Day 22 - At Sea

Finally a sea day. A do nothing but hang out day. A day to put on a bathing suit and read a book. Five hours of pool time with plenty of shade. That was Maggie’s plan, anyway.

Jerry, Dave, Linda, and I took a “behind the scenes” tour. It was fascinating. It’s not for everyone, but we really enjoyed it. The “highway” on Deck 4 is called I95 and it runs from Forward to Aft with no twists and turns. I had to wear closed toed shoes on I95

First stop was the kitchen for one of the speciality restaurants. We learned there are 224 Chefs on board. They use color coded cutting boards to keep all food separate, utilizing seven colors. They use 20,000 eggs every day and the chef quipped, ‘that is one busy chicken!” Everything is made from scratch; nothing is ready made or prepackaged. All leftovers are ground up into small pieces and fed to the fish. That’s why the birds are constantly following us. English is the only language spoken in the kitchens.

Next was the provisions storage area with three huge walk-in freezers. One person is responsible for ordering everything for the entire cruise and he bases the quantities on the usages of the last cruise. They had 80 pallets of food delivered on day 1 including 70,000 pounds of meat. They stock at least 8,000 different items and have enough food for 15 days on a 10-day cruise in case anything happens.

We visited the engine room and learned that the maximum speed for the ship is 21 knots using five engines. But they don’t run all at the same time unless they need max speed. The ship is diesel powered and has a revolutionary 360 degrees propeller system that allows the ship to move in any desired direction without resorting to rudders. No photos allowed in the engine room.

The laundry room is staffed by 70 people. Bags upon bags of passenger laundry are sorted by floor and each stateroom’s laundry is washed separately. The crew has their own laundry and do their own washing. Then we saw the automatic towel washing and folding station and the two machines that sanitize the sheets and fold them too.

On to the backstage. There are several shows with the headliner being Beetlejuice. It has a cast of 22 people. The leads have understudies who are also cast members and then there are four people (2 men and 2 women) who each understudy for 6 roles! These people are called swings and have to be able to step in at a moment’s notice into any of the six roles with all of the songs and choreography. Wow!!! The director said you have to have a “swing brain” to do that job. And the other cast members help with what is called “push with love” where the other people gently guide the swings to their marks. All flammable liquids are stored in the prop room in a chemical safe because fires on boats are a bad thing. We must have had a blank stare trying figure out what materials they are talking about. And the costumer spoke up and said, “hair spray, lots and lots of hair spray!” No photos backstage either because of proprietary information.

And finally, we saw the Bridge. Since we are sailing in active waters, we didn’t get to speak with any of the crew. But we did have a First Officer explain what was going on. She said basically there are two roads through the channels and everyone drives on the right side (red right returning) unless there are drunk ships. Then you just have to avoid them. But RADAR helps with that. Then she showed us the console and said, “which one do you think steers the ship?” We all pointed to the big buttons and knobs. Nope! It was this teeny weeny joystick like from an old Atari system. Seriously, at least make a show of it like Captain Stubin used to do. (Or Captains Sandy, Lee, and Jason for the younger readers).

This is the first night that we don’t have dinner reservations. But, on our first day, we received a bottle of champagne. So, we invited the others to happy hour in 12102! We had some snacks and plenty of adult beverages.