Bananaland at Sea
Katie 
I had been planning this Bananaland at Sea trip for what felt like forever, but when the time finally came it seemed like it snuck up on me. Initially I was going to fly in the Saturday before, but with there being threats of snow and slick roads I opted to leave Friday morning instead doing one of the most panicked packing jobs of my life Thursday evening. (And I only managed to forget a hairbrush!)
Friday I had some backup plans incase the hotel room wasn’t ready since I’d be landing before check in time, but to my surprise it was ready so I ended up just chilling there and booking flights for a future trip because are you really on a trip if you’re not planning the next one while you’re there? My roommate for the trip was supposed to be coming in Saturday morning as well but ended up joining me Friday evening as well.
Saturday when I woke up I found out that there was a Capybara Cafe and we had a visit booked for Sunday afternoon. We ended up doing my Friday back up plans on Saturday, getting tacos and walking to the Tampa Baseball Museum. The museum is housed in Al Lopez home but has a focus of players who came from the area – including my former favorite Met, Pete Alonso. It’s basically one large room but has a lot of cool artifacts and the wall with balls signed by just some of the players from the area is really impressive to see just how many have come out of that area (and many of them have made their way to the NY teams!) After I was done with my history lesson, we went for a walk to pick up the race packet for the 10k my friend was going to run the next morning. We then had a while time at the hotel over accessibility and potentially moving rooms and our own personal Tower of Terror.
Sunday I hung out in the room while my friend did her 10k, we found a cute tavern for breakfast and then made our way to the Capybara Cafe! In addition to capybaras they had a couple of baby goats, a guinea pig, tortoise, rabbit, some birds, some snakes… We were given 1 piece of lettuce/kale upon entering to feed anything but the goats with and then we had bought extra to feed them some more. Since I had no way to hold my extra lettuce I placed it on toaster (rollator) and one of the capybaras, I think his name was Latte, decided to help himself up on to toaster and help himself. Shortly after the baby goats decided to tag team me and try to get the strings on my cane and my shoelaces and staff had to rescue me. Then I decided I’d be safer sitting down and just observing everyone else interacting before I got taken out by another baby goat. We made another quick museum stop at the St. Petersburg Museum of History to check out Little Cooperstown which is a collection of 5036 signed baseballs with his a Guinness World Record.
Sunday night one of the fans who would be on the cruise organized a Super Bowl party that was basically in the parking lot of our hotel. (I may have booked that on purpose) While our hotel room overlooked the restaurant, we had to navigate around a fence so it wasn’t quite as close as expected. A few of the banana ball players came out, there was a lot of great food and we even got our own baseball card made (with a group photo). Things got a bit loud and overwhelming so we left after the halftime show to decompress and get ready for our voyage!
Monday morning we made our way to the hotel lobby to get a ride to the port, only for there to be a shuttle with room waiting for us. By the time we arrived the bananaland party had already started with the Nanas and other cast members welcoming everyone up the escalators. Since I had rented a scooter, we had to wait for the elevator, which unfortunately was not working so we had to wait until it got its act together. Entering the check in area we were given high fives from a ton of players and we were able to check in, get our keys and then went where we thought we would be out of the way. I made a video for friends saying that the waiting area was “chaos in the best possible way” only for us to end up in the way of a player parade shortly after.
Once we got on board, we decided to make our way to one of the restaurants first for lunch. After lunch I discovered that the ship had its very own penny machine which was pretty exciting. We then went to our first panel, “Broadway on the Boat” which featured Party Down’s Jenane, The Firefighter’s Sam Tinnesz and the Bananas’ Derek Klena. They had each talked a bit about how they came to banana ball and sang a song – Jenane sang Aretha’s Natural Woman, Sam sang his song Legends (which honestly I was a bit sick of by the end of the trip, hoping he adds some new songs to his repertoire for the games!) and Derek sang Dancing Through Life from Wicked and then Beautiful City from Godspell. It was a nice introduction to Derek and I’m looking forward to see what he adds to the games and a bit bummed I’m not going to be seeing the bananas all that much this season! (But hoping since I am seeing them in NYC things will be pretty awesome)
After dinner we noticed that all the decorations and theming had gone up around the boat. We also bumped into my “cousin” Connor on our way to dinner after we decided the pool deck was a bit too cold to continue watching Party Down. We ended up bumping into Flash, Ryan and Reese while we were wandering around. They had players stationed at the hand sanitizer stations on the way into the buffet making up “washy washy” songs. We also tried to check out the Whale Show – but couldn’t see a thing. I would have liked if they could have somehow streamed it on the screen behind the stage instead of it just saying “Whale Show”. Biko and Josh were narrating and it seemed to be mostly the Party Animals pretending to be whales in the pool. I can only imagine how cold that pool was. When we got back to the room we had a message that since we had asked for a refund on our Vibe Club purchase (which is a whole other story because it wasn’t accessible and no one decided to let us know that until we showed up and tried to access it) we had to go and get new key cards. Did they mention this when my friend went downstairs to request the refund? No. THEN we we decided to go to sleep early and were waken at 10pm with a phone call about the refund being processed – which we knew about because they had emailed us about it before we even set sail! THEN we got a 6am phone call while we were still sleeping that an alarm was going off in the room and they wanted to make sure we were ok and didn’t need help. There was nothing going on in the room – we were asleep.
To start the day I decided to expedite my getting out of bed by… falling. I knew it was bound to happen because the bed was just way too tiny for me. But after falling out once I learned my lesson and made all my movements very carefully for the rest of the week. For lunch we went to tea time with Princess Potassia and colored photos and did princess trivia. After that we went to the theater to watch Jeopardy and Family Feud. I knew more Jeopardy than I thought I would and whoever they asked the questions to for Family Feud were weirdos – which seem to be the case whenever this game gets played. For Jeopardy it was Tailgaters vs Bananas vs Firefighters and each team had 1 player and 2 fans to a team. Family Feud was 4 fans and 3 players – Tailgaters vs Party Animals. Split came out with a Steve Harvey mustache on and distracted everyone playing with it. Did you expect anything less? After we went by the Mascot M&G but the line was so ridiculous we decided to skip it. Before the cruise a fan swap had been coordinated and we were supposed to just leave the gifts at our groups doors but my group decided we would meet up and give them to each other in person which was a much better idea because we got to meet each other and make some new friends! I got a lot of really cool stuff – some really talented fellow fans on board! Then we went to dinner where Fisher came by and serenaded us with his flute with some classical tunes. Then it was time for our group to check out Bananaland At Sea – THE SHOW! I was really excited for it and when they let ADA in they were still rehearsing so we had to pretend like we didn’t see anything. (Honestly it didn’t give anything away) They did a great job with the show and somehow fitting a LOT of content into one hour.
Wednesday we docked in Cozumel and we had bought a pass to hang out at a resort for the day. It was all inclusive though it was a bit cooler than I was hoping for so I didn’t end up going in the pool, but it was a nice little escape. Bonus entertainment – the drunk old guy who fell in the pool (he was ok), his wife who was incredibly pissed at him, a friend who decided to finally help him out and everyone else at the pool turning into his mother and him just laughing it up. When we got back on the boat we changed for the “pajama party” and then I almost ran Bronny over trying to get off the elevator. He ended up giving me permission to run him over and told me I looked beautiful in my outfit. (Party Animals pajamas, of course!) We swung by the tattoo event only to see the line was far too long and the tattoos were all generic and not team related, went to cookies and stories with the nanas and snagged some s’mores and ended up leaving before they read us any stories… That evening the boat was quite rocky so while my roommate went to lay down (we never saw her again that night), we made our way by line dancing, I ended up going to karaoke which was sooo much fun and so many of the players were so into it. Then we popped into the silent disco for a bit but felt a bit out of place and old so we didn’t stay very long. I guess after we left someone dislocated their knee and the whole thing ended early.
Thursday morning was our Meet and Greet day! Our first session was Tailgaters and Firefighters. I was a bit bummed that they didn’t give us anything to have the players sign (other than a frame, which wouldn’t fit everyone on it, and not knowing what photo was going to go in it, and I still don’t, I didn’t know who to have sign it) and opted to instead get photos with as many of the players as I could instead. I found the 1 player who knew who Hanson was (according to my friend, there may be more, though they are pretty young – but Peanut is from Tulsa) There also were 3 rogue Party Animals in the back who were otherwise going to be busy and miss their scheduled time so we made sure to see them as well. Since we finished so fast we ended up finding the nail painting with Bronny and Ryan and watched that for a bit. With better planning, we were able to make it to the mascot meet and greet this time and meet Split, Peter Colada, Coco the Coconut, Bo and Pharty. Pharty loved my rhinestone jersey of his that I had made. Of course, MMMBop started playing as we were going through the mascot line – as if Split wasn’t getting annoyed enough with me and not driving my scooter around to pose with him instead of him moving to me… I should have just stopped and sung instead. We also popped in to Tea with the Princess again for lunch. We then made our way back to the meet and greets for Party Animals and Clowns. At this point, we were cutting it close with a silent auction I had my eye on. My friend decided she was going to leave me to meet the rest of the party animals and go win it for me. We finished up with the rest of the clowns and party animals and made our way to the auction just as it was about to be called – to find out I won for $2 over the initial bid. Timing worked out great as I was then able to pay for my own winnings. (Eli Manning game worn and signed hat and shirt). We had time to make our way to Valentine’s with Princess Potassia and then went to the Bananas & Coconuts meet and greet. We “rope dropped” KJ, knowing his line was going to be pretty long and chatted with him for quite a bit – he didn’t seem too pleased we were going to skip Jackson, but we are adults and can make our own decisions on what lines we do and don’t want to wait in. We tried to prioritize to get as many players as we could before we had to leave a bit early to head over to our painting class. We painted the outside of a villa that was supposed to have 5 steps but mine, of course, has a ramp. It was fun and we had the Party Down band with us. After painting I grabbed a spot for the closing ceremony while my friend brought the paintings back to the room to dry. It was still bright out so I couldn’t see the screen of my camera and instead looked through the viewfinder without sunglasses while tearing up from the brightness, so I was pleasantly surprised that the photos I took for the most part came out pretty good! After we went to dinner, Fisher once again was there with his flute. We picked up our bag tags, packed up our large suitcases and put them outside for them to be taken away not to see them until Friday morning. Or so we thought.
Ah, Friday. We got a “bing bong” in our room from the captain BEFORE 7AM apologizing for coming into our rooms and waking us, but due to fog we wouldn’t be able to dock at the port in Tampa as scheduled and we would be delayed. We had picked the latest time to leave the ship at 9am since we were in no rush to get anywhere as I was flying out the next day and my friend had an evening flight. When we did wake up we opened the curtains to our balcony and couldn’t see a thing so the fog was definitely bad. I don’t really remember the timeline of everything else but we were told that we needed to leave our rooms by 10am so they could start to flip them for the next cruise that would be coming on after we left. We decided to hit up the buffest for breakfast and fans first was channeling their rain delay training and threw together some last minute entertainment for us. At some point during breakfast we got word we’d be delayed until at least 2pm. With the ship wall to wall people and luggage, we opted to go into the theater to watch the teams Q&A that was added and just have a spot out of the way. At some point then our 2pm became 4pm. At this point, there was nothing we could do but laugh as the plans people were making and changing were just getting thrown out the window. At some point during the Tailgaters Q&A (I think, I just know Bret Loftis was hosting) the captain came on once again and said he had “good news in some respect” which I knew wasn’t really good news for us. He said 6 of the 7 channels had reopened but we needed the one in the middle that had not yet reopened. (Cue all the players on the stage doing “6 7” hand motions) He followed that up with “Could be 5 minutes, could be 5 hours” and at that point I knew things were not going to go well. Friends all rebooked their flights for Saturday and we continued in the theater for Q&A until 4, when we left to get dinner. Then we went back to the theater for a panel on the history of the Clowns and then over to the lounge for an acoustic show they had put together with Derek, Kaden, Jenane, Jayson, Fisher, Dalton, Sam and Tre (I think that’s everyone?) where they had played some songs they had never really practiced together for us which ended up being a lot of fun because I hadn’t been able to catch Jayson or Dalton’s sets on the boat due to other activities going on. I think it was somewhere around this time we got word that the pilot captain would be boarding the ship around 6 and we would likely be getting to the port around 10pm. After the acoustic set the cruise line set up trivia so we watched that and then decided to grab our luggage we had left in a lounge and start heading to the 7th floor since that’s where we needed to debark from. We ended up once again hiding in the theater to avoid the chaos outside the rest of the area of everyone wanting to leave. They ended up calling our 9am debarking colors at 12:17am. We made it off the boat, couldn’t find our luggage, returned my beloved scooter and made our way to the uber pick up. While we were waiting to get picked up, the next cruise was getting ready to board the ship having waited all day for updates and standing out in the freezing cold. (WHY was Florida so cold?!) We finally got to the hotel at 2am.
Saturday was uneventful. I got a 2pm late check out, hung out in the hotel lobby for a bit, took a shuttle to the airport, and hung out there for my flight. The flight was pretty empty, I had an entire row to myself. I got home by 11:30pm and was ready to sleep in a bit on Sunday!
Overall the trip was a ton of fun! I felt like we missed out on a lot with there being so much overlap but we also did so so much too! I’m definitely ready to go again if they have it! I am looking forward to the banana ball season starting TONIGHT and all of my games coming up this year!