Monday, April 30, 2012

Carnival Triumph Cruise Day 2: April 15, 2012

This sea day was fantastic!  We had so much fun.  Didn't take many pictures though- too busy playing trivia!
Woke up and had breakfast on the Lido.  No trays, but plates are huge.  It is like eating off of a hub cap.
 Went  to movie trivia and the questions had nothing to do with movies for the most part…  Fun, but we didn’t do too great (Kevin may have been top 3?)  The host was “Irish Bob” and he ended up doing a lot of the trivia with him.  We later found out he usually does all the trivia, but he had some other duties this week, so the girls had been helping out.  Since we liked all three of them, I was happy that they all traded around.  It wouldn’t have been as fun with just one trivia host all week.

After playing Monopoly yesterday, today's game of choice was Quiddler, and Kevin consistently kicked my butt.  I still love the game though.

Next up, we played Scattegories. Slighly different rules. She names a single category and letter and you write down 3 things. This was A LOT of fun, and I actually won with 24 unique answers, but didn’t get “the win” because a guy claimed to have 31 things- BUT it was 31 between his and his wife’s cards, and they had played separately! (So instead of writing three things down, between the two of them they wrote six.) He said he only took 3 from each, but of course, he decided on which three AFTER hearing what others had. Boo! I was sad, but didn’t say anything.



Then, due to a crying baby next to us, we wandered for a bit, bought Kevin some gin and scotch from the shops, and came back for “On Your Mark, Get Set, Draw” this was a lot of fun, and our team won (the other team had a girl who was amazing in the quick fire round!) sadly, no Ship on a Stick (SOS) because it was two large teams, but it was a lot of fun!

Our room was on deck 8, and I felt that we did NOTHING but climb stairs the whole time.  This picture illustrates what I look like (exaggeration...) after coming up from Deck 3...again...   It really illustrated to me we are better off in steerage!  We spent all our time on Deck 3, 4, and 5.  


Next, we went to lunch where I had THE BEST California roll, and a good vegetable fajita thing.  Kevin had carribean pepper pot soup and a crab/shrimp baguette sandwich.  We sat a large table with 9.  The woman next to Kevin had no idea what a California roll was, but ordered it anyway, and refused to try it when it came, poking at it a bit while we explained what it was, but never even giving it a small bite.  Then, her steak salad came out and she didn’t even try it either, she said she expected a steak and then disappeared, presumably to the Lido deck.  Her friend said “she’s a picky eater” – must be, as she turned things down without even tasting them…   (The steak salad had some slices of beef on it.  Not sure what she expected...)   Already, we fell down on the job, forgetting to take pictures of the main courses. 
 
After that, we went to find out how much the wine tasting costs and it was a reasonable  $10 but they wouldn’t let me sit with Kevin without paying.  I don’t drink, so we didn’t go in.  Instead, we went back to the room where I took a nap and Kevin read on the balcony.  At tea time, I was still full from lunch, so we skipped it, and then when I woke up, Kevin was asleep so we missed Last Man Standing Trivia- we caught the tail end and the questions were SO much easier than on the Freedom… he would have rocked it.   The ocean was gorgeous!
 

Next up was progressive Trivia where we met up with friends from yesterday and new friends from the drawing game today to form team LA ARIA (Louisiana, Arkansas, Iowa). We did really well, though sadly talked ourselves out of two answers. I think we were in second place, but no SOS was given out for the individual rounds of progressive trivia (also different on the Freedom- as that was how we won ours!) I was joking with the trivia hostess about not being allowed to be overly competitive and said something about how I was “cheated out of my SOS in scattegories” (NOT complaining, at ALL) and she went over and gave me one, and said I earned it. I felt SO BAD. That was not my intention AT ALL. I tried to give it back to her, but she told me to keep it. So, I did win one after all.


Then, the pack of us went over to sports trivia where we all did okay – sports trivia is hard! (we got 10, others I think got 12) chatted for quite some time and went our separate ways.


Next up was dinner.  I wore my new dress (love it!) and we had the “alligator” fritters (no alligator, he said it was conch) and stuffed mushrooms.  I ate Indian again (thought about lobster but changed my mind) and the portion is just TOO big and Kevin had a fish dish.  We shared bitter and blanc for dessert and it tasted like a warm cookie.  The “show” was excellent- That’s Amore as always, but just a single singer featured and he was FABULOUS.  Possibly better than the show singer, actually.  The rest of the waiters just sang back up at the very end.
 

We spent a few minutes watching Karaoke (girl from yesterday did Proud Mary again- it is apparently her signature) but the sound system hurt our ears (not the singers, at least not yet…) so we wandered a bit and went to the “Wonderful World” show.  There was one part that went on a little too long, but overall it was one of the best shows Carnival has done. I don’t know if it is because of the movement, or the wear and tear on the dancers, but Carnival dancers do way too much promenading, and not enough dancing.  There are moments that you can see in their movement that they are really really talented dancers, and the positions on the ship are so competitive, that I know they are- but the shows just don’t show it.  That said, one man did ala seconde turns, and the girls had a few moments to show off, but no virtuoso moves L   There were two parts where they weren’t in character shoes – which I think may be a first for Carnival… they wore jazz shoes and what I think are called ghillies for Irish dance (set to fake taps).  The singers were good (the man maybe a little hoarse, and the woman hit one bad note in Time to say Goodbye at the end- ouch).  Honestly, Time  to Say Goodbye is a really really ambitious choice for a show that requires a ‘pop’ performer.   So good on them.  The costuming was also great.


After the production show, we headed to bed.  Progresso in the morning!  And Chef's table tomorrow night!

2 comments:

GopherLass said...

Grr...the picky woman...you know how I feel about wasted food.

I didn't want to rant any more in my trippie than I already did, but OH! it was hard to see people ordering multiple plates of food and then just picking at them all. I assume Carnival is like DCL and most of the staff is from the developing world...what must they THINK?!

I recently watched a cruise vlog (a Disney Magic one, since that was *our* ship, lol) - and the vloggers ordered ALL the hot breakfast choices.

"You might say it's a waste, but I'm so excited to be on a Disney cruise...I have to try it all!"

No, you don't. :(

Sorry, I have filled this whole comment up with complaining. Oops.

ANYWAY!

I wish DCL would have done more table games on sea days (and we had like 6 sea days!) - there was only Disney trivia! Family Pictionary or something of that ilk could be a lot of fun, I think.

OOH - and thanks again for the "Puffs" info - I think we will do next year's WBTA (into NY) and if it's running...we'll try to catch it then (assuming it STILL hasn't come to London).

Jessim said...

Oh I totally agree with you on the food waste.

I also am not a huge fan of sea days, because as much as I love a nap, sometimes it is struggle to find things I'm interested in. The Triumph was probably our best cruise for options.

I hope Puffs makes it to London. They are in Melbourne- so maybe; but they are "off-broadway" and have smaller financing, so I don't know what will happen.