Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Escaping Insanity: A Cruising Trip Report. Day 4: Swimming in (the) Trunk (of the) Bay, Part 3

The previous part of this day can be seen HERE.

On tap for dinner tonight was the Supper Club.  I had heard that the food was only so-so here, but we didn’t select this venue for the food – we were looking forward to seeing Company Men singing!  We arrived around 5:40 and were seated with a column blocking some of the stage.





Oh well…

The food was pretty much as previously-described to us…”meh” .  The singers definitely were talented, and I actually felt a little bad that they weren’t getting as much applause as I thought they should have received.  Granted, that goes along with a dinner/show combination.  They have shorter-term contracts, so seeing them on the ship might be hit-or-miss.





We were out of there by just after 7:00.  It would have been about 10 minutes earlier, but the servers misplaced my room key, and we were the next-to-last-table out.  No worries, though…we were planning on heading right back in for the 8:30 “Escape the Big Top” escape room.  Still, we had about 75 minutes to kill, so we headed back to our stateroom so I could turn off the GoPro, which had taken about 7,000 pictures of us leaving St. Thomas (please see video).  On our way to the room, though, we noticed a photographer with no wait, so we hopped in and got a couple of photos.







This little montage, taken just after we left our rooms, gives you a little peek into how we typically are.










We started making our way back to the atrium.  As we went past the Cellars, we heard the distinct riff of Orly’s guitar.  We waved, and he waved back.  We then pointed to the boys and shrugged our shoulders jokingly.  He laughed as he kept on playing.   A couple of minutes later, we found ourselves back at the atrium and sniffed out the onboard Starbucks.  We chose to be bad parents and decided to feed our kids’ addiction of caffeine.  I’m more of a purist…just give me a venti nonfat cappuccino, and I’m happy; the other three basically had them melt a candy bar in a cup and added a shot or two of espresso (they all got mochas or frappuccinos).  Since we didn’t think their pancreases were under enough duress with the candy-bars-in-a-cup, we also ordered some macaroons to share.


We sat down nearby (rather, we tried to sit down, but our legs were starting to tremor a little from the buzz) and listened to Groove Addiction finish up their set.  Around 8:10, we went back to the Supper Club and got assigned to a table with just us.  We were expecting to be paired up with another family or two, but it was just us until right before the start.  We had a family from Florida at our table – the husband was an on-air personality for a local station, but I couldn’t remember what he said he did.


The game started, and we all paid close attention to Ringmaster JoJo (it would have been really funny if it were ringmaster Jackie Tang…all the way from Hong Kong) as he gave the instructions for the game.  Now, remember…the Mushfam is competitive…this family is, too.  I liked our chances!  We had to solve six puzzles, which all fed into a seventh puzzle.


By the time the game ended, we had figured out two of them.


I felt like I should have put a bag over my head for the rest of the cruise, like Sylvestor the cat’s ashamed son




After leaving the Supper Club, we headed back to the Atrium.  The Celebrity Dance-Off was scheduled for tonight, and research told me that this was not to be missed.  We looked for some chairs and found nothing, so we headed upstairs.  While we were doing this, “Sing It If You Know It” was going on.  I expected this to be a lower-key event.

Yeah…it was popular.  I only have about 20 seconds of usable footage, so I can't really show you how much participation there was.  I'd estimate about 40-50 people on the stage, singing their hearts out, with dozens of others sitting down but still singing.  One of the guys on the microphone was from Bloomington, IL, and we contemplated heading down to talk to him afterwards.   The boys wanted to play pool and/or darts, so they headed out while Sheri and I looked for chairs.  We found one, and when the Dance-Off started, the woman in the chair next to us left (apparently, she wasn’t a fan of Tyler).


SCORE!!!  Two chairs together!


The boys came back after what I could only assume involved a game of whipping darts at each other, and the show started in earnest (after selecting the audience participation and pairing them up with the celebrity dancers).  I won’t spoil it, but they had a last-minute celebrity dancer who had to ad-lib.  I wish I had the camera going, because it was absolutely hilarious.


The premise behind this is that everyone dances, and, after a critique by judges (one of the judges was from Company Men), they eliminate a couple.  The dancing itself is hilarious, but the interviews with the eliminated couples seriously had me crying a few times from laughing.







We had an early morning the next day, so Sheri headed back to the room fairly early.  The rest of us followed about 30 minutes later, even though there were only a couple of dance teams left.  We all collapsed and were snoring within a few minutes.


Day 5 starts...HERE!

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