Day 11: Sunday, March 8, 2026

This was a pretty relaxing Sea Day for us.  We both crashed HARD last night and slept in until about 830A or so.  We were correct about there being no actual change in time overnight.  After a typical breakfast in Windjammer were in the Schooner Bar in time for the 10A Morning Trivia.  Our 13/20 was good for 2^nd place, behind the winner with 15.  We stayed in comfy seats catching up on tablet games and then reading through another edition of Napkin Folding and Dingbats, where 4 of the 20 puzzles had been switched out.  If we'd played it “new" we would have score 16/20 (assuming we would have missed the same hold-over puzzles that we hadn't know the first time around).

As we wanted comfy seats on the main Music Hall floor for the later Harry Potter visual trivia we went over to the Music Hall, forgetting that they'd be starting Royal Mystery the hour before our HP trivia.  So, yes, we were “those people" who took up two comfy chairs that would have better served two people playing the mystery game – but dem's da berries.  It was interesting to watch the two teams on either side of us work (or not) at the challenges.  One team got close but submitted a wrong final answer, while the other team never finished all the basic puzzles.

HP trivia was the usual assortment of questions, where there's usually one specific question that's meant to stump 99.9% of the players.  In this case, the question was “how many staircases are at Hogwarts?” to which the answer is 142 (or maybe it was 144 – I forget).  As expected, ONE team knew the answer…but that wasn't enough to give them 20/20.  They were one of 4 teams with 19/20 in a playoff where the tie-breaker question was “what was Ron's patronus?”, which we believe was a Jack Russell terrier, although we didn't stick around to confirm.  Our 18/20 was shared by many team around the room.

Since we'd had a late breakfast we had decided that we'd only snack in the afternoon, so post-trivia, around 145P, we went down to Sorento's/Café Prom for some small bytes, and then went and walked through the SeaPlex (since we hadn’t actually seen it on our earlier trip around the outside of Deck 15) and hung out watching the kid’s pool until our 230P escape room.

Mid-afternoon we’d booked a slot for “The Royal Puzzle Society”, which was a low-production-value escape room hosted up in Fuel, normally the teen’s disco area (and probably used for that in the evenings).  We were one of three couples in our session, which had us finding 3 physical keys to unlock 3 of 6 locked boxes, while we had to solve some number puzzles to unlock the other three.  I feel like we would have benefited from 2 more people because a few of the puzzles took a lot of time for our group and we failed to get out of the room.  Sounds like it is about 50/50.  I say “low-production” not as a bad thing.  They have pretty cleverly figured out how to get an escape room experience in a way that is a lot more portable than the dedicated rooms we’ve seen on the other ships.  The physical components were low-tech (tangram puzzles, a paper/pencil puzzle, some lucite overlays to neoprene mats, etc) but served their purposes well.  I had no complaints, especially given that it was only $10/person.

After the puzzle room, it was time to head over to the tables outside Café 270 for more of The Crew.  I went into two70 to the bar but there was no bartender to be found, so ended up at Vintages to get us a couple of Mai Tais.  Inside two70 they were rehearsing bits of Starwater, clearly needing to do some spacing as they were still down one male dancer.  A tech guy saw me standing (I was looking onstage to count dancers) and came over to say that this was a (public) rehearsal and I was welcome to come in and sit.  I asked him if the male dancer was seriously hurt, which took him a bit by surprise.  He asked what I had noticed, so I explained.  He was (rightfully) not going to give me much detail, other than to say “we haven't been given much detail".  They did rehearse the acrobatics scene that he got hurt during, and I saw one of the other ensemble male dancers in the featured slot.  I'm not sure whether the featured female who was also rehearsing was his normal partner or one of the featured women we'd already seen.  I'm suspecting that there's AT LEAST three couples capable of stepping into the featured role.  Who knows?  May all six couples can do the part?

While Eileen went to the cabin to start her afternoon nap I went down to Guest Services and charged off additional tips for our stateroom attendant (Joseph) and waiters (Veronica and asst. waiter Ikadek).  When I got back to the cabin our luggage tags were waiting – such a sad sight! L

Dinner was at Chops and, as usual, we had a great time.  We basically had the same stuff as on Brilliance.  Interestingly the one item Brilliance seemed to do better was my Grilled Black Pepper Bacon, which here seemed more pork-chop-like than previously.  On the waiter’s recommendation I tried the Red Velvet Cake for dessert and it was excellent.  The difference between the mass-market version served in the WJ and this was huge.  The Chops version was just about perfect.

Post-dinner, we had time for another visit to two70, this time to listen to the Quantum of the Seas Orchestra perform numbers by Earth, Wind, and Fire, Stevie Wonder, and more.  From there we hoofed it over to the Royal Theater for…wait for it…MO5AIC!  Yep, the boys were back and yep, they were doing the same show as always.  Actually, there were a couple of differences.  No more opera interlude, and there was at least one new arrangement for the encore.  They also had a sub in for one of the guys.  He had to have been someone who had been a prior member because he slid in seamlessly.

We ended the night reading in comfy seats at the Music Hall while listening to another set by Pulso.  They are very good, but the main band we had on Brilliance was better – but that's a plaudit to the Brilliance band, not a knock on Pulso.