand new cast and their first performance. There was a box of 3-D glasses at the entrance to the theater but we opted out of using them given the still rough seas. I'm not usually one for the big production style shows but this to me seemed super cheesy like a high school play. The cast stood at the doors to greet people as we left. 

I would like to give a shout out here to the couple decorated doors that we used as landmarks to know how to get back to our cabin. I didn't get a picture but the first had little signs that said "Yes, we are obnoxious" and "We still don't care." The second one we used was the one featuring this sweet plaque:

As a sign of appreciation for their guidance, we would routinely salute and/or say hi to Rufus as we passed by this door. One day our walk back to the cabin occurred at the same time as Rufus and Brenda were getting into the elevator just outside their cabin. We proclaimed "Hi Rufus" as we routinely did when walking by the door only to hear a "Yes?" as a head pops back out from the elevator. We all had a good laugh when we explained using their door sign for guidance. Here's to you Rufus and Brenda, we thank you and your plaque for its service!

Once we made it back to our cabin, we discovered a piece of paper left in our mailbox with a sad message.

Carnival giveth us Grand Turk then taketh away (for good reason). Carnival give us a fun excursion to do in Nassau instead, then giveth away for "low enrollment." We researched other options including the one they offered a 25% discount if we chose instead but decided against booking anything new. We also found the official letter confirming the change in itinerary.

Not long after arriving at the cabin, we heard another distress call announcement with a cabin number. Hopefully that one was a false alarm. A bright spot upon entering the cabin cheering us up was to find we'd each been left a gift card celebrating our birthday. I'd asked the travel agent to put on our account that we were each celebrating a birthday on this cruise even though the actual date wasn't for months later. We each received $50 off at the spa and Joni also received $12 off at Pixels. Purwanto had also left us a cute message on the mirror above the desk.

I'll share more about our experiences trying to cash in these gift cards when I get to those days.

I wanted to enjoy some time out on our balcony even though it was dark by now and tried to turn on our balcony light. Nothing seemed to happen despite my flipping the switch on and off several times. I stepped out onto the balcony anyway for a few minutes in the darkness. Came back inside, got ready for and into bed, and noticed this bright flash of light from the bit of balcony door we could see around the curtain. I thought it might actually be lightning until I realized it stayed lit up. Turns out our balcony light had finally turned on after all that time had passed. I got up to flip the switch once to turn it off and crawled back into bed.

Carnival Pride - Day 3 - Sea Day (Part 1)

I woke up earlier than Joni this morning so I took advantage of an empty bathroom to grab a shower. I tried watching the morning show on our cabin TV while Joni showered but only that channel had no sound this morning. I may or may not have amused myself by making up my own dialogue. Once we were both up and dressed, we headed to the buffet for a quick breakfast. I never noticed until today how they double the space for bins of food choices by having a second row only accessible by asking the crew to scoop it out for you. Wonder if it was a coincidence that the item choices in that back row were the prized items like bacon? I ended up with a plate of pancakes, French toast, and bacon so I was ready to pour on the syrup. Hmm, a silver pitcher unlabeled, and a silver pitcher labeled as honey. I didn't want to take the chance on pouring something that wasn't maple syrup from the unlabeled pitcher all over my food so I opted for the bottle next to it of sugar free syrup. I told Joni about the pitchers and she said of course that other pitcher was regular syrup. When she went to get her own food, a lady asked her what was in the same pitcher. She told her it was syrup but the lady was so unsure, she told Joni to pour some onto her own plate and show her it really was syrup. Joni refused but politely pointed out the small ceramic cups they had above the syrup for pouring out some to keep separate before walking away. On the plus side, the sugar free syrup tasted just as good as the regular syrup.

The next clue was scheduled to be at the Seaside Theater (a.k.a. where we watched and I slept through our Dive In Movie last night) so we figured we'd multitask and hang out in the area checking out the 2/$20 Tshirt (or 5/$50) sale being held in front of the stage. They offered everyone a raffle ticket just for showing up and the winner of that drawing won two free shirts. When I spotted one shirt I liked, the crew member monitoring the table insisted I pick a second shirt or else they'd be $16.95 each. I thought they used to be more like $12-$15 each or was that only Princess? Joni ended up picking out 3 shirts and insisted on purchasing my two shirts at the same time so it would qualify for the 5/$50 price. I offered to give her cash to pay back for mine but she said to forget it since I paid for the cabana. I liked that these weren't all port specific shirts but I passed on some of the designs because they said Carnival on them. I did pick out one for Half Moon Cay and of course was fine with that one saying Carnival. I went for the largest size offered as souvenir shirts usually run small but one of the ladies of similar build tried on a large sized shirt and it fit just fine. To hold mine up looks like it could be a nightshirt on me but I wore one the other day and it was just roomy enough to look flattering on my figure.

We moved on with our purchases to sit at one of the picnic tables but soon became concerned when the time for the Clue was getting closer and no one had showed up to the stage. I noticed that on the movie screen, they started projecting the morning show with Leigh. On the busy pool deck, you can't hear the low volume of the morning show so as the time for the clue came and went, I moved over to stand by the screen. It turns out what they meant by Seaside Theater was that the clue reveal was going to be displayed on the morning show broadcast. Thankfully they not only said the suspect etc that was to be eliminated but also showed the giant cards with the name so I was able to go back and relay the answer to Joni who'd remained at the table. By then I was just PLUM tired of the noisy deck as we'd missed out on morning trivia waiting on the clue.

We headed back up to the cabin to drop off our purchased shirts and found that Purwanto had gotten an early start finishing our cabin by 10AM. Another morning towel animal greeted us and after we each took pictures, we decided to thwart our steward's attempts to replace the daily animal and hid him on top of my suitcase in the closet.

Seas this day were a little rocky so Bronty started out surfing the waves. 

Joni wanted to see what the "Creativity At Sea" activity was about so back down to our frequent location of the Piazza Café we went. It turned out to be making masquerade style masks complete with tiny bottles of glue that looked like the old puffy paint bottles. Once we figured out how to even open the glue bottles, it was horrendous to try and squeeze any out of the bottle. I went with the more practical approach and upturned the cone shaped nozzle to use as a scooper for the glue. Fun squad member Aisha was hosting this activity so she came around to each table and dumped a handful of each colorful item (sequins, feathers, gems) for everyone to share. When I saw what the craft was, especially since the band to hold the mask on one's head was super short, I told Joni that I'd decorate mine with a little boy in mind so she could give both of them to her sons. You can definitely tell looking at them both together which of us had the weird looking project in art class and who obviously had the creative touch. Who knew my toughest critic would be Joni's youngest who pouted momentarily when his older brother chose Joni's mask first without ever being told whose was whose.

Cool that they had actual craft kits made for Carnival

Here we observe the rare species of super organized crafter in her native habitat with her lined up materials so that she could "be able to see all my choices"

I started out going for a pattern around the eyes but then it morphed into this sort of birdman meets hidden mickey motif

Ahh, the crafter comes up for air to show off her masterpiece!

After we were done crafting, Joni wanted to attend the Diamond and Gemstone Seminar in hopes of winning something else. We went to the Butterflies lounge for the scheduled 11:30AM time but the newly engaged shopping experts who were hosting the talk stopped us at the door to explain that they'd postponed the start of the talk until 12:15PM because as they phrased it "The captain wants to make an announcement at 12PM about your cruise." Hmm, yes the captain always came on at noon to give an update of where we currently were etc. Why is this one so special? We headed back out into the Piazza Café to wait. The captain came on the intercom right around noon to announce that due to yesterday's medical emergency, we have to alter our route and skip Grand Turk in favor of the closer port of Nassau. As a result since Nassau was so much closer to our next port of Half Moon Cay, instead of having to leave Grand Turk at 2PM, we could stay in Nassau until 5:30PM. During the cruise and after returning home, I heard through reports from fellow cruisers that the medical emergency call we'd heard yesterday was dire enough for the captain to start changing course in order to try and meet up with the Coast Guard for a transfer. Unfortunately, that transfer never happened because the passenger passed away. By then, we had gone too far off course to make it to Grand Turk in time so we detoured to the nearest port of Nassau. Hence our Caribbean/Bahamas cruise has now turned into an all Bahamas cruise.

We returned to the Butterflies lounge for the gemstone seminar and took our chances putting in raffle tickets to win the tanzanite jewelry pieces on display. The talk was surprisingly well attended but honestly, I was bored out of my mind as this was something I'd not normally have chosen to attend. Joni was even regretting deciding to come after a while because the rough seas and being in this lounge was doing a number on her stomach. The shopping expert Salvatore talked on and on about gemstones and alternated between his passion for them and his passion for his new fiancé and fellow shopping expert Trina. Every other comment seemed to reference how beautiful Trina would look in each gemstone piece he was describing. They'd altered the seminar to also feature a quick introduction to port shopping now in Nassau and Salvatore talked so long about gemstones that he sped up like the Energizer Bunny to fit a whole lecture about Nassau shops in the last 15 minutes of his allotted hour. That may rank up there with the longest most boring hour I've ever spent on a cruise ship. While we didn't get picked to win any of the jewelry, we collected our cards to redeem in Nassau for free tanzanite earrings and filled out the forms for each of us to win a $2,500 Carnival gift certificate toward a future cruise. The contest runs until December so here's hoping one of us is sitting here at Christmas time planning how to best use that money.

Due to the long winded Salvatore and the later start time, we missed getting to play Trivial Pursuit and seeing the Dr. Seuss Parade Joni had wanted to check out. We instead returned to the cabin only to be stopped by our steward Purwanto who warned Joni that she needed to return her rented blanket from last night or risk getting charged. Joni told Purwanto that she did in fact return the blanket before we ever left the pool deck last night and saw the crew member cross off a cabin number from the list as she did so. Purwanto said he'd make a call and ask them to check again. 

We headed next up to the pool deck to grab Guy's fries and Blue Iguana tacos for lunch. Joni figured out while getting her tacos that they had guacamole in a squeeze bottle behind the counter and you have to ask them to add it. Pretty much anything else you could want for a topping is self serve at the toppings bar.

It's Taco Tuesday!

Joni headed over to the pool deck towel counter to double check on the blanket rental and spoke to a manager who promised to look into it. We kept an eye on Joni's account summary throughout the cruise and a blanket charge never showed up. No further word about it from Purwanto either. It soon started to sprinkle rain and it was funny listening to the DJ start playing songs like "I've got sunshine on a cloudy day." We watched from our covered picnic table seats as the sky opened up into more of a downpour and the mass exodus of pool loungers began. We soon spotted another group of candidates for the drink package when a 20 something young woman was trying to follow the crowd and fell on her bum on the wet deck. She was feeling no pain by then and went right to laughing said bum off. Her friends with drinks in hand came up shortly and started laughing at her so hard they nearly fell over themselves. Thankfully she hopped right back up and kept on laughing as she walked away. 

Back down to the Piazza Café where the rain had sent a larger crowd than usual to join us for Slogans themed trivia. We decided to stay put for the Gotcha! game and Actor's Trash trivia where you were given 3 items unique to 3 projects the actor had done and had to name the actor. It threw me at first because I thought the 3 projects all had to be movies which made some of the clues not fit the celebrity like they should. If I'd have known we could also include TV shows, we would have gotten a lot more correct and not lost once again by only one point!

With time to kill between trivia sessions and wanting to make sure we still had seats for each one, I used the Carnival Hub app to look up possible excursions for our new Nassau port. I'd been to Nassau a few times before so Dad and I have crossed over into the "don't bother to get off" group. Joni's one visit to Nassau before turned into that not by choice because none of her family wanted to get off choosing kids club activities and a movie instead. Joni had mentioned wanting to check out the aquarium at Atlantis so I showed her some of the excursion choices that included Atlantis. She didn't like any of the choices so I switched gears to looking at whether any of the choices were unique or different than the generic city tours or beach breaks. I showed Joni the Nassau Native Quest excursion and she was just as interested to try this scavenger hunt challenge themed city tour. I avoided the long line at Shore Excursions desk by booking it directly from the app for both of us. Upon seeing the booking confirmation on the app and the charge to my account summary, I saw the notice that said our tickets would be delivered to our cabin.

After hanging out to watch several teams play Speak Out, the game where you put a piece of plastic in your mouth and your team tries to guess what nonsense phrase you're now mumbling, we headed back to our cabin to get changed for dinner. We discovered that our tickets were already there waiting in our mailbox. 

Carnival Pride - Day 2 - Sea Day (Part 2)

Once Joni returned to the cabin, we both changed clothes and headed down to dinner. Hoping to avoid the embarrassment of not being able to squeeze into a seat along the rail, I asked the host at the podium if we could have a four top table tonight. He insisted that no, since we were only 2 people that we had to have a 2 top table. I countered by asking for one of the 2 top tables on the end of the row and he obliged. Right across from us, a group of 2 was seated at a four top booth. Whether it's a matter of who you ask or that they'd arrived right when all 2 top tables were already in use I can't say for certain. I also didn't make a big deal about my medical reason for asking so I might have been more convincing for an accommodation if I had. Since this was our first formal night, we had tablecloths but no water carafe on our table. The menus were also already provided on our table in single paper form rather than the folded book.

We each got our soup on tonight with Joni's Italian Wedding Soup and my Mushroom Cream Soup

We each went with the Broiled Maine Lobster Tail and it reminded me of a tiny dead bug on its back with its legs stuck up in the air. Is fried cricket painted to look like a lobster the new "Didja ever?" dish?  Joni tried to pawn off the rest of her lobster onto me. Notice how low the level of melted butter is in the dish. I guess they figure if they serve tiny lobster no one needs more than an ounce of butter? My favorite cruise dish is Spaghetti Carbonara so I had to get that too when I saw it on the menu. One of the off putting things tonight other than no one bothering to offer a drink refill the entire meal is that several wait staff came over to repeatedly tell us that this is the only night for such a menu and not to expect even seeing these items offered on the other formal night. Umm, good to know I suppose but did we need to be told literally four times? Were they expecting a mutiny when lobster wasn't on the menu later in the week?

Vanilla Crème Brulee and Malted Chocolate Hazelnut Cake. I asked the waiter if the cake had Hazelnuts mixed in throughout or just on the crust (I.e. the hazelnut crust of David's Steakhouse cheesecake I can eat) but he didn't know and didn't offer to check. Word to the wise - don't rely on your waiter's discretion if you have food allergies.

After dinner we headed down to the Taj Mahal to watch the Viva Variety show with comedy juggler Dana Tison. We tried to get each other picked when he asked for volunteers but it seemed more like he already had people he planned to pull up from the audience. At one point he had someone from the audience toss items to him and he jumped when one landed behind him on the stage with a loud thud. Joni joked that since Dana was from Baltimore, he should be used to loud bangs. There was a funny bit at the end of the show where Dana's volunteer took the hard hat Dana put over his face for protection and moved it to protect his crotch area instead while Dana juggled axes over his prone body on the stage. Dana revealed, once he was able to stop laughing, that he'd actually brought a super tiny hard hat for that purpose. 

We returned to the cabin and changed out of our formal clothes so we could sit comfortably on the pool loungers to watch The Greatest Showman movie. My first try of the pizza for a movie snack wasn't great. We got to the pool deck while the previous movie Murder on the Orient Express was finishing and found two available loungers next to each other in the second row. Shortly before the movie started, Joni got up to go rent a blanket and grab some popcorn. 

A larger crowd started moving in looking for seats and it was like circling sharks trying to snatch Joni's seat. I spoke up when two guys came by to try and take her seat as they were trying to save many loungers together for the rest of their group. They instead split up and took the one next to hers and one in the row in front of us. The rest of their group arrived and once again expected Joni's seat almost to the point of accusing her of swiping it from them when she came back while they were still standing there. They eventually moved on and elected to double up sharing the 2 loungers they could find. 

I had a nice chat with the lady who took the seat on the other side of me helping her find where to get the blankets and popcorn. She found out I was from Baltimore and started asking me if I go down to the casino. I was so in the cruise zone I thought she was asking about the ship's casino. Wasn't until later I realized she was asking about the one built downtown by the Inner Harbor a few years back.

All the movies shown on the Dive In screen had subtitles and while Pitch Perfect 3 had been blaring in sound level, The Greatest Showman was super low. A large enough crowd had gathered to watch tonight that they were even sitting along the edge of the pool. A handful of kids had decided to switch to late night swimming and shrieked in the pool so much I kept looking back to make sure no one was drowning. Their noise really bothered the ladies sitting along the edge of the pool so for every child shriek I heard a lady's voice telling the kids to be quiet or go play on the other end of the pool. Moral of the story, if you're hard of hearing choose a seat in the front row of loungers so you can read the subtitles. I soon no longer cared about the noise as I fell asleep on my lounger. Do you think I could get a pool lounger on a cruise ship installed in my bedroom?

Carnival Pride - Day 2 - Sea Day (Part 1)

Pretty much any cruise out of Baltimore will require a couple sea days at the front of the voyage to get out of the Chesapeake Bay and start our way south down the east coast. Today was the 1st of those 2 straight sea days so we woke up early for breakfast in the buffet in order to get to a 9:45AM trivia.

Not having been on the Pride since they instituted the more important Funship 2.0 upgrades of Guys Burgers (wouldn't a breakfast burger of sausage and a fried egg on a biscuit from Guys sound good? Someone submit that to Guy Fieri and John Heald) and the Blue Iguana Cantina, my first stop was to the Blue Iguana for one of their famed breakfast burritos. Breakfast is definitely less of a line than lunchtime. Side query: why does these eateries close so early? So many people who don't want to dress for dinner would gladly grab a Guys burger or Blue Iguana burrito.

For my breakfast burrito, I went with a wheat tortilla, scrambled eggs, cheese, sausage (which was in link form and cut lengthwise in half even though he still gave me both halves together), and hash browns. The cheese had to rely on the hot eggs to melt it as there was so no heating once put together. I couldn't finish all of it. Next time though I'd leave off the hash browns as it was a weird texture change since the wrapping smashed the hash brown into more of a hard chip. I'm also one of those people who put ketchup on my eggs so this needed a little something for extra flavor.

I included a yogurt for the appearance of culture

About the size of a 6 inch sub at Subway

Joni isn't normally a big breakfast eater but she frequently wound up with a bowl of oatmeal. Her only lament was the lack of a crunchy topping like walnuts. I love drinking orange juice in the mornings so it always made me laugh to fill my cup from the dispenser marked "Orange Cocktail." On many ships I happily drink tons of water from the buffet dispensers but after finding one time the water dispensed here to taste like a salt lick, I stuck to lemonade for every non breakfast buffet visit. Would have been fine if I didn't despise lemon flavored drinks or dressings. That's one of the things I like about the other lines. Within minutes of sitting down with your food in the buffet, there was a crew member offering to bring you a drink whether that was one of the free options of water, iced tea, or lemonade, or something from the bar like soda or a beer. In this case, I'd have had to go leave the buffet, fetch a soda from the bar, and come back to the food. 

After trivia, Joni wanted to attend the Fun Ashore & Fun Aboard talk as she heard the magic words "chance to win free stuff." Off we went to the Taj Mahal where we each put our names on a raffle slip. We sat back listening to Leigh run through a slide show about select port activities. He had a small pile of useful port items like snorkel sets on the table and started tossing them out to people who raised their hand saying they liked snorkeling. Red from the fun squad was his helpful assistant and whenever Leigh got to an excursion choice in his slideshow that they had tickets to give away for, Red would signal him to pull a raffle ticket out of the box. A few people won the classic beach break or snorkel excursions. Then Leigh got to talking about Half Moon Cay and the stingray excursion. Each time an opportunity to win would come up, Joni would get super excited but I'd mostly sit there wishing one of us would get picked for something simple and low key like the beach break. Whose name does Leigh pull out of the box for this HMC stingray excursion tickets for 2? 

Yours truly, the one person in the room who'd rather just wave and admire them from afar and otherwise wouldn't have bothered coming to this talk, gets called to win an excursion to swim with stingrays. Leigh asks if I'd ever swam with stingrays and I said no. He then asks if I want to swim with stingrays and I said no. Leigh offered words of encouragement for me to face my fears and try something new while Red tried to abscond with my prize. Leigh made him give the ticket envelope back to me. The "tickets" were in the form of a letter saying to give the bearer the equivalent of admission for 2 to the excursion. They also made sure to point out in the fine print that there was no monetary value and you can't exchange it for another free excursion choice. I briefly toyed with the idea of giving it away or Joni going by herself since the actual envelope was not personalized to any one person but Joni wouldn't hear of me not doing this with her.

The app when I purchased the soda package said that the first bar I visit and show my card will put the sticker on it for me. Visited the atrium bar for a quick soda and the bartender never bothered with a sticker but did honor the package after swiping my card. Unfortunately, they also dropped my card into the wet area behind the bar in the process of handing it back to me so I got one napkin for my drink and one to wipe down my card. I did notice that more times than not, the bartenders and bar waiters would not include a straw unless you specifically asked for one. Drinking the sodas straight from the glass was usually fine but I can see why a lot of cruisers plan to bring their own drink cups.

We returned to the cabin around 11AM and was surprised to find that Purwanto had yet to clean our cabin. To give him a chance to do so, we left after a quick pit stop and headed up to Guy's Burgers to have lunch. While the specialty burger concoctions are posted on the wall by where you walk up to order, if you don't specifically ask for one of them, they automatically hand you the plain cheeseburger and fries. There is an extensive toppings bar though with everything from caramelized onions to pickles, and sautéed mushrooms. Dispensers and little metal cups to put it in if you'd rather not just squirt it onto your plate provide the self serve condiments along with some separate squeeze bottles of various barbecue sauces. I found it odd that the ranch sauce came out like a snail but it took 2 seconds to fill up one of those little tins with ketchup. The burger itself was fine and actually well cooked despite the frequent turnover of supply they served. I found the fries to be a little too spicy but many times during the cruise Joni would go back just for a plate of fries.

Joni also tried the Quatro Formaggio pizza. Plain burger to which I added ketchup, pickles, and sautéed mushrooms

I needed a dessert to get that spicy taste out of my mouth. Fruit and the fudge heart was the best choices.

As we sat eating in the buffet, we noticed throughout the cruise a few costumed characters going around offering to take pictures with the cruisers like a sailor girl and a guy who resembled the Gortons Fisherman. I know every cruise line has the costumed characters that want you to pose for pictures as you get off the boat in ports but asking you to pose while eating in the buffet was new to me. Another new costumed character to me was the giant towel animal standing by the photo department for people to take pictures with him. I'd heard of him but also heard that he's a bit of a recluse when it comes to grabbing a picture with him. I tried to persuade Joni to get her picture with him but she wouldn't. 

One of the trivia sessions Joni was really excited about attending was Harry Potter themed trivia. We teamed up with some young adults whom at least one was on their first cruise and what they didn't know as casual fans, Joni told them in full detail. The one answer I was able to provide was actually a byproduct of getting it wrong on the Harry Potter trivia session on Oasis - the Dursley's address of 4 Privet Drive. I guessed at the house number getting it wrong on Oasis so believe it when I advise trivia players to learn the right answers to questions they get wrong as it might repeat itself. We ended up winning that trivia. It was a little odd that depending on who was running the trivia, they either insisted that the winning team only got 1 prize (in this case a ship on a stick) or some would be more generous and offer to either go grab some more or at least promise to send a prize to the cabin. I've already won more ships on a stick at this point than I care to keep dusting so I was happy to let someone else take the 2 ships we were offered. Of course everyone was all for Joni getting one of them and the other went to the young lady who was on her first cruise.

Ahh, the PRIDE at getting her first ship on a stick

To celebrate the win, we headed up to Lido for some soft serve ice cream. While Joni opted for a cone I went with filling one of the drink cups. 

I think they might be making their soft serve a little too thick these days:

We returned to our cabin to drop off Joni's trophy and finally found that Purwanto had done the morning cleaning. The new trend this trip was receiving our towel animals during the morning cabin cleaning. I enjoy seeing each new towel animal creation but I like it better when it's a treat to come back to when you're ready to settle down in the cabin for the night. Also noticed that he neglected to take my used soda glass but had taken our previous day's towel animal. Usually the stewards don't bother to take them unless we've already dismantled them so that was a little sad. I like the look of a growing towel animal menagerie by the end of the cruise.

We next headed down to the Butterflies lounge to watch the Celebrity Heads game that had started early as it was already in progress when we arrived at the scheduled time of 2:15PM. It was basically a version of the app game where you have to hold up your device above your head and everyone else gives you clues as to what it says. This panel of 3 cruisers sat on the stage in front of a screen so that the audience could see the names projected on the screen but they couldn't. Each participant could keep asking yes or no questions until they got a no answer and had to pass the microphone to the next person. 

We had also decided to attend this game because the next suspect eliminating Clue was to be revealed right afterward. The Clue game was very popular and lots of the small venue's seating was taken up by Clue players resulting in lots of angry Bingo players who were coming in to get ready for the Bingo game scheduled at the same time. I heard several cruisers complaining to the fun squad staff while waiting to grab a soda at the bar. As soon as the Clue was revealed, Bingo players could stop getting all RED in the face as 1/3rd of the lounge's occupants gave up their seats. Joni went the extra mile in kindness by holding our spot with a table so two of the complaining ladies could move over to it before anyone else swooped in. 

Our afternoon trivia session was run by Bradley from Belgium who yes is as sweet as Belgian Chocolate or so he told us every time he introduced himself before hosting an activity. When us and another team were the only two still cheering when he narrowed down the score range, Bradley made a big show of walking over to each of our teams, looking at our papers, and then pretending to announce that he was giving us the ship on a stick only to yank it back and hand it to the other team for getting 1 more point than us. Kudos to the other team for winning but honestly, the joke by Bradley wasn't all that funny. 

We stuck around for TV theme trivia - a favorite of mine. We missed a handful of them this go round because they were more toward the sci-fi or cartoon genre and a fair amount of people missed them too. The bane of my TV theme trivia existence as I missed it on Oasis too is the theme music to Grey's Anatomy. I've seen every episode and whenever I hear the music I instantly think medical show. But for the past several seasons, the show just features the opening monologue and a white background with the show logo. At least that was the only one we missed that I felt I should have known.

With nothing else of interest on the schedule until dinnertime, Joni and I decided to split up for a couple hours. I used the downtime to relax in the cabin fighting with our TV remote only working 1/6 of every button push and Joni wanted to head up on the pool deck to read and get some sun. We rode back up to our cabin together so Joni could change and spotted a sweet surprise in the corner of the atrium elevator:

The back says to post a picture saying you found it on Happiness Rocks on Facebook but we couldn't find the proper group amidst the multiple search results.

While we were each doing our own version of relaxing, we heard an announcement over the ship intercom citing a cabin number associated with a call for medical assistance. It was for a different deck than I was on but I silently sent up some good thoughts that it was simply a false alarm.