1996 Sci-Fi Cruise Report, By Jack Beven. This report is slightly edited, and is reprinted with the author's permission. Greetings, everyone! Hopefully you have seen the recent posts on the Who Cruise from Dan Harris and Sylvester McCoy. Yours truly was on the cruise, so I thought I would make a longer report on it... ...Some background material: The cruise was on the Carnival lines ship Celebration. This ship carries up to 1,900 passengers, primarily in the four lowest decks. It features three swimming pools, two formal restaurants, and a third restaurant/snack bar between two of the pools. It also featured a fair- sized theater/lounge, several smaller lounges/bars, a discotheque, and a casino. In short, it was a floating Las Vegas hotel. The ship also had an internal TV system with several channels. This was mainly for movies, but it proved quite useful to us a few days into the trip. (More on this later.) Our group included Sylvester and his sons Sam and Joe. The group leader was Dan Harris of Margate, FL. We had one family come from Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Fred and Darlene Elrick and their son Frazier. Another international participants included Tony Pressley, of Worksop, Nottingham, UK. The Florida contingent included Tina Stitzer of Pembroke Pines (a r.a.drw participant a while back), Barry Rosenfeld of North Miami, Carol Easterling of Royal Palm Beach, and Peter Sowka of Sarasota. Rounding out the group were Dawn Hubbard of Valdosta, GA, and Bette Llewellyn of somewhere in North Carolina. The group had a great variety of professions and interests. Sam and Joe are students back home. Dan and Carol are leaders of the WXEL (the Palm Beach PBS station) Sci-Fi task force. Tina is a postal worker and head of the Sophie Aldred Appreciation Society. Tony is a health care worker and part time actor. Barry is a human resources worker. And to top it off, I'm a professional meteorologist. Sylvester and his sons had been in Florida for some time before the cruise. Sylvester had done a few pledge drives and other functions, then he and the boys went to the Keys. Sylvester's wife would have been there except that she was doing relief work in Iraq. One other note: You'll see a few scientific references included. This is because my work duties include hurricanes and high seas forecasting, and thus I had a professional interest in the cruise. Plus, we weren't that far from an erupting volcano on Montserrat. My apologies in advance if anyone's bored by this. Now on to the adventure: Saturday, April 6: I live in southern Miami, so I had one of the shorter trips to the port. I got on board at about 1:30 and spent the next hour-and-a-half exploring the ship. Around 3:15 I went to attend a meeting on the beaches to be encountered during the trip, which was hosted about our Cruise Director (CD). I should say something here about our CD, who shall remain nameless. He spoke with a marked English accent, and he sometimes seemed to think that he was as funny as Craig Charles (or so I thought). I think he irritated Sylvester at times. I know he irritated me! The ship sailed at 4:30 PM. By this time, I had met other members of the group, and we were up on deck as the ship departed. The ship's PA system played a medley of songs during departure, including the theme from ST:TNG. This prompted some comments that we should have gotten them to play the Doctor Who theme! Right after departure came the mandatory lifeboat drill, which to my eye appeared rather disorganized. Thank goodness there were no real emergencies! Dinner that night was our first full meeting. We had two reserved tables - one circular seating 10 and one rectangular seating 5. I actually found Sylvester and sons hanging out with Tony in a near-by bar before dinner. This turned into their favorite pre-dinner location for the rest of the trip. Carnival liked to have theme nights for dinner, and this night was Italian night with an appropriate menu. I should mention here that all formal lunches and dinners offered a choice of appetizer, soup, salad, entree, and dessert. A food aside: There were formal sittings of breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. The poolside restaurant served breakfast and lunch every day. In addition, there was a midnight buffet every night. I can't speak for the rest of the group, but I put on a few pounds during the trip. I'm still trying to lose them! Three dining room comments here: First, Sylvester usually bought a bottle of wine for which ever table he was sitting at. Second, there was a sign at the door that said no shorts allowed. Sylvester ignored this on several occasions! Third, our dinners usually took two hours! After dinner came the introductory show hosted by the CD. I left before things really got going and eventually found Sylvester, Dan, and Barry in the disco where a singles party was allegedly in progress. I say allegedly, because the party had so much loud music that it was impossible to hear yourself think, much less talk to someone else. (Definitely not the environment for singles to meet, IMHO.) Our conversation was, to put it mildly, stifled, so I didn't hang around long. AFAIR it was sometime this night that Dan related an interesting story. The first Who Cruise was in November, 1988, sailing from Miami to Cozumel and other places with Sylvester and others on board. Well, the night the ship was supposed to sail through the Yucatan Channel was the night that Tropical Storm Keith passed across Cozumel at just under hurricane strength. The ship had to wait for the storm to pass, so it circled around on the edge where winds were 40 mph and seas 12-15 ft. (That's 65 kph amd 3.5-4.5 m for all you metric folk.) Sylvester spent the night partying in the disco and turned up the next day saying "what storm?" He thought all the rocking and swaying was just him! One other Who-weather story came up during the cruise: Sophie Aldred visited Florida in early August, 1995. Her first night in Orlando was when Hurricane Erin moved across the peninsula. The storm knocked out the power to her hotel in the middle of the night. At some point, the door to Sophie's room opened and a man walked in. Sophie (who sleeps in, how shall we say, a state of nature) originally thought it was someone coming to evacuate her from the hotel. You can imagine her shock when it turned out that it was someone who had been given a wrong key by a desk clerk and was in Sophie's room by mistake! Easter Sunday, April 7: One good reason for departing the singles party was midnight Easter Sunday mass. The turnout was reasonably good given the lack of advanced publicity. After that, it was time to hit the sack. This was a day at sea, so there was no real hurry to anything. The CD gave an 11 AM talk on shore excursions, much of which was focused on shopping. Sign-up for the shore excursions occurred right after that. I went for an early lunch in the pool side restaurant and joined up with Dan. We spent some time talking about his activities at the West Palm Beach PBS station WXEL. It seems that he and the science fiction fans basically take over the station's programming on Saturday night. (Unfortunately, my cable system doesn't get WXEL. :-( It also doesn't get the Weather Channel. ##*&!) Sylvester joined us after a time, and we discussed various aspects of public TV and Doctor Who. One conclusion we reached is that "Paradise Towers" should have given a lot of southeast Floridians the screaming heebee geebies! (The coast between Miami and West Palm Beach is filled with high-rise apartments and condominiums.) Dan and Sylvester departed for the formal lunch, and I hung out near the pool the rest of the afternoon. The ship was heading straight into a brisk southeast wind, so there was a wonderful cool breeze on deck. An aside: I (and the rest of my family) have pale skin. My is so pale that my graduate school buddies dubbed me "Albedo Lord". As you might guess, I sunburn rather easily. My sunscreen of choice for this trip was SBF 50! Sunday night included the Captain's Formal Gala, which meant you got to dress up and shake the Captain's hand on the way into the lounge where the party was. (I did get to talk to the Captain professionally a few days later.) This was followed by Easter Dinner. While we were waiting for dinner, Sylvester commented that it was hard for him to watch his Doctor Who episodes. He thought it would be easier for him now that several years had passed. Dinner was followed by the Las Vegas Revue show that I skipped. (It was produced by someone named Roger Blum. Any relation, Jon?) Some of the group went to party, while the rest of us turned in. Monday, April 8: We were still at sea most of Monday, so there's little to talk about. We arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico, about 6 PM. The whole group went to the forward observation deck to watch and take pictures. We got good views of Old San Juan and El Morro Castle as we entered the harbor. We also got to see the somewhat tricky process of bringing the harbor pilot on to the ship, which hadn't slowed down yet! San Juan notes: Old San Juan sits on an island where its old fort could command the harbor entrance. The newer San Juan sprawls out to the east and southeast. The 1995 hurricane barrage had little effect on San Juan, so there was no damage to stop tourist activities. We were the only cruise ship around that night, but San Juan has a bustling night life and things were quite crowded in the old city. One problem with the visit was the timing. The 6 PM to 2 AM stay didn't allow us to take in any of the sights outside of town. Once we docked, the group went its separate ways on shore tours. I took a bus tour that wound its way from Old San Juan over to the high rent district in downtown San Juan. (The prices being asked for some of the high rise condos were, to put it mildly, astronomical!) It then wound its way back to the shopping centers of Old San Juan. One store, which specialized in gold and watches, was giving away free pina coladas (small size!) to everyone who came in. Another store specialized in jewelry and liquor. Since I'm not much into any of those things, I settled on a T-shirt. (This night's dinner theme was French. It's likely that very few people were there with all the people who went on the San Juan tours.) Once back at the ship, I went to the Mexican buffet and party that was being held poolside. I noticed that none of the rest of the group attended. I found out later that Sylvester and several others went bar-hopping, and they barely made it back before the boarding door closed at 1:30 AM. They found a Doctor Who pinball machine in one of the bars and rather amazed the barkeeper when they introduced Sylvester. Some of the group had walked to El Morro Castle before heading for the shopping district. I found out the next afternoon that Tony had stayed in the disco until 3 AM and had won the adoration of a bunch of spring breakers. He was now known as the "English dancing fool"! Tuesday, April 9: Discovery!: I stayed at the buffet until 1 AM. The ship departed at 2 AM, and I found out that my cabin (which was forward on the lowest passenger deck) was right over the maneuvering thrusters used to steer the Celebration in and out of the harbor. It sounded like a jet engine! Just for good measure, I got a repeat dose when the ship docked in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, at 8 AM. Needless to say, I was a little short of sleep that night. Fortunately, my scheduled tour was in the afternoon so I could sleep in. St. Thomas notes: St. Thomas was devastated by Hurricane Marilyn in September, 1995. While much of the damage is cleaned up and the tourist spots restored, there are still signs of the storm in the blue canvas being used as temporary roofing material. The Virgin Islands were held by Denmark for many years. Thus, many of the streets of Charlotte Amalie (the main town) were narrow and the alleyways narrower. Danish street and place names abounded. Another interesting point was that we were one of three large ships docked at Charlotte Amalie that day. The locals put great importance in the ships. Indeed, the guidebook I brought back has the schedule for every arriving ship during April. One of the locals said that he's seen as many as seven cruise ships there simultaneously. Traffic was pretty heavy in Charlotte Amalie with three ships. I shudder to think what it's like with seven! I got up about 11 AM and met Tina and Carol in the main lobby. We all had the idea of going shopping in Charlotte Amalie. Thus, we hopped a taxi to a downtown park and proceeded on foot. Carnival had given us a map of some recommended stores, and one of the locals happened to see me referring to it. This set him off on a tirade of how Carnival was getting kickbacks from these stores! He pointed us to some stores off the main shopping street, and we wandered through them spending some of our cash. One particular store merited extra mention. This was the Mimi Mouse House Toy Store, which sold a great variety of unusual toys. Our CD had recommended that we visit it and buy the mechanical pigs and frogs so we could race them on the ship a few days later. The store also featured mechanical cows, mechanical frogmen, and mechanical dinosaurs that looked a LOT like Godzilla! (No, I don't think they had thermonuclear breath! :-) ) It also featured alarm clocks with a variety of loud, rude, or sarcastic alarms. We didn't buy much there, but it was quite entertaining. We returned to the ship for a bite to eat, then it was time for the afternoon tour. Tina, Carol, Bette, and myself were going on a submarine tour of a coral reef near an offshore island. A large cabin cruiser took us out to the Atlantis II submarine, plowing through 5 ft seas in the process. The submarine voyage was VERY interesting. We had excellent views of living coral reefs teeming with marine life. Indeed, one school of fish (a yellow-striped snapper) followed us wherever we went, with many of them swimming right up to the portholes. The highlights were when we saw two sting rays and a barracuda. The sub descended to 150 ft, and it was fascinating to watch our clothing change color as we went deeper. I was sitting next to Carol, and her pink shirt became purple! (Despite the low light, we had no trouble taking photos other than the fact the fish didn't pose for us!) The trip lasted about an hour, then we returned to the cruiser and Charlotte Amalie. An aside: The sub tour is part of a chain scattered around the world. Several of them are in the Hawaiian Islands, while another is on Guam. Yet another is at Nassau in the Bahamas, while there are others whose locations I've forgotten. If you have the chance, I whole-heartedly recommend taking one. We left St. Thomas around 5:45 PM. The departure was slow, as we had to back out of the anchorage past the other two ships. We then turned and steamed out of the harbor. One piece of Dan's planning came to fruition about then. He had brought some videos of Doctor Who episodes along with interviews with various Doctor's and PBS pledge break material. For two days, he had been trying to get the crew to play them on the TV system. After a lot of Catch-22 and Alphonse-Gaston scenes, he finally got the videos underway this afternoon. He even switched the TV in the main lobby to that channel. The videos played through the rest of the cruise. Sylvester reported later that he hadn't got much extra notice from the fellow passengers, but that the crew had taken more notice of him. This evening's dinner theme was Oriental. I turned in right after dinner, as I had an early tour call the next day. Wednesday, April 10: Sint Maarten/Saint Martin notes: St. Martin is an unusual island. The southern half is Dutch, while the northern half is French. The Celebration anchored offshore of Philipsburg on the Dutch side, and we took tender boats to the dock. Philipsburg appears quite Dutch with narrow streets and narrow houses. I don't know what the French side was like, as I didn't get there. The island got clobbered by Hurricane Luis in September, 1995. There were few visible scars left, but a cruise ship pier destroyed by the storm hadn't been replaced yet. An aside: One of the more amusing (to me) sights on St. Martin was a T-shirt in a local shop. It featured a pelican on crutches with a leg in a cast and bandages on a lot of other parts of it's body. It was muttering an expletive, and the caption underneath read "Hurricane Luis September 5, 1995". I guess that sums up the islander's reaction to the storm! We arrived at St. Martin at 6 AM, and I once again got an earful of thruster. I made the tour assembly at 7:30 and I set out for the America's Cup Regatta. This tour was taking people sailing on the 12 meter yachts used in America's Cup racing up to 1987 in a shortened version of an America's Cup race. The tourist would do all the grinding, trimming, and winching, while the professional sailors did the steering and navigating. There were five or six yachts available, and we had enough people to man two of them. I was on the Canada II as one of the grinders, and we were racing against the Stars and Stripes. Well, conditions out on the course were quite rough this day (seas up to 5 ft with waves occasionally breaking over the bow), and grinding is rather tough work. Thus, about halfway through the third of five legs I found myself leaning over side of the yacht throwing up. Fortunately, I hadn't eaten breakfast, so there wasn't much to come up. The crew switched me to a less strenuous position, and I carried on as best I could. Unfortunately, we wound up losing the race after leading the first half. :-( Two other people got sick on my boat: my fellow grinder and his girlfriend, who was a "winch wench". (Don't get mad at me, ladies! I didn't make that one up!) Ironically, both of them were set at a table right next to ours at formal meals. Despite the seasickness, I rather enjoyed this tour, and it gave me a great appreciation of professional sailors. An aside: This business must have been rather expensive to set up, as the 12 meter yachts were not know as "lead-bellied money gobblers" for nothing. The people who run it race the yachts competitively in the islands, and from the number of plaques and trophies I would say they were kicking some serious butt! Another aside: The skies over St. Martin were very hazy this day, and the yacht racers mentioned it had been like that for several days. My first guess was the volcano, as St. Martin was downwind from Montserrat. The volcano had shown its largest eruptions (so far) as we left Miami, and I wasn't surprised that some of the ash was heading that way. I found out later that we also had a outbreak of Saharan Desert dust blow across the Atlantic during the voyage. The probable combination gave the skies a non-picture postcard appearance. One of the racers gave me a newspaper with pictures and details of the eruption. I went back to the ship to freshen up and eat, then I went back to tour Philipsburg. The first thing I noticed was that every taxi driver was asking if people wanted to go to Oriental Beach. This was the nude bench on the French side of the island. (Sorry ladies, I don't think Sylvester went there! :-) ) The other thing I noticed was that the Dutch didn't like to build overhangs on their buildings to create shade. I walked through town for about an hour, then caught the tender back to the Celebration. One thing I noticed as I was leaving was a nice shady restaurant at the end of the pier draped with Heineken ads. I would wager that they were making a monetary killing. The cruise staff had warned us that the last few tenders before departure would probably be crowded. This was an understatement! Many of our group were on those tenders, which I saw from the lounge. The last one was late, and the Celebration actually got underway while it was still tied to the ship! Hair-do's: That evening I noticed more than a few people walking around with braided hair inserted through beads. This was apparently somewhat of a tourist attraction in Philipsburg. Imagine my surprise when Peter showed up at dinner that night with braided hair on the left side! The dinner theme this evening was Fiesta Night. This featured our waiters and busboys doing a festive dance around the restaurant that turned into an informal conga line! Thursday, April 11: This was a day at sea. It was also the worst weather of the trip with overcast clouds and occasional showers as we passed through a cold front. This probably annoyed the sunbathers, but I didn't mind one bit! :-) The highlight for our group this day was the pig races. Frazier had bought one of the mechanical pigs at the toy store in St. Thomas, and he raced his against several others in the forward lounge. The CD had recommended that the people who bought pigs dress them up and create a colorful background for them. The various participants did just. Frazier dubbed his pig "Superpig", who when not in costume lurked under the guise of mild-mannered Peter Porker. The races were interesting to say the least. The pigs would take a few steps down the track, then stop and oink for a few seconds, then take a few more steps. Each race understandably took several minutes. The final race had to be re- run, as the little girl who was trying to keep her pig in a straight line kept pushing it forward. Fraizer's pig didn't win, but everyone involved had a good time. (I mentioned earlier that there was also a frogman's race. This was actually held on Friday afternoon at the pool. None of us attended, as we were busy at lunch. Given how pool liked to slosh back and forth, I would imagine that race took a while!) Another event was the men's hairiest chest contest held by the pool. None of our group participated, so there are no pictures of Sylvester without a shirt. Sorry, ladies! :-) One other event was the galley tour that several of us took together. This was a most instructive lesson in how to fix food for 1800 people and still provide some variety on the menu. This is as good as time as any to talk about gambling. I'm not much of a gambler, so my flirting with Lady Luck was limited to one Bingo game, one session of dice horse-racing, and one trip to the slot machines. I decided to leave the slots after I got a dollar ahead, while I was a general loser the rest of the time. Several group members were more frequent gamblers with varying degrees of success. The evening featured the Captain's Farewell Party, which meant formal dress once again. There was lots of picture taking, as the official photographers snapped a lot of shots of us at a table, as well as our group taking photos of each other. This was followed by the Farewell Dinner. Our waiters and busboys entertained us with a rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" just before serving dessert. (I thought at one point they were going to sing "Happy Trails to You!) There was a Broadway show after dinner, but I passed on that. Friday, April 11: This was a full day at sea and the last full day of the cruise. I woke up early and attended the CD's disembarkation talk. This mainly involved what customs forms we needed to fill out and what to do with our luggage. The luggage had to be outside our cabins at 11 PM, and it was wholeheartedly recommend that we put breakables in our carry-on luggage. WhoTime!: This was the day that we finally had our formal interview/ autograph/Q&A session with Sylvester. Dan set up his video equipment and caught most of it on tape. Obviously, most of the talk centered on the new movie. Sylvester mentioned that he spent much of his time tied to a medical trolley, and he swore up and down that he knew nothing about the movie other than the parts that he was in. He was (if you'll pardon the pun) very coy about giving nothing away! Syl did have some explanations for how some the rumors on the casting of the new Doctor spread. Apparently, some people at Visions had gotten wind that Paul McGann was going to be the new Doctor. One of them made the mistake of mentioning it to a certain vociferous British actor, who then *whispered* it loudly enough to be heard by the entire hotel! (An aside: Brian Blessed's name came up on several occasions during the cruise. It seems he's currently off climbing Mt. Everest. Some of us got the idea that Brian may get himself into trouble by shouting during the climb and triggering an avalanche! On a more serious note, I hope Brian wasn't involved in the recent climbing tragedies on Everest.) Syl did say that he was still a bit peeved about not getting any royalties from his picture appearing on the New Adventures covers. I may have irritated him a little when I handed him a copy of "The Also People" to autograph! Sylvester is current involved in a couple of TV roles. He is appearing as "Rab C. Nesbit" (a show I know nothing about) and as an undead butler named Crud in the show "Ghoul-Lashed". He mention that the latter show recently had Paul Darrow as a guest star. In another interesting story, Syl related that he and Timothy Dalton were appearing together in a play when it was announced the Syl would be the new Doctor while Timothy would be the new James Bond. Syl commented that perhaps these roles should have been reversed! I have a little trouble seeing Syl in some of the actions scenes, but I think that he and Desmond Llewelyn would have had some great scenes together in the lab! The original session in the aft lounge came to a close when a steward decided to close the curtains over the portholes. This made the light too dim for videotaping, and caused Dan to do a slow burn! We thus moved to another lounge in time for English-style tea. I got to show my Visions '95 pictures at that point, as well as the ones from my flight into Hurricane Luis last year. Dinner that night was, to say the least, a little rowdy! The theme was American night, and we got to hear our waiters serenade us again. This time, we were treated to "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "God Bless America". Sylvester and Tony responded to that with a rendition of "Rule Britannia"! This brought some interesting glances from the nearby tables. Things became rowdier when Bette turned the mechanical pig (which she bought from Frazier) loose on the table. Dinner was followed by a farewell party at one of the bars. There was a lot of picture-taking and lots of autographs. It broke up about 12:30 AM, as the Celebration was scheduled to reach Miami at 6 AM that morning. Saturday, April 13: The ship arrived on time, and most of the group made it to the 7:15 breakfast that became the farewell meal. (Only Fred, Darlene and Frazier didn't make it.) After that, we headed for our assigned areas to wait for the disembarkation call. One thing Carnival did was assign people to different decks and then send crew members to each deck to quietly announce it was time to go. This avoided the general stampede that would have resulted if it had been broadcast on the PA system. The system worked well, and everyone was off the ship by 10 AM. The group finally broke up on the curb outside the terminal building. Sylvester headed to Ft. Lauderdale for a flight to Tampa and another pledge drive. Sam and Joe headed off on one last excursion before their flight home the next day. Tony headed off on a tour before his afternoon flight back to Britain. Fred, Darlene, and Frazier headed for the airport and then back to Canada. Dawn headed back to Georgia, while the Florida contingent headed for their respective homes. Finally, Barry and one of his friends gave me a ride back to the my apartment, and that's how the adventure ended. In closing, I would like to thank Dan Harris for arranging the cruise, and I would like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself! Here's looking to the next one whenever it occurs. Jack Beven (a. k. a. The Supreme Dalek) Tropical Prediction Center jbeven@delphi.com beven@nhc.noaa.gov some traveling guy...