Saturday January 17We all woke up a lot earlier than we needed to – probably because we were ‘too excited to sleep’ We showered, even though the temperature control was a bit.. broken. Just before noon we headed to the hotel next door to ours, said hello to Nemo and Dory in the aquarium and waited for our shuttle.
We took the $10 shuttle ride to the port, gave our luggage to the porter and made our way to security to get on the boat. We showed our passports, went through the metal detector (where I was pleasantly surprised that my leg brace didn’t set it off) and made our way to check in.
Our sign and sail accounts were set up, which were also our room keys. It was about this time I noticed that my little schedule book had 2 of almost every page. It was very confusing to begin with, but I decided that they just knew I was a scrapbooker so I got double pages so that I could put almost all of them in my scrapbook once I got home!
We went up the escalator, got a group photo taken (I think one of the only photos of the 4 of us from the whole trip!) and got on the boat!
We checked out our room (so tiny!) and then headed to the Lido deck and got our first drink of the trip and some lunch. We also had our first encounter with one of the artists when we rode in the elevator with none other than Mr Stephen Kellogg, who showed us all the different Dramamine bracelets he was wearing. The last boat he was so seasick he had to sit for most of his sets!
At 4pm we did the lifeboat drill. Thank God we didn’t actually need to evacuate during the course of the trip because there was no way we’d survive. We barely figured out how to get our life vests on!
Then we headed back to the Lido deck for the sail away party where Cowboy Mouth was playing. Pretty much everyone on the boat was there, since it was the only show going on at the time.
We had our first Hanson spotting when Isaac and his wife were coming out of the pizza bar area while we were entering it. Isaac was sporting a spikey hairdo and Maribeth and I both commented on how it hadn’t been that long in a while and we liked how it looked!
As we walked through the casino area Maribeth noted that we were moving (we had no idea we had left the port) and I noted that I didn’t feel like we were moving at all, and was glad because earlier I thought I’d fall over when we took off.
Then we headed to the formal dining room (we had met up with some Vets who told us to eat there as much as we could) and were told that the room was “full” except we saw empty tables. We had to walk to the other restaurant and take the elevator down to the 3rd floor. Once we were waiting for our seats, we really felt the rocking. The whole dinner it seemed like we’d fall out of our chairs the rocking was so bad.
Also, 2 tables away from us having dinner was 2/3 of Hanson and their crew. That was pretty cool and it was shocking that no on bothered them. Although it was funny to see the reactions as people turned the corner and noticed them.
After dinner Maribeth and I took a quick nap while Michele and Marisa checked out the boat. We headed to the Lido deck for Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers set.
We went to bed right after because we had to be at our shore excursion at 9am.