2022-07-24: Day at Sea

It’s our first full day on the ship and we are at sea today on our way to Santorini, Greece. We slept in this morning. Michael and Amanda were up earlier than Patrick and Darrell. They hid on the balcony while the other two slept. Once everyone was awake, we got showered and dressed and headed to the Windjammer Market for breakfast. Windjammer is the buffet on board where they have a large selection of different foods. For breakfast that includes items such as pastries, cereal, yogurt, oatmeal, eggs, pancakes/waffles, bacon, sausage, ham, fruit, and more. While eating, we could see land on both sides of the ship. The captain made his morning announcement and informed us we were travelling through the Messina straight between Sicily and the Italian mainland. He also mentioned we were about 45 minutes behind schedule due to the medical evacuation the night before.

Michael almost lost his Seapass card at breakfast when it fell out of his pocket. We usually get the kids’ cards hole punched and put on a lanyard so they don’t lose them. After breakfast we headed to guest services to get the cards punched. After waiting in line for about 10 minutes and watching another gentleman behind us bud in front of a few people to get farther in line (what a jerk), we made it to the desk. Unfortunately, the agent told us they don’t punch the cards anymore because the new card provider isn’t very good and usually the cards stop working if they punch them now. He suggested we buy a lanyard at the store that has a plastic pouch to put the cards in. That figures. We have a couple of the pouches at home but never use them so didn’t bother bringing them. We headed to the store which is just down the hall to find out the store was still closed. It was supposed to open at 10:30 and it was almost 11:00 at this point. A staff member informed us we were too close to land since we were still traversing the Messina strait so they had to wait until we were farther from the coast. It was due to the medical evacuation the night before which put us behind schedule.

The kids wanted to challenge the adults to a game of ping pong in the Seaplex, so we made our way up to the Seaplex. Not surprisingly, it was a pretty busy place being a sea day. They had the bumper cars running in the main area so we watched them for a few minutes while we waited to see if a ping pong table would free up. The kids eventually gave up and went to play a few of the arcade games. After a bit, we headed back down to the stores to see if they were open yet. Luckily, they were just opening. We purchased a couple of lanyards and then returned to the room.

We decided it was time to give the pool a try. We got changed into our swimsuits and headed to the pool deck. Like the Seaplex, it was pretty busy. Finding a couple of deck chairs was near impossible, but we did manage to find a couple. We’re pretty sure people had parked their belongings on a good chunk of the chairs and then dispersed so they could “reserve” them for later use, even though that’s not allowed. After swimming for an hour or so, we returned to the room for a quick change and headed to the Windjammer for some lunch.

After lunch, we went our separate ways again. The kids went to the kids’ clubs again while the adults wandered the ship for a bit. Darrell and Amanda came across the Bionic Bar, where you can order a drink on a tablet and a couple of robotic arms will mix the drink for you. Pretty cool! We all met back in the room around 5:00pm and started to get ourselves ready for dinner. It was the first formal night this evening.

Shortly after 6:00pm, we headed to the main dining room for dinner. The dining room was more full this evening than it was the first night. Because of this, the service seemed to suffer. It took a lot longer for our waiter to take our order and for our food to arrive this evening. They also didn’t provide menu recommendations as they did the night before and they didn’t come by to ask if we wanted tea or coffee at the end of the meal. We’ll see if this continues moving forward.

After dinner, we found a few of the locations where they had photographers taking photos and had some pictures taken. It will be nice to have a few pictures with the whole family dressed up. The kids were eager to get out of the fancy clothes and head to the kids’ clubs. We released them from picture duty and they took off. Amanda and Darrell had reserved a couple of tickets for a show called Book in Two70 which the kids weren’t interested in so they headed to the venue to find seats. At 9:00 the show started. It was a good show, but visually overwhelming at times. In parts, we weren’t entirely sure where to look as there was so much going on in the room. The show was about an hour long.

After that show, we headed to our room briefly to see if the kids had returned. They hadn’t but we found a surprise on the bed. Our stateroom attendant left us a towel animal! We think it’s supposed to be a Koala. We had reserved tickets for another show in the Royal Theatre at the front of the ship at 10:30 called The Effectors. We were going to see it at 7:30 with the kids, but dinner took too long. As we were heading to the theater, Michael was coming the other way down the hall. We sent him to the room to get into bed and continued on to the theatre. The show was about a group of superheroes whose powers are based on effects; light, sound, video, and special effects. It was really enjoyable. They used a bunch of fun technology in the show such as lasers, lit up costumes, and various lighting effects.

Once the show was finished, we returned to the room. Michael was in bed but Patrick hadn’t returned yet. As we were getting ready to send him a message, he returned to the room. Everyone got ready for bed and called it a night.