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August 2024
Ron Voyage had planed an epic trip on a cruise through the Northwest passage, which my mom was not interested in. She did not want to be that cold for that long without a bathtub. She was looking forward to staying home to enjoy Sequim’s lovely summer weather, when her Parkinsons symptoms were starting to make everyone a little wary of her being alone for that long. So what would be the next best thing? To visit me! Ron booked her flight and hotel with miles so the trip could be cancelled if it turned out that I wouldn’t be there (this has happened roughly three times in the last couple of years when my mom has made arrangements to come visit me on a ship). Ron couldn’t be happier with the deal my mom was getting- she would only have to pay for souvenirs!
I crossed my fingers and constantly checked my phone for updates, waiting to hear that my mom had made it to the hotel. If she could make it across the ocean, through immigration (which I had an escort for), get her bags and take a taxi to the hotel in a country with a language barrier, I could get her the rest of the way.
I found my way to the hotel, and used her wifi (the fastest I’d found in Japan) to upload pictures so I could write these blog posts on the ship. We took a taxi back to the ship, and brought her to my cabin to unpack.
Since my mom cruises so much and often stays in suites, she really enjoys being able to stay in the crew areas and going where I get to go on the ship. It’s like a month-long backstage tour. I print out an extra copy of my schedule and she follows me around. The best part of her being on the ship for a whole month was that she was there for three full cruises so if she missed something on one cruise to rest, then it would come around again later.
Here I am doing Zumba up on the pool deck.
I love that my mom got to see how much the Japanese love to dance.
I think the Wake Show on the ship is my mom’s favorite TV show. She loved getting to watch how it was filmed, and then she would watch it again when it was on the TV the next day.
I think over the last five years, my mom has been on a ship with Andi more than I have! Andi was on the inaugural season of the Sky Princess with my mom, and then he was the Cruise Director for the second half of the World Cruise in 2022. My mom really liked Andi as a Cruise Director.
It was magic having him back. We chatted on the wake show like the best friends who hadn’t seen each other in five years that we were. I mentioned in a previous post that I was nervous about whether or not I would think Andi was a good Cruise Director. The last time I had seen him, he was a confident host doing the same stuff that I was doing. After stepping up as Cruise Director for three days, I felt like I was floundering because it was still new. It was so fun to watch Andi confidently host the Theater, the Wake Show and the Big Game Shows. He was so good. He was so funny. I was so inspired. I meticulously watch the Cruise Directors I’ve worked with to learn as much as I can, and it was so fun to watch Andi. There were so many things he did that I wanted to figure out how to do my version of. After a while, things obviously repeat, but I always took every opportunity I could snag to watch Andi at work. And he loves getting feedback too. I was honored that he trusted me enough to let me critique tiny things- like, (I didn’t even realize I had been doing this too until I watched Andi do it) when everything you say is then being said in Japanese, I would finish a sentence with a comma, – When I was watching Andi, I realized that sounded weird, and suggested he finish the sentence vocally with a full stop. He would also give me little hints of what was working and if something didn’t work as well as I wanted it to, we would brainstorm on how to make it better. I was having so much fun.
Let’s Wear a Yukata!
Joanne wanted to try on Yukatas with my mom, and my mom even got Gary to dress up too!
Joanne and Gary are old friends of my mom’s and they had been on the ship for a few weeks before my mom came. Luckily their cruises overlapped for one cruise so they could hang out together while I ran around. They turned out to be an incredible trivia team!
Behind the Seas with Andi and Lauren.
Even though I work on a cruise ship, I still find these Life at Sea talks fascinating. I especially enjoyed getting to hear Andi and Lauren’s stories.
At one of the ports (Sakaiminato) I took my mom to the sushi place that Koto had taken me to. I showed my mom how to make the green tea, order from the tablets and wait for the sushi to come on the train. I was the pro now!
Bless Lauren. Lauren lived right across the hall from me in her fancy Entertainment Director cabin. When I told her my mom was coming to visit for a month, she started to ruminate on what we could do for her. My mom cruises so much that all the little extra things we can usually get for family members when they come onboard are normal for my mom. So when Lauren offered to print an extra key to her cabin so my mom could use her sitting room for some extra space and privacy and, get this, use her bathtub, I couldn’t believe it. Access to a bathtub makes a huge difference to my mom – it helps her relax and sleep better. I had been thinking that she could go up and use the hot tubs upstairs, but having a bathtub across the hall was the thing (besides me) that would delight my mom.
When I would nap (any chance I got), or if I was doing something (like handing out tickets) that my mom didn’t need to watch, my mom would go hang out ‘at Lauren’s house’ and watch the Wake Show. Lauren liked to go on early morning walks, and my mom joined her when she was also awake early. I knew my mom would like Lauren as much as I did and I loved that they hung out together.
One evening we took advantage of an empty ship (I was IPM during one of the Japanese Summer Festivals, so I did the activities for the few guests who stayed onboard). We went for dinner at Kai Sushi, the Specialty restaurant on the ship.
Lauren, Directing Entertainment
One day in Yokohama we were parked next to the old Sun Princess, which Princess sold during the pandemic.
One day my mom was on the wake show. She sat with Andi and pretended to be me. She said she was tired and she was going to go to the spa. After the break I came back feeling 30 years younger. She was thrilled.
Sometimes I sent my mom to go to activities that I wanted to go to but didn’t have time because I had to do other things. One of them was Hiroshi’s Japanese class.
One night there was a Japanese Festival where we docked right by the fireworks. I took my mom along the M1 (the crew area that goes from front to back on deck 4)
to the crew pool where we watched the fireworks with and exclusive view from the nose of the ship (where they do “I’m King of the world!” in the movie Titanic).
It was so fun to get to share this unique experience with my mom.
One evening Andi was double booked so I hosted the Captain’s Circle Party
We did a game show in the afternoon on one of the sea days called Pick Your Pony where the cruise staff do silly competitions and the guests guess which “pony” is going to win. I usually hosted or kept score. that day one of the dancers was competing but we found out right before the game show that she had a fear of eggs. One of the competitions was that we were each given an egg to smash against our head, and the guests would guess who had the raw egg.
I have to pause this story to tell you another story from this game show. A few weeks prior, Fernando was playing and we all knew that he had an event right after this game show so we tried to rig it so Fernando wouldn’t get the raw egg. Fernando saw us scheming with the eggs and he thought we were rigging it so he would get it so he insisted on switching eggs with DJ Hammer – well he ended up with egg on his face despite our best efforts. I thought this was hilarious. After that we stopped rigging the game since it didn’t work out the way we wanted to anyway.
This was our last time playing Pick Your Pony and Masa had gotten the raw egg 4 times in a row. I had the longest break after the event, so I offered to take the dancer’s place since she was scared of eggs. To up the entertainment value, we told the guests that I had rigged the game so that Masa would get the raw egg the last time and as punishment I would have to play. No one knew that I rigged it so that I would get the raw egg, and Masa did the biggest happy dance when I smashed the egg against my face. He was so happy to not get the raw egg and everyone thought I was getting my deserved karma. It was lots of fun but I pretended to be mad about it.
I always love when my mom comes to cruise with me. She cruises a lot imagining how I would run the events, and I call her from the ship to tell her about what I’m doing and who I’m working with. It’s so fun when those two experiences come together. Every contract I end up doing things I’ve never done before – the Japanese season was no exception – and I think my mom likes seeing them even more than I like showing her. I also really appreciated how much my friends helped take care of her – Andi was always looking for places where she might trip over uneven ground when we went outside, my friends would make sure she got back to the ship okay if I wanted to stay out later, they helped her navigate the crew areas (which are confusing even when we’ve worked on ships for years) and Lauren sharing her cabin (and especially her bathtub). It’s so nice when family makes the ship feel more like home.
