A sea day that was also Halloween that was also our wedding anniversary arrived on our 2023 Ruby Princess cruise. Ordinarily, if we were at home then this would be a time for a takeaway and a bottle of fizz, and if we were on a general cruise around this time of year then we might book speciality dining, but we were on an American cruise ship, sailing from and to America, and actually sailing on the actual day of our anniversary for the first time, and we were keen to see and partake in (to a small extent) the general Halloween celebrations aboard a cruise ship because Americans really like to make a big deal of this sort of thing. Probably because life isn’t horrifying enough for them in America. No, that doesn’t sound right.
Halloween: a day for horrors. And the day started with one when the captain announced over the speakers that the following day’s stop at Panama City along with all its excursions had been cancelled as there was political unrest in the country that wasn’t considered to be dangerous to foreigners but would likely cause disruption that could have knock-on effects for our subsequent transit through the canal. This was the port of call we’d most been looking forward to as we’d not only booked a great trip to visit local tribespeople, we’d even had to get Yellow Fever vaccinations beforehand. Gutted, of course, but we understood the decision.
That meant we’d be getting another, unplanned sea day on the following day but for this one right now we got over the disappointment and decided to treat the day as we were going to anyway, only now we could stay up later and make more use of the drinks package. There’s always a small upside to these things.
To start with we headed off for a walk around the ship after breakfast and following is a selection of photos of some of the various Halloween decorations put up by passengers on their doors or by the cruise ship’s staff across the various venues.
At Crooner’s they’d prepared a display of Halloween-themed cocktails. By all accounts we were the first people to try some of them (because we’re nosey, and borderline functional alcoholics (well, we’re British, so the same thing)) because as soon as the first ones were delivered to our table the bar staff asked if they could take some photos of us for their corporate marketing or social media or something. People who know us know that we don’t like our photos being used or our faces shown (we have our reasons) but we said yes because the likelihood of anyone seeing the pictures should they be published anywhere or recognising us especially as we wouldn’t be named was ridiculously low.
As I was waiting for one of the drinks to be made I nipped along the deck from Crooner’s just to grab a few more photos of Halloween decorations we’d missed. At the photo centre the guys there switched on a skeleton with flashing eyes so I could take a shot of it, while in the entrance to Club Fusion a giant spider with motion detectors would rise sharply from the ground and let out a screaming roar much to everyone’s amusement.
To the main Halloween events on the Ruby Princess cruise ship then, and if you’re hoping to see photos of me and my wife in our Halloween costumes then you really, really don’t know us at all. However, I will let you see what we wore. I went with a monk’s robe and hood, adding a plague doctor-style mask to it. My wife wore an Alice in Wonderland Queen of Hearts costume. I really wish I’d taken up the hem of my outfit and had it altered to give more room to walk as it proved very awkward to do much more than shuffle, but both costumes proved very popular. On three occasions – one in a lift, which was the funniest – women passengers flinched when they saw me, and two crossed themselves afterwards. My wife, on the other hand, added to the day’s earlier unexpected photography session by the bar staff with additional poses between groups of Asian women on the cruise who wanted shots taken with this sort-of-Disney-queen look, I guess. This happened many times. Several Asian women bowed to her too.
There was some music taking place in the piazza as we passed by but our main source of entertainment to start the evening – and it features in most evenings on a cruise ship for us – was some Halloween trivia. It was one where you need to guess the Halloween-related music based on a small clip and we did pretty average on this.
Then it was back to the piazza for the Halloween Costume Parade. We observed but didn’t take part, primarily because my shuffling through the central hub of the ship while being stared at from three levels was too much for my introverted self to contemplate. I’d often take some photos here then look around to find my wife had been cornered by more Asian cruisers wanting a photo taken with her.
From the parade it was along to Club Fusion and the Halloween Disco, first with music from the resident band, then the DJ. As we tend to get along with and get to know the bar staff quite well when we cruise with Princess – it just happens – it was nice to bump into some here who were dressed up too and it was good to see their own reaction to our costumes.
Knowing we didn’t have to get up super-early any longer because of the Panamanian disruption ashore, we headed to Skywalkers for a bit afterwards and it was lovely to see the place with a few more people in it than normal, even if the absolutely bloody awful DJ was there playing the same old songs he always played without any concern for the passengers.
In the next post in this travelogue series we get another quiet, relaxing day aboard Ruby Princess before a deck party in the evening to make up for us not being able to go ashore in Panama.