January 28, 2018 – At Sea

Weather continues rather cloudy and windy, and Jim had to move his 3-mile (1-hour) walk indoors this morning, with a fairly steady rain falling outdoors. At 6:00 a.m., there isn’t much activity interrupting speedy roundtrip walks around and around the sixth deck. The good news is that the rough seas have calmed down a great deal, and the swimming pool has finally opened. We’re hoping that by the time we reach Hawaii the sun may even make an appearance.

We’ve stayed busy with all the activities onboard. World Cruise Game events have begun and will continue on sea days through February 13th. Jim’s mixed-relay walking event will take place after our two days in Hawaii. The two of us had a wonderful dinner last Friday evening in the Prego (Italian) restaurant. Because we’re full-world-cruisers (as opposed to those passengers who are only on board for one or two segments of the voyage), we can eat as often as we like in the three specialty restaurants on Crystal Serenity. We really like Prego.

Each segment of the World Cruise, there’s a different magician from the Magic Castle in Hollywood on board the ship. They perform 30-minute shows in an intimate club setting. The audience is restricted to 20 people maximum for each show, and tickets are hard to get. Last Thursday (Jan 25^th), we attended the show by Paul Wilson, a Scotsman who was described as the world’s foremost expert on cons and scams and star of both the BBC show, “The Real Hustle” and “Scammed” for the History channel. We sat no further than three feet from him and could not figure out how he did his amazing sleight of hand tricks.

In the Galaxy Theater we went to shows by Broadway performer Emily Skinner and comedian John Joseph. We especially enjoyed the comedian -- he was nonstop, laugh-a-minute, funny.

The past two days at sea there have been excellent enrichment speakers. We went to six of their presentations and found them well worth attending. Dwight Stones, Olympic medalist who set the world record in the high jump ten different times, spoke on "The True Definition of Winning." Destination lecturer Ken Rees presented the history of the Hawaiian Islands, along with tips on what to see and do during our visits to Maui and Oahu. Astronomer Dennis Mammana previewed the total lunar eclipse which will occur between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m. January 31st. He will be on deck 13 of the ship that morning to help with viewing the eclipse. We aren't sure whether we will get up for the viewing or not. Maybe we'll just take his word for it.

The two former Olympic Athletes, John Naber and Dwight Stones spoke, once again, this time on "Mind, Body, and Spirit of an Olympian." Here’s a photo of the two of them (the ones in suits).  Mr. Naber is in the foreground and Mr. Stones is in the background). In case you’re interested, both of them are very tall – 6’6” and 6’7”.

World affairs lecturer Dr. Robert Schrire spoke on the topical theme, “Tyrants: The Case of North Korea.” Special interest lecturer Jon Malay presented theories on how the ancient Polynesians navigate across the vast Pacific Ocean to Hawaii. Not everyone on board attends all of these presentations, but they are taped and shown on stateroom TVs, but we like to attend as many of these as possible in person.

Today was the first Jazz Brunch Buffet set up in the Crystal Cove, with more appealing food than you can possibly imagine.

Jim & Ginny

January 26, 2018 – At Sea

We’re continuing our west-southwest traverse of the North Pacific from Los Angeles to Hawaii, and the full schedule of on-board activities are underway on Crystal Serenity. There are normally about 50 offerings of fitness, enrichment lectures, card games, movies, and so forth from which to choose. These include everything from bridge lessons to music, knitting, golf, computers, digital filmmaking, dancing, tai chi, Pilates, casino tournaments, afternoon tea, and on and on.

One big event -- the opening ceremony for the 2018 World Cruise Games. Three former Olympic athletes are onboard to officiate and to share their stories with us – John Naber (America’s most decorated athlete at the 1976 Games in Montreal and later a TV broadcaster for over 35 different sports for all major networks and cable outlets), Dwight Stones (two-time medal winner in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games and TV broadcaster for nearly 30 years), and Wyomia Tyus (four-time Olympic medalist and founder of the Women’s Sports Foundation). The World Cruise Games will run from January 28 through February 13, with an average of about six events per day. Events include lap swimming, paddle tennis, shuffleboard, basketball, walking relay, and golf putting, to the somewhat less athletic events such as chess, team trivia, and gin rummy. Jim signed up for the walking competition, and Ginny for solitaire – up until now, we didn’t know that was an Olympic event. It must be for the World Cruise Games.

Weather is slowly warming up, approaching 70°F (much better than the 50s we experienced in LA). Jim has started his 3-mile walks daily around the Promenade Deck in early morning (usually starting between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m.) and we’ve started our game competitions between the two of us. The score so far is tied 1 – 1 in Gin Rummy. So far, it’s been rather windy, with a lot of swells in the ocean. We’ve noticed that water has been drained from the swimming pool for the past few days, because it was splashing out of the pool and all over the Lido deck.

We’ve attended a number of excellent enrichment lectures, including the previously mentioned John Naber, who is an excellent speaker tying his Olympic experiences to motivational themes. Dr. Robert Schrire is a world affairs lecturer and Director of the Policy Institute at the University of Cape Town. Dr. Schrire is a rather expansive, thought-provoking, and challenging thinker. His first topic was, “Why are People So Angry.” Today were two more exceptional presentations ─ first was Jon Malay, a meteorologist, oceanographer, and what he calls a “space professional.” Of course, his presentation interested Jim, as they were right down his alley.  Then there was Celebrity Lecturer Bruce McGill, who has appeared in over 150 films, Broadway plays, and TV series over the past 50 years. His reminiscences of a career spanning from “Animal House” to “Lincoln,” and many others along the way, were fascinating.

Last Wednesday evening, as part of formal night, we saw the remarkable new Crystal Serenity production, “Crystal in Motion,” featuring the Crystal Ensemble of Singers and Dancers, and accompanied by the Crystal Showband. Our review ─ “Wow” ─ it’s a very high energy and spectacularly performed show. Everyone in the audience was blown away by the cast. Singers Tom Lowe and Karin Kovacova sang strongly; violinist Irina Guskova was great; and the Showband, led by Raphaël Derkson, was outstanding. Likewise, the six singers and dancers performed difficult numbers beautifully. Highlight for us was probably the Lord of the Dance number, led by Dmitri Ilukhin. We don’t know how he can do that and make it look so easy.

Thursday night’s show was equally good. Vocalist Jessie Hamilton has a lot of energy, talent, and showed a wide repertoire -- he put on a great show, backed by the Crystal Serenity Showband. Jessie starred as Simba in the cast of Disney’s Festival of the Lion King in both Hong Kong and at Walt Disney World, and we saw him star in the final Crystal World Cruise Special Event show onboard Serenity in 2016. He was a dynamic, young performer then and still is a real showman. It was a great evening.

We have two more days at sea before reaching Maui on Monday, January 29th.

Jim & Ginny

January 24, 2018 – The Voyage Begins

Our grand world cruise adventure has begun. We’re onboard Crystal Serenity and have left the Port of Los Angeles behind us. A lot has happened since our first blog entry a week ago. We’ll cover them in chronological order.

The night before leaving home we attended a 60^th anniversary party for our dear friends Lex & Eileen Roulston, which was organized by their children. It was a grand affair, with lots of their old friends, co-workers, and current neighbors – delicious dinner, good fellowship, and good time had by all. Of course, everyone was interested in our upcoming cruise, and we regaled them with our plans and expectations.

We can’t say our flight west was uneventful, but we did make it to Los Angeles eventually. Believe it or not, our plane from Ft Myers to Atlanta left two hours late, because of a flat tire! It was necessary to jack the landing gear up off the ground to change the tire. We couldn’t see what they were doing from where we were sitting, but with the weight of the plane and the 200 passengers, that must have been a mighty strong jack. We eventually took off, and the flight to Atlanta was uneventful. Of course, our connecting flight was pulling away from the gate by the time we got there. Delta did a great job, rescheduling us on a later flight to LA.

We stayed at the Doubletree Hotel in San Pedro – site of the Port of Los Angeles. It’s really a pretty location, sitting alongside the very large Cabrillo Yacht Marina. We don’t think we’ve ever seen so many pleasure boats in one place before.

We spent our time here walking around the marina and the local area. We didn’t have a car, as we didn’t want to take any risks driving on the LA freeways. It was more important to make it to the ship on time. We had an interesting breakfast with a couple from Denver who were staying at the same hotel. They were waiting to leave from the same port, a day earlier than us, on a world cruise aboard the Pacific Princess – a smaller ship (only 670 guests compared to 1,080 on Crystal Serenity and 848 on Crystal Symphony).

Our stay in San Pedro was pleasant, but it was time for the real adventure to begin. Crystal arranged a limousine and driver to take us to the port yesterday. He arrived exactly on time and, after a short drive, he dropped us off at a red carpet entrance on the second deck of the terminal building. Many Crystal ground-based staff were there to greet us by name and escort us through security. Then they took us to the VIP lounge where we were checked in very quickly and given our pass-cards (room key/ID, charge card), which had been pre-made for us. More Crystal staff walked with us to the boarding gate. 

As we knew from our 2016 world cruise with Crystal, full-world-cruisers are treated very well, as special guests with this company. It couldn’t have been easier or faster for us. Total time from getting out of the car and stepping onto the ship took about 10 minutes.

We ate lunch in the Main Dining Room, went to the Computer Center to set up our free, no-time-limited Internet service, and then to the Library to sign up for Friday’s “Magic Castle at Sea” show. We always enjoy these magic shows – they’re restricted to a very small number of people (somewhere around 10 -15). By then, our stateroom was ready for us.

Three of our suitcases were already in our room, and the others arrived very quickly after that. Time was somewhat limited, so we were only able to do a partial unpacking. At 4:15 there was a mandatory lifeboat drill for all passengers. Luckily for us, the drill for us our group was held in the Crystal Theater. On other ships we’ve found it necessary to stand by our lifeboat out on the deck. We then had just enough time to return to our room and change clothes for the evening festivities.

Crystal Serenity left port at 5:00, and at 5:15 we attended a special reception in the Stardust Club for full-world-cruise passengers; the room was full. The show band played; Rick Spath, the Cruise Director, welcomed everyone effusively; and we recognized quite a few people we’d cruised with in 2016. In many ways, the beginning of a World Cruise is something like a reunion, as there were many people greeting each other as old friends. The same can be said about crew members, as they tend to work for many years with Crystal and were greeting passengers as old friends as well. At the reception, we sat with a couple who are on their 11^th Crystal World Cruise.

Dinner was at 6:00, where we enjoyed meeting our four table companions – Martin & Judy from near Phoenix, Arizona, and Ken & Sunday from Boynton Beach, Florida. We all seemed to have a lot in common, but they will not be transferring to Crystal Symphony in Sydney with us – too bad, as they seemed like great people. Right after dinner at 8:00 was the exciting start of the World Cruise, with the massive balloon drop — great fun. We retired to our stateroom fairly early, since we needed to move suitcases and clear out space on our bed.

After a good night’s sleep, we wakened to a beautiful day at sea. We’re headed in a west-southwest direction toward Hawaii. There will be five days at sea at the beginning of this cruise and we’ll arrive at Lahaina, Maui on Monday, January 29th. Sea conditions are pleasant, and air temperature 59°F (15°C). We finished unpacking at about 9:30 this morning and attended two enrichment lectures today: Ken Rees, normally the Destination Lecturer, spoke on some of the highlights of his lengthy TV news career. Ken has a cosmopolitan and humorous personality, and it’s always fun to listen to his presentations. In the afternoon, Dennis Mammana, who is a highly acclaimed astronomer and celestial photographer, spoke on “The Seven Wonders of the Universe.’ It was a very interesting talk, and we’re hoping that later in this segment of the World Cruise he’ll be able to go up on the top deck of the ship at night and hold an astronomy class.

Tonight is the first “formal night,” which on Crystal Serenity is called “Black Tie Optional,” followed by a new entertainment production called “Crystal in Motion.”

Jim & Ginny

January 15, 2018 -- Preparations

Welcome to our blog – a diary of our latest grand adventure, as we sail on Crystal Cruise’s 2018 World Cruise 4, “South Pacific Reflections.” We are Jim and Ginny, the couple on the left in the photo shown above. We plan to update this blog, to describe what we’re seeing and doing, whenever Internet connections are possible along the way.

This is an unusual and exciting adventure for us, and for Crystal Cruises, as they have two ships participating in world cruises this year, with four optional itineraries. We chose option 4, which means we will sail onboard both ships during our travels. We begin the adventure in Los Angeles, California on January 23rd onboard Crystal Serenity, and return to Fort Lauderdale, Florida 98 days later (April 30th) onboard Crystal Symphony. If all goes according to plan, we (and all other WC-4 passengers) will be switching ships in Sydney, Australia.

Along the way, we should be visiting 49 ports in 19 different countries. One of the highlights for us will be the 10 port stops in New Zealand over a period of 11 days. We’ll also be in French Polynesia for eight days and may be able, finally, to visit Easter Island. Sea conditions there are often too rough to transfer onto the island. We sat in the waters off Easter Island in the past and never had a chance to go ashore.

Shown below is a map of our intended route. You’ll see annotations such as “Sydney Voyage 8204,” “Auckland Voyage 8205,” etc.. It’s possible for people to book passage on one or more “segments” of the world cruise. What that means for us is that some fellow passengers will be boarding and others leaving at the specific intermediate stops of the full world cruise shown in larger letters on the map.

You may view our port-by-port itinerary for the full 98 day world cruise from the Itinerary tab at the top of the page for this blog, adjacent to the Home tab.

We’ve been planning for this trip for over a year, and are definitely ready. We have all our travel documents; we’ve updated all the necessary immunizations; and we’re signed up for some of the excursions being offered along the way.

We contracted with Luggage Concierge -- a company recommended by Crystal Cruises – to ship the biggest part of our luggage directly from our home to the ship. They set up an appointment for UPS to pick up the bags this past Tuesday (Jan 11^th). Exactly on time, a big brown truck arrived and Tyler, with UPS, loaded the bags and was gone in less than 10 minutes. We’re hoping all four pieces of luggage will be in our stateroom when we board Crystal Serenity on January 23^rd in Los Angeles. They’re shipping the luggage across the country – from Florida to California – by truck in the middle of winter; that’s why the pickup in Florida is nearly two weeks before being needed in L. A. We assume the bags are stored safely somewhere near the port if they arrive early. Crystal will reimburse us for the cost of shipping the luggage (up to $500 per person).

   

We still have essential things that we’ll bring with us when we fly to Los Angeles next Sunday  – tickets, passports, laptop computer, camera, medicines, etc. Unfortunately, all of it is covering our dining room table right now, but we should have it all packed within the next few days.

We’ve been fortunate enough to do a lot of traveling over the years and have a pretty good idea of what we need to bring with us, but it’s still a chore. Highest priority is to make sure we remember all the essential things – we have checklists for them. We can always do a little shopping in L.A., Honolulu, or elsewhere for other things, if necessary.

Our next blog entry will probably be next week, either in L.A. or soon after boarding the ship.

Jim & Ginny