As we walked into the bar I hear over the speakers, coming from the front, “You guys are way too young to know any of these. Find a team to join.” I looked up and it was JJ talking to us from the stage. I smiled and we saw Mike and Chris from the Cruise Critic group and we joined them. We did okay, but most of the shows were from way before our time. There were a couple of ones that we knew and JJ would make a comment like – even you guys will know that one. After the trivia ended, we had a little time before the get together, so I went to the bathroom. As I walked back in JJ was talking to Shannon. When he saw me he started walking towards me and we chatted. He asked if we were getting dressed up for formal night and if we were going to go to the show – he said the one that night was his favorite of the production shows. He said we needed to come to the Champagne waterfall at 11:30 pm- which he referred to it as the obligatory dance party. JJ also mentioned that after the Champagne waterfall he and the crew go up to Skywalkers and that we should go. We said we probably would go.
After JJ left we helped move some chairs around to set up for the Cruise Critic group. We had another great turn out and it was so fun to see everyone again after several days on the cruise to hear what they had done. Mike and Chris had put together a trivia game based on the posts on the roll call thread on Cruise Critic. They put so much work into it – I was blown away. Again we could work in teams and we joined Bob and Candace. We were all actually answers in the game – one question was who worked on a cross continental bike tour. Shan was the person from the furthest away. Bob was mentioned about his screen name. Over all we did really well – just one less then the winning team. We had a great time with the group and stayed there for a couple hours.
Lunch was next on our plan. We went up to the 14th deck where the food court was located. There was also a pizza place and a grill where you could get hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled chicken sandwiches. That is where we ate lunch every day. Pretty much every day I had a salad and a piece of pizza. After lunch Shannon decided she wanted to go check out the big Champagne art auction. I had no desire to go, so I went back to the room to read, relax, maybe take a nap – since it had been such a taxing day so far. :) Shannon only planned on staying at the auction for a little while, so I was surprised when she came back over an hour later. Well it turned out the DJ saw Shannon at the art auction and started talking to her.
Shan decided to relax for a while before starting to get ready for dinner. 13 going on 30 was on the TV, so we watched that for a while. Every afternoon in the food court they serve free ice cream and I decided I wanted to get some. I could not remember if it started at 3:00 or 3:30, so I went up just before 3:00. Unfortunately it did not start until 3:30. So I sat down at a table and waited. Of course the staff was so on top of things a server kept asking me if I needed something. Finally I admitted I was waiting for the ice cream. During my wait I read a little, but I was more fascinated by the family sitting across the isle from me. This family consumed more food then I have every seen four people eat before in my life. It was like a train wreak I just could not turn away. The waiter was so great, he kept coming back and giving me updates on the status of the ice cream. When it was ready he let me know and also told me the caramel ice cream was his favorite, so I tried that and it was great. After my snack I headed back to the room to start getting ready for dinner.
Now I enjoy getting dressed up, there have even been times in my life getting ready is more fun then actually going out. Shan and I were going to wear our fancy dresses for this, the second formal night. A couple months before we left Shannon sent me a picture of the dress she bought for this night and I was in a total panic, I did not have any that fancy to bring along. So in between traveling back and forth across the country I needed to find a dress. It was quite stressful. Finally a couple weeks before we left I found one I loved. The problem was that it needed to be altered a bit and I had not had time to do this before I left. So I tried to make due with safety pins and it just did not work very well. I was so uncomfortable and fidgety all night. It was the only negative thing of the night, other then that we both got all gussied up and got ready for our fancy night.
Once we were ready we went down to dinner. This night we were seating more the in middle of the room then the other nights, and we ended up at the greatest table. Dinner was a riot!! The other people at our table were a couple from Boston, a missionary couple from Ravenna, MI – not too far from me, and a couple from Oklahoma. The whole group just talked and laughed and told stories, it was great! My favorite story happened when we were in a hockey discussion. The woman from Oklahoma was a very petite Asian woman and she was talking about how hockey was way too violent for her all that fighting. Her husband piped up something about how it was so much less violent then wrestling. It turns out she was a huge WWE fan. Then he went on to comment about her getting thrown out of a wrestling match. We all just looked at each other wondering what that was all about – she went on to tell us that her grandsons wrestle and she would get so worked up she would start yelling at the officials or the other kids that she was asked to leave. I so wish I had a picture of this lady, looking at her she would be the last person you would expect to be asked to leave any where or to be a fan of the WWE. The food at dinner was good as well and I ordered the Love Boat Dream dessert. When it came it was so cute I decided to take a picture of it.
After dinner Shannon and I decided to get some more professional pictures taken. We then went to go watch the Newlywed not so Newlywed game show – another one of those cruise favorite activities. We could only stay for a little while since we wanted to make sure we got seat for the show. We got to the theater and found seats in our regular section. The show was destination anywhere and it was based on a around the world theme. It was really good and we both enjoyed it. I did think it was a little funny when they did a segment on Africa and they sang In the Jungle from the Lion King. After the show we headed back over to the atrium to get ready for the Champagne waterfall. At one point we asked this gentleman to take a picture of us together. He was quite particular about placing us in the right light, almost to the point of it being creepy, but it ended up being my favorite picture of us. Don’t we look nice. 
We then went into the art gallery and had a little photo shoot.Here I am
Here is Shannon
More me 
More Shannon 
Fun times! 
Then it was time for the big party!! Here is Shannon getting ready for the fun!
I would compare the Champagne Waterfall to a New Years Eve countdown type party. People line up on all three levels of the atrium to watch as the maitre d stacks hundreds of champagne glasses on top of each other. Once all but one of the glasses is in place the Cruise Director and Maitre D do a little program and then the champagne is poured. Here is a picture of the glasses.
Before they start pouring the champagne there is a count down and people have streamers to throw. This is just after the streamers came down. 
Then everyone has an opportunity to pour the champagne if they want – we chose not to, but here is someone doing it.
Here are some people dancing. 
Shannon and I walked around and watched people. I was laughing at these two boys – I would say about twelve years old who went around picking up as many streamers as possible and they were covering each other with them – you could not even see their clothes – it was all streamers.At one point JJ came up to me to give me a hard time about not joining in the dancing. It was so funny – he was in total cruise director mode – big grin on his face, moving to the beat of the music – Mr. Social Director. I made some comment about the music being kind of old and if they played something a decade or two newer it would be more my speed – he said they needed to cater to the crowd and to come up to Skywalkers later for newer music.
We stayed around for most of the party and then we ran up to the room to freshen up and then we made our way up to sky walkers. We walked in and found a place to sit over in the area where the crew was hanging out. The DJ saw Shannon and pulled her into the DJ booth with him to chat. After a few minutes I was not sure if she wanted to hang out there or not, so I went to rescue her – she was okay that I came over.
The music in Skywalkers was better and I danced to a few good songs. At one point Staying Alive was on and I pulled out all my disco moves. Suddenly I was surrounded by 60 – 70 year old men who were emulating every move I made – it was both hilarious and frightening. I decided to stop dancing for a while.
After we had been for a while Shannon got up to go somewhere, and I looked over and saw that JJ was standing alone, so I got up to go talk to him. We started chatting and had a really great time. Shan got sick of sitting alone so after a while she came over and we all chatted. Since the ship was going into dry dock in two days and most of the crew was leaving there were huge crew parties going on. Shan and I so wanted to go to one of them, just to get into the crew area and see what it was like, but that did not happen. JJ kept getting paged to come to the crew party and finally he decided to go. It was getting pretty late at this point, close to 2:00 am. After JJ left Shannon and I stayed at Skywalkers for another 10 minutes or so and then we decided to leave. Shannon wanted to say good bye to the DJ since he was getting off the ship the next day in Victoria. When we got up to leave we saw that he had gone down a level to go to the bathroom so we started headed down that way. As we were walking down Shan went one way to say goodbye and I went the other way to go to the elevator and much to my surprise JJ was standing there….
It was another great day!
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