Day 5: Monday, March 2, 2026

Slept late.  LONG crew drill this morning, running from about 930A-1030A.   A typical WJ breakfast.  One “entertaining” moment came in the bacon line.  I watched a woman grab tongs and put her hands all over them (including far down the handle) and then proceed to leave them (touching all the bacon) badly balanced on top of the heap rather than placing them on the resting plate provided for that purpose.  Of course, the tongs fell and clattered to the floor as she wandered off completely obliviously.  The funny thing was the eyeroll by the staffer inside the serving island.  He didn’t see any of this happen, but he heard the noise and was rolling his eyes and shaking his head as he immediately walked over to the cabinet where they stored extra serving tongs.

Post-food, read for a bit in semi-comfy chairs between the Bionic Bar and Schooners, then True/False trivia in Schooner (13/20 – far back in the pack).  I think the Bionic Bar was a good idea that probably didn’t pan out.  It is in operation for limited hours, requires a staffer to be present to baby sit things, seems to take a long time to make a drink (compared to a human), and – fatally – measures everything precisely, so you’re never going to have the accidental – or intentional - “heavy pour”.  The fact that they stopped building them – and are potentially pulling them out of other ships – is not surprising.

We wanted to return to our stateroom to drop off our stuff before heading to the Music Hall for Th Royal Mystery game at noon.  I had a vague memory of moving all around the room when we'd done this game on Mariner, and didn't want to risk leaving our bag unattended.  So we left Schooner and actually (finally) walked out onto the outside of Deck 4.  This is the lifeboat deck, so there's actually little to be seen, but at least we confirmed that there IS outside decking around all these enclosed spaces! 

Then to Music Hall for Royal Mystery, which was really fun.  As people entered the host directed you to form or join an existing group until each team had 7-8 people on it.  We were with a dad + three 20s-something sons (on a dad and son cruise) plus a young married couple.  All of us were definitely “gamers".  In fact, the sons were carrying D&D books plus a couple of card games, and the other couple had done dinner murder mysteries before.  Our team was one of 3 (out of 11-12 teams) to solve the puzzle.  From what E and I can recall of the game we played years ago on Mariner, this game might have been a reskinning of what we already played.  We certainly recognized that the “connections" puzzle formed a picture of a bunny, and there was a footprint puzzle that tied into the alphabet.  So we had a little meta knowledge, but unlike last time (where I was the leader and therefore had a better overview of the entire puzzle) we each worked on one of the sub-puzzles and neither one of us knew what was happening around us.  We submitted our answer with about 5 minutes to spare.  Not sure if we were first to solve or not.  No prizes, but we all felt good about ourselves.  The family was slated to undertake the Royal Puzzle Society challenge later in the day, which motivated us to book it for the next leg of the cruise.  Turns out that we could have had our stuff with us – at least one of us was always at the couch where our team gathered.  In retrospect, I think that on Mariner we had been younger than our teammates and therefore did a lot more of the “running".  In today's game we were the oldest team members and we happily let the youngsters run back and forth.

After the Mystery, we went to the Pub and each ordered a Pub Burger and shared the Pulled Pork Nachos.  The nachos were nothing special – soggy chips topped with pulled pork, BBQ sauce, cheese, and onions.  Taste was fine – just a bit too soggy/messy to eat.  The burgers were each made of two thick 4 ounce patties (8 ounces total) with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, some kind of mild green pepper, and garlic aioli and ketchup on the side, along with steak fries.  Burgers were pretty good – for a ship, they were excellent.  I paired with a specialty gin and tonic while E had Strongbow Cider.  Nice!  Downside: they give you little 4” square cocktail napkins to eat greasy food.  They need bigger napkins!

We then returned to our stateroom to pick up our tablets.  We took a path that allowed us to walk through the hallways of our deck and look at the art on the corridor walls.  Compared to other ships the corridors were pretty sparse, and most of the stuff on our floor were aspirational affirmations rather than art or photos.  Kind of a letdown.  We were surprised at the number of cabins that had decorated their doors.  Didn't count, but I'm guessing that it was at least 25-35% of doors sporting something on the outside.

Tablets in hand, we decided to try and find the “best" chairs where we could relax and read.  We looked at the deck plans and decided to try The Library, located on Deck 6, tucked up behind two70.  Turned out to be the perfect choice.  Comfy padded chairs inside a quiet room protected from direct sunlight but not so isolated as to make you feel lost.  Spent close to two hours reading and relaxing there before deciding it was nap time and coming back to the cabin once again around 345P.

Wonderland was our specialty dinner reservation and definitely fell into the “been there, done that" category.  As usual, they asked about any potential food allergies and the certainly listened.  E received several modified appetizers compared to what I got, highlighting a combination of how many food products MIGHT have been exposed to nuts during packaging and how terrified they are of possibly killing someone.  For example, my “tomato water" test tube was garnished with ONE drop of Siracha, while E received none because, to our surprise, siracha might have nuts in it. 

We each started with one of the specialty cocktails: a smoked Old Fashioned for me (novel but no better/worse than any other OF) while E tried Down the Rabbit Hole.  Again, nothing to write home about.

Anyway, while the dishes might qualify as imaginative, almost none of them qualified as “good".  One appetizer in particular had some kind of deep-fried potato cone which had been fried in VERY tired oil.  I mentioned this – not as a complaint, but as an FYI, to our waiter.  Surprisingly, there was effectively none of the above-and-beyond customer service I would have expected.  I figured they'd bring us a 7^th appetizer or something simple like that, but nope.  Not that we'd likely have found enjoyment in another meh appetizer!

For appetizers, as first-timers our waiter brought us a curated “greatest hits" selection of 6 (out of 9) options.  I personally enjoyed the shrimp with siracha aioli (E got Thai chile sauce instead, and she didn't get the potato(?) strings) and E most enjoyed their citrus salmon offering.  The rest was just meh.  For entrees, I got Snap Crackle Pork, which was mostly tasteless with a pork crackling that suffered the same “tired oil" problem as one of the appetizers.  E got the chicken which was also mostly meh.  We were offered two of the three desserts (#3 contained forbidden pistachio).  The apple “thing" was mostly Royal's signature rubbery crème brule-like apple flavor with a center of raspberries – no bueno as per both of us.  The other was their signature The World: peanut butter ice cream atop a caramel cream atop of chocolate fudge cake base, surrounded by a globe of dark chocolate that gets a hot caramel sauce poured on it, causing it to melt and reveal the ice cream/cake inside.  Both technically and visually impressive – and quite tasty.  Far and away the best food of the meal. 

With dinner over we were early enough to try to catch Battle of the Sexes in the Music Hall.  We arrived during the tail end of If You Know It, Sing It.  It was pretty raucous and it was clear that seats that had a view of the stage floor weren't to be had, so we simply enjoyed the comfy chairs and read, while listening to the Battle as it happened.

We then made the short hop over to the Theater for their special Sonic Odyssey show, starring some dude who invented a strange instrument.  As we sat down I spotted what seemed to be a line of small lighting instruments strung diagonally over the main seating area.  Turns out they weren't lighting instruments but were actually the termination points of the strings of the instrument that was located DSR.  Dude played the amplified strings by rubbing them while wearing gloves.  He also did percussion stuff, including playing a musical jacket that made different drum noises depending on where he hit himself.  Add in the usual vocalists and dancers and the show was certainly different.  We enjoyed ourselves, but aren't certain we'd watch it again on the next leg (whereas we will certainly go see Sequins & Feathers again in a few days).  Another case of someone mastering the weird instrument they invented.

The night ended with us turning our clocks back an hour to reflect our return to Pacific Time sometime while we slept.