Mixups and Drama....Cruisin '05

Tuesday, August 23rd

Last night was a lot of fun. We hung out in Henri's Dance Club watching the people get their groove on. My son (who sometime moonlights as a DJ) was not pleased with Patrick, who served as our DJ for the entire cruise. "He should mix it up better", he said. He was right though; Patrick would get a massive crowd on the floor only to lose them on the very next song. Oh well, I was entertaining myself by watching the drunk people dance. They stayed on the dance floor.

Today, we looked forward to another full day of fun. More importantly, the drink of the day is Caribbean Breeze. It was a little on the sweet side (a little heavy on the pineapple juice) but what the heck, I decided to live a little. I knew that it wouldn't make me sick but after two of them, I became bored with it.

After breakfast, we hit the casino. There was a $500 Slot Machine Tournament taking place so I decided to give it a try. After paying the twenty dollar entry fee, I sat down at one of the machines and waited for the tournament to begin. About forty minutes later (the slot machines would not reset themselves so we had to wait for the technician to reset them. I do not envy his job!), the tournament began. To advance to the next round, you had to rack up the most points in the current round. All we had to do was keep hitting the spin button as if we were playing for money instead of points. Each contestant was allotted 300 spins to collect as many points as possible. Needless to say, I didn't advance past the first round but it was fun.

Meanwhile, My mom and my sister Donna, were hit'em heavy on the slot machines. The two of them are very lucky with the slots so it was a matter of time before one of them won some money. Donna was the first one. She sat down at a nickel machine (yes, I said nickel) and put in a twenty dollar bill; as soon as the girl hit the spin button, she won a jackpot. I forget offhand how many nickels she won but it amounted to $700. We were happy for her because she had just started a new job and would not be getting paid for the week she is on the cruise so this would really help her out. Go, Sis!!!

Today's line-up of activities included Shipboard Survivor (an onboard version of Survivor), The Newlywed Game, more Bingo, TV Theme Trivia and a host of others. The crew went back and forth between the activities and the casino.

Now, the drama....

As I stated previously, my entire family was not seated at the same table in the dining room at dinnertime. The night before, we'd mentioned it to our group leader who assured us that she would straighten things out. The previous night, my table was missing two people (our table was a seating for eight). Tonight, they decided to join us for dinner. The only problem was the night before, there had been another couple sitting there. So, after our group leader did some shuffling to seat my family together, the people from the previous night had been bumped from the table. They showed up for dinner late so they took seats at the next table over from us without checking to see if the seats belonged to anyone. Why'd they do that? The next thing I knew, there was mad cursing and yelling coming from that table. I turned around and the couple who had been bumped from our table had taken someone else's seats and the people showed up. Apparently, someone asked them to get up, a comment was made and it got ghetto. Now mind you, the dining room is pretty big and there were a lot of people having dinner at the time. There also were a lot of white people who looked none too pleased with folk to begin with. So, when the yelling and threatening (you read correctly) started, they had looks on their faces like they expected black folk to act out (which we did).

My parents became disgusted, I became frustrated and my sister was unhappy because it wasn't only our group whose seating was jacked up, a lot of folks were separated from their people. The next thing I knew, there was a fight breaking out on the other side of the dining room. We decided that it was not worth the drama and we would have dinner the next night on the upper deck where folks knew how to act. The diningroom boycott was in full effect. Besides, we could wear whatever we wanted at the buffet!

After the dinner drama, everyone went back to their cabins to change into our clubbing clothes for later that evening. There was a Lido Deck party going on and wanted to make sure that we didn't miss it.

It was off the chain but I'll have to write about it tomorrow after I get the pictures together. I will say though that my crew wound up on video for everyone to see! Hopefully, it won't end up on the blackmarket! :) And tomorrow, we port in Montego Bay, Jamaica!!!!