It’s a new day and all ship services are open – hooray! But not until 10am – boo! So, there’s a little more waiting. Sarah goes to daily mass and I take the kids to breakfast. We’re at this great stage where most kid stuff is getting easier. They’re older, have decent judgement, can find a bathroom and hold a table by themselves. (It’ll all go to hell again when they’re teens, but we’ll enjoy the slide into easiness while it lasts.) I get all the kids settled with food and tell Veronica that she’s in charge of the table. I get my cutlery, a plate, then turn around and see Veronica behind me. She’s looking for juice. I say, “But I left you in charge.” She says, “And then I put Teddy in charge.” Eight years old and already a master of delegation. Second breakfast highlight: Susannah receives the bravery award for trying all liking hash browns. We can now serve seven different things to our food phobic kids! (To Susannah, at least.)
On the way out of breakfast, Teddy runs into a boy his age and says, “Are you going to the kids’ club?” He says yes, then Teddy leads him by the hand to the stairs. We end up walking beside his parents and make introductions, laughing at how fast both kids have mutual accepted friendship. But every 20 steps or so the kid looks back at his parents with eyes that say, “I’m not being abducted, right?” We drop the kids off at Adventure Ocean which is Royal’s kids’ club (which I will forever call the Fun Factory because of all the years at Celebrity). All of the kid’s staff go by nicknames, and Ladybug takes charge of the kids. She seems… unfun. Clearly not someone in love with their job. Doubts about the kids’ program continue to gnaw at us.
Now that we all have some free time, Sarah and her dad’s first order of business (because they’re true to form) is to book their next cruise. We’re going on separate vacations next year, and my parents will be coming with us on a cruise in 2020. Sarah’s dad gets his cruise tied up in no time; ours is more of a struggle. One of the problems is that rooms which used to be reserved for families of five have been opened up for smaller parties to book. In the end, we get three rooms in a row between the seven of us, and the ship is this flat-our, bonkers floating amusement park – with diving shows, a carousel, laser tag, and loads more. We pick the kids up from the pseudo Fun Factory, and Veronica’s pretty upset because there are no girls, while on the bright side, Teddy has made a couple of friends. We meet one at the waterslide right afterwards, and while he’s a couple years older than the Tedster, he’s very nice and totally keen to hang out. The waterslide is super slow, like, the lazy river of waterslides, at least until Teddy’s friend teaches us the key: lay back and stick you butt in the air. His pro tip is to turn yourself into a sled, basically. The slide is pretty rockin’ after that.
Next, the kids go back to the kids’ club and the adults get dressed for formal night. We head to the Safari Club, which serves as the extended happy hour lounge for Diamond club members. We sit with a nice couple from Florida (formerly Long Island), and Sarah’s dad and the guy trade baseball stories (Long Island Guy was at the last game the Dodgers played at Ebbet’s Field, while Sarah and her dad were at the Skydome when Joe Carter hit the home run to win the World Series.) Then we picked up the kids, whipped on their formal attire, and headed off to dinner. On the way, we stopped for photos. The girls’ go-to pose is always one hand on a hip, and now Teddy has decided that his pose is to put a casual arm over the closest railing. Despite and not because of these affectations, we get some nice pictures.
After dinner, the kids do a kids’ club threepeat. We try to get some info out of their staff about when they’ll be offering dinner club (where they feed the kids while adults have an adult meal). The staff is maddeningly imprecise with details. Everything is basically, “we’ll let you know the day before,” which makes booking dining reservations impossible. At some point, they seem to have forgotten that they’re part of an interconnected series of ship services and not this totally independent fiefdom. Sarah is spitting nails over it, but she’s measured and rational with the staff when voicing her complaints, and they come around in the end. Then we all go to bed early because we’re about to see the clocks go back one hour every night for the next four nights.
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