The Dr Who Cruise Part 1
About every15 or 16 months, a friend of ours organizes a Dr Who Cruise. It generally isfairly small, maybe 40 people. This year’s was the largest so far, with 72guests signing up for it, including about a dozen ‘talents’ and 26 members ofone family! The next few blogs will follow Hubby and me as we enjoyed thecruise.
Sunday, Oct22 – We’d been looking forward to this cruise, and now it wastime to get to it. First, I got out of bed at 5:20 AM to load the dishwasher,because who wants to come home to a sink full of dirty dishes? Then I cleanedout 3 email boxes and packed my cpap for the trip. About 9:30, we tossed thesuitcases into the Toyota, put my car in the garage, and we were off.
Getting tothe parking lot at Port Canaveral was mostly uneventful, although there hadbeen some confusion when I wanted to mapquest the directions to get there.Turns out there are 2 lots with very similar names, and I had made areservation at Lot B when I thought I was making a reservation at Lot A. Butthat got straightened out before we left home, and the directions to get therewere simple. However, we didn’t see the sign for the parking lot until we weredriving past it, so we made a couple u-turns to get back to it. We arrivedabout 2 minutes late for our reservation, but we were the first ones on the11:15 shuttle to the ship. By 11:25. The shuttle was full to the gills and tookoff.
This was aWestern Caribbean cruise on the Wonder of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s largestship. We’d been to the Caribbean several times but traveling with our DWfriends was always fun.
Once we gotto the terminal, it was practically a walk-through to get to the ship. Ofcourse, my artificial knees set off the security alarm, so that slowed us downa bit, but not for long.
The firstthing to do is to go to our muster station, so we know what to do ‘in case ofan emergency’, so we asked how to get there. Our muster station was through thespa area and deep in the fitness area, which seemed a strange place to put it,but we didn’t ask questions. Perhaps there was a nearby exit to the outsidedeck that I didn’t notice.
The buffet isalways a madhouse on debarkation day, so we thought we’d try the main diningroom, but that had a private event for those passengers who had bought the ‘key’package, and we hadn’t, so we ended up in the buffet anyway. At least we got toclaim our soft-drink package and didn’t have to rely on the buffet’s watered-downjuices.
By the timewe finished lunch, our cabin was ready for us. But we had packed everything inthe suitcases except our travel documents and whatever I could stuff in myfanny pack, so there was little we could do there until our suitcases showedup. In the meantime, we explored various decks, looking for ‘quiet spots’ wherewe’d be able to work. John had brought some short stories to on and edit on thelaptop, and I would be writing on my blog and current WiP using pen and paper.
We went tothe fitness center about 4:30 to see if they drew our names for a spa raffle.We didn’t win anything in the raffle, but we decided to sign up for theManagers Special, which was a 75 minute massage. We made our appointments forThursday at noon, without knowing what our DW schedule for that day might looklike.
Our cabin wasa surprise. It was pretty much a normal cabin, except it had an extra 7 or 8feet to it. The ceiling sloped down in that area, and in the middle of the slopewas a big picture window looking out over the bow of the ship. Next to thewindow was a button and a sign asking that we close the curtain in the eveningsso as not to disturb those working on the bridge. It took us a minute to figureout that button, which was 3 buttons in one, but we did understood it beforenight fell.
Our group’sdining time was 7:45PM, and those who wanted to could meet at the Schooner Barat 7:00 for a social hour. At about 7:45, we would all go down to the MainDining Room and find the table we were assigned to. On the first day, I didn’trealize the Main Dining Room was located on 3 decks, so I went down to deck 4,because that was where I remembered seeing the sign for it. There was a longline to get in, but it moved pretty quickly. When I got to the maître d’ andgave my cabin number, he informed me I was on the wrong floor and sent me up todeck 5. When I got to the deck 5 maitre d’, he started to show me to my table,got distracted by his radio, and told me to ‘look around, your party is aroundhere somewhere.’ I knew a moment of sensory overload; there was a sea of facesaround me, and I couldn’t pick out 1 that looked familiar. Then I heard Hubbycalling my name, and I was united with the friends who were sharing a tablewith us.
After dinner,those fans who were interested went to the conference center to discuss ‘creativeendeavors’ for the cruise. Sometimes the fans write a short DW episode and filmit during the cruise, but with only 7 days, that didn’t seem feasible. So itwas decided to split the creative fans into groups and let them write stories5-7 pages long. On the last night of the cruise, the professional talent wouldread the stories out loud to the group.
The gatheringwas turned over to the creative fans. I couldn’t participate this time becauseI had deadlines to meet. Hubby was placed in charge of one writing group, and hespent some time talking to the other members about story ideas. Eventually, we crawledoff to our cabin and went to bed.
