Formal Night
Our second night on the ship was formal night. Everyone gets all fancied up and eats dinner. Not much different than any other night, except we just look nicer and there are a million chances to get your picture taken. Above is a picture (excuse Jeremy's head :P) of the duo who went around taking requests and serenading us. Our table couldn't come up with anything, so they starting singing brown eyed girl. A little down the dining room someone requested Free Bird and they played it! Guitar break included. It was pretty awesome. Naturally on a ship full of college students, Free Bird would be requested!
After dinner we ran upstairs to the Chorus Line Theater for the Captain's Welcome Aboard Reception. There we took a picture with the captain. It was very formal. We waited for Amy -- one of the entertainment staff -- to come up, get our names, and then she brought us over to the captain and introduced us. Then we took the picture and went on our way. We never saw any picture from that. Must of forgotten to print them out! After the picture, we got some free champagne! I wasn't a fan of it, but I sipped it anyway. The Captain made a speech and introduced other important members of the staff. He had a cute accent, he is from Norway. It was interesting that most of the other more important members of the staff were also from Norway. He joked about if he was here, who was driving the ship?! That would be the navigator of course! Here is the Captain:
After the reception we decided it was time to change out of our fancy clothes before the show. First we stopped by many of the places taking pictures and got a portrait taken in front of the ship's white baby grand piano. We felt this was the best background to have taken behind us since Kevin loves the piano so much! We did end up shelling out the $20 to have the portrait later on. I think it turned out all right. :)
When we finally got back to our room, we saw our first towel animal! Cruise ships are famous for these things. In December when I went on our Christmas Cruise with my family we actually went to a towel animal making demonstration, which was very interesting. I now have a little pamphlet...somewhere...that explains how to make each animal. I believe the one we had was a dog, and our Steward found Kevin's goggles and used them as the "eyes."
We changed and headed back to the Chorus Line Theater to see the first of the shows put on by the Royal Caribbean singers and dancers. It was a 70s show called Boogie Wonderland. Since we got there on the late side, we got a crappy seat. They need to have better speakers over on the sides, and there were a lot of poles blocking the view of some seats. It was an okay show. I've seen better by Royal Caribbean. Kevin was amazed they could do all that on a moving ship. And remember multiple shows.
Our night was not nearly over yet. There was still a lot to do! There was a mid-night buffet that night, and to entertain us until then, we went to play "Survey Says," which is Royal Caribbean's version of Family Fued. The entertainment staff guy in charge, I forget his name, wanted us to get in groups of six. Kevin and I were a group of two, so we decided we would just watch. A group of four people, however, asked us to join them. So of course we agreed. The staff member told us we'd be playing as many rounds as possible to get everyone that wanted to play a chance to play in a certain amount of time. He asked each group to jump up and cheer and show that they really wanted to play. We didn't get picked for the first round, but we were able to watch and see how they were playing. Apparently Royal Caribbean surveyed 100 passengers on a ship last year and this is where they got all their answers. Our group went up for the second round. We got ridiculous questions! Things like, name a fruit that starts with a "P," Name a childhood character that's name started with "Little." Ack! What?! My P fruit was papyaya, which was there! And my little was Little Mermaid, which was also there. But how many littles are there?! Apparently at least 5. Little Boy Blue. WHO?! Oh, and the other question was to name expensive car makers or something, or favorite car makers...which were all the expensive ones. Our team won a round, and the other team did too, and we ended up losing the last round. We got key chains for playing. *shrugs* okay...It was fun though! I'm glad we played!
It was then time for the mid-night buffet and ice carving demonstration! Oh, and dancing under the stars. We didn't stay long for that because we were super tired after a long day, and there were so many drunk college students there. It was Spring Break...of course there would be a ton of college students, and Kevin and I added to the college student population, but not the crazy get drunk until you puke and pass out population. Anyway, here are pictures from the time we were there! :)
The midnight buffet all set up! Each location had an ice sculpture along with it. Really cool.
They had an ice carving demonstration where he carved a fish and coral into the ice block in less than 15 minutes. I think he did it under 10! Awesome.
This was the dancing under the stars party. It was so jam packed down there that it was really hard to move around!
We went back to our room to sleep, before we slept, we checked our location out on Channel 26! I had never seen this on a cruise before, but they have a channel that shows our position on a map. I took a picture of this instance because I thought it was interesting how we did a loop on our way to Coco Cay. What was with that?!
It was a busy, but fun night! :)
~Taylor~