Afterwards we headed down to the 60 Seconds or Less Game Show in Boleros and the place was already packed. Maybe they thought free drinks were involved? We snagged two seats by asking to share a group of chairs with another couple and John soon rejoined us pulling over one of the last bar stools available. He asked for my answer to the trivia question he posed earlier. Impress your friends with this factoid: The furthest north state is Maine. The furthest south state is Hawaii. But the furthest states east and west? Alaska. The mainland of Alaska is our furthest west state but the island chain extending off the mainland goes so far around towards Russia that it's actually our furthest east state too. He was very impressed with my answer as he hadn't found many people that knew the right answer. The 60 Seconds or Less Game only lasted a couple minutes with about 4 rounds doing some of the same physical challenges I did participating in this game on Celebrity. They started out saying only the winners from each round got prizes but then decided to give everyone who participated a prize.
We rushed next over to On Air for afternoon trivia where enough of a combination of trivia friends showed up that we had a full 6 member team for the first time. Since we had already seen the comedy show we initially had scheduled for tonight, we asked Smitha to reserve seats at Come Fly with Me instead. They only had the one showing tonight at 7:30PM but we wanted to be able to enjoy it now rather than when we'd originally scheduled it for the night of our Labadee port stop tomorrow.
The day before we talked with Smitha about making some room service snack delivery changes. We returned to our cabin now expecting to find our 4:30PM delivery of new snacks to tide us over since dinner would be late but instead we found a delivery that looked like someone took our new snack change requests, our old snack requests, and some we'd never considered and threw the names of the dishes into a hat and picked what they pleased. Dad made the best of it by eating the small plate of cake samples they sent but I opted to skip all of it in favor or resting in my room and watching the Love and Marriage show replayed on the TV.
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| There were 4 tiny chocolate cupcakes when this tray was delivered. Dad had already started in before I could grab a picture. |
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| One of our changes was to take a break from the guacamole and queso. Instead, we got the brownest looking guacamole I'd ever seen, queso, and now salsa got added to the guest list. |
When we changed our reservations, Smitha suggested we sit further back to get the full view of the aerial work in the show. I wholeheartedly agreed. Arriving for the show tonight we found that she reserved us two seat options. First row or third row on the bottom level. We explained that we thought she'd reserve us seats up in the first section and pointed to the seats just behind the sound booth. Turns out that those are the rows they reserve for any suite class guests. The crew member monitoring the rows was so preoccupied with another passenger asking if the seats were released yet that he didn't even notice we were trying to ask him to let us in. Smitha came up and had him move aside so we could work our way to the center of the row.
She promised to send over a bartender but had to step away to seat her other clients who happily took the front row seats. She took the time to catch our eye and confirm we were good with a thumbs up query before rushing off. We sat waiting so long for a bartender to show up that I started trying to flag down whomever was close enough. While I was doing that, Dad noticed that Smitha had grabbed one on her way out and directed him to us. Dad ordered popcorn and we both got water bottles. Dad handed over his card when placing the order and we discovered once back at the cabin that his card had been charged mistakenly for the popcorn. I don't know if it was the fact that we weren't in our original reserved seats or they just didn't notice the logo on our card. One loop message to Smitha and it was refunded by the last day.
I had been looking forward to seeing Come Fly with Me because I'd partially assumed and partially read online that it was like Mary Poppins. When the show started with the plane on stage I was a little confused but thought it was back to the storyline when a guy in a suit walked out with his briefcase. Turns out that this was more of a play on words meets cirque de soleil as we saw both acrobatics suspended from the ceiling to the performers hooked up to harnesses and flying out over the audience. Our seats were the perfect spot and height for seeing all of the aerial work without having stiff necks by night's end from craning to look up all the time.
Rather than our reserved dinner in Coastal Kitchen, we changed tonight to reservations at Solarium Bistro. When we first arrived, there was a small group of people standing in the doorway so we thought there was a line at first. Eventually we walked around them to the podium and got essentially the same reaction as Izumi with a manager falling over us and the most attentive waiter. At one point during the meal I didn't even realize I'd drunk any of my water and he showed up to refill it. Dad ordered a diet coke and the straw wrapper top came back folded into a heart.
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| Guess someone liked Dad better. My drink didn't get a special straw! ;) |
Appetizers are self serve from the buffet and we placed our entrée order of the surf and turf for both of us before heading up to pick what we wanted. The surf and turf is one of the few upcharge items at this restaurant that otherwise has no charge. But of course for us it was no charge totally. Other than some fingerling potatoes and the beauty that is finally soft rolls, the rest of my appetizer came from the salad topping choices.
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Clockwise: Grilled shrimp, mushrooms, fingerling potatoes, baby corn, shrimp from the salad station, and soft rolls.
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Not a result of the flash - it really was this dark under this section for some reason. I don't know about you but I'd also like to be able to see what I'm eating before I taste it.
Our waiter, Bonifasius, stayed on top of everything checking in on us, clearing plates, and delivering our entrees in a timely fashion. He took the time to separate the lobster meat from the shell for us and our filet mignons were cooked perfectly to our liking. His nervous laughter when I asked if he could come home with us made us all laugh.
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| Somehow Bonifasius managed to get much more meat out of my lobster than Chops did |
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| A steak cooked the way I actually wanted it - *gasp* it does exist! |
The dessert selection is also serve yourself from the buffet style but when we finally got up to see if there was anything we liked, one of the managers thought we were leaving and made a big show of thanking us and saying goodbye. Even though I had left my stuff at the table, our cutlery had been cleared so Bonifasius rushed over to give us fresh forks when I brought back what I thought was like a donut and an apple pie.
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| Why slivered almonds? Why? |
Neither were very tasty however. As we left, we were one of the last diners there. We looked around for which way to leave and one of the crew directed us out the opposite door and took the time to open the velvet rope that had been put out to show they were closed. Felt so fancy like we were celebrities closing a place down and being let past the velvet rope.
I held off mentioning our afternoon snack mistakes in hope that by tonight's delivery it would be worked out. Came back to our expected soupy ice cream sundae, cookies, milk, and popcorn but now every other plate was filled with some sort of chocolate brownie or cake.
We took the time to write out what we had really wanted as our snack changes and sent it to Smitha via the loop along with my query about the missing platinum pin and our desire to get off for Labadee tomorrow at 11AM. I spent the next hour checking in online and by the time I headed to bed, she had replied with promises to fix the order and get my pin. She said she'd reach out to us by phone in the morning to arrange a meeting place because another cabin wanted an escort at 11AM too.
It turned out that our towel animal menagerie was being more social then we were as the cruise went on. Tonight we discovered that Mr. Stingray, Druid Penguin, and Playboy Bunny had left the balcony door open a little too long and in flew Batinsky swiping Bunny's sunglasses in the process:
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| Who knew that bats were into "hanger"-gliding? |
