Cruise Day 5 – Tracy Arm Fjord Scenic Cruising
September 23rd, 2007Today was basically another “at sea” day but with neat scenery in the morning. We woke up early so that we wouldn’t miss the best parts of the scenery. Reviews that we had read said that this was one of the highlights of an Alaskan cruise, so we didn’t want to miss it! We woke up and headed to Deck 9 to get a good view, but then we quickly found out that it was raining. We didn’t want to stand around in the cold rain, so we went to the dining room to get a quick breakfast. It was only 7:30am, so we had plenty of scenic cruising left and the dining room had just opened.
After breakfast, it was still raining, so we headed to Deck 5 which had plenty of covered outdoor deck space to view the ice and glaciers. We saw another ship from the Princess cruise line leaving the fjord as we were entering. We had to wait for them to pass before we could enter the same section. It was so neat to see all the ice in the water and the different types of glaciers and waterfalls. The rain didn’t stop us from getting a beautiful view of the scenery.
As you might imagine, it was a bit cold outside on the deck. We spent some time watching the scenery and taking pictures, but then we decided to spend some time indoors where it was much warmer! We spent a little bit of time in the casino before heading to our first trivia of the day, Family Tribond Trivia. The Piggy Bankin’ Big Bang Game treated us decently again as we won $30 in the morning and another $150 that afternoon! We ended up giving some of that money back in Bingo and slot machines, but it was fun to visit our old friend again. We ended up winning “more crap to pack,” as some of our activity directors called it, when our team won Family Tribond Trivia. At the end of the cruise, we had won pretty much every trivia game (except for the two big ones) that we played and were rewarded all sorts of prizes — keychains, pens, water wallets, document holders, gold medals, lanyards…some prizes more than once. We ended up giving our tablemates some of our excess prizes since we had so many.
We had lunch in the dining room and then headed to the card room to see if anyone was gathering for informal spades games (as indicated in the library). Nobody was available for spades, so we went back to the casino when we won the aforementioned $150 as well as another $10 from roulette. We then returned to the cardroom to play bridge with Beverly and Bekka.
Here’s a photo from the cardroom that I took earlier in the day during the scenic cruising:
We had many activities that we wanted to attend today. Next on our agenda was another Name That Tune trivia, this time in the Some Enchanted Evening Lounge. This was the biggest trivia game yet! The place was packed! The trivia was 50s and 60s Name That Tune, and our team didn’t do all that well. The clips were played on a stereo instead of by the piano player this time.
Next on our agenda was “Win a Cruise” Bingo where we sat with Karen and her parents. They wanted us to sit with them to bring them good luck. At some point a few days ago, I saw Karen in the casino and walked up to her. I told her I was there to bring her some luck, and a few minutes later she hit 7-7-7 and won around $100! Unfortunately, we didn’t bring them luck this time (or ourselves). Oh well. This Bingo game was huge and was held in the big Masquerade Theatre.
After Bingo, we found Chuck in the casino and convinced him to join us for Gabe’s favorite – Sports Trivia! The Sports Trivia ended up being all over the board. We kept running into the same people over and over at the trivia games. Two British ladies were there at pretty much every game, but they weren’t sure if they were going to show up for the Sports Trivia…claiming that they didn’t know a thing about American sports. They showed up at the last minute, and I teased them saying that there weren’t going to be any questions about cricket or rugby. We convinced them to join our team, and wouldn’t you know but the first question was about cricket! Another question was about the New Zealand rugby team. Of course, the English ladies knew the answers to both questions and our team won the game. We gave Chuck a hard time for missing a question about his favorite Nascar driver, Jeff Gordon.
During the game, we saw some whales! After the game we saw a few more, and I attempted to take some video…watch carefully and you can see the tail.
We went back to the room for a little while to relax before dinner. This is when we were able to watch the Love and Marriage gameshow on TV. We were entertained but really glad that we didn’t have to be on stage for it! The ship was really rocking by this point and throughout the evening it was tough to even walk around. Apparently some people weren’t feeling too well, as there were barf bags posted at each stairwell. I thought they were amusing, but I’m sure that some people weren’t laughing!
At dinner, we were treated to a production. Our waitstaff sang for us:
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After dinner, we went to the Quest gameshow with Chuck and Karen. My parents wouldn’t tell us very much about it, but they said that we shouldn’t miss it! We had a few ladies join us on our team. Quest is a crazy adult scavenger hunt…involving things that can be found within the room. Our team was somewhat enthusiastic about the game until about the time when we would have had to take off our pants. We were able to do the simple tasks…3 belts not worn, a woman wearing men’s socks on her hands (I wore Chuck’s), a man wearing women’s shoes (Chuck), a man wearing lipstick (Gabe actually did this one!), a shoelace taken out of a shoe, and even a man who had to kiss another man’s bald head (Chuck did this one and was caught on the cruise highlights video). We even were able to come up with three shirts that were not being worn (2 ladies had on an overshirt and Chuck took his off). We just sat back and watched other crazy teams as they took off various other items and did other crazy things. The finale involved each team dressing up a man as a woman and then parading them around the room.
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