Allure of the Seas - Day 7 - Final Day @ Sea

Today is the final full day at sea. Gah! There’s still so much left to do and so little time to do it all! I still have to go on the zip line and I still have to do the stand up Flow Rider. 

I think I woke up around 8:30 – 9 today, which was the latest I’ve ever woken up on the cruise? Not really sure where everyone else is, but I check the cruise compass, which tells us what events are going on where, and I notice that there’s a Backstage Tour. So I head on over to the Park Café to grab a coffee, and make my way over to the Amber Theatre, sit in the audience and wait for the tour to begin. 

They begin at 9:30 sharp, the “hosts” introduce themselves and explain their involvement with the shows. Once that has concluded they begin a question and answer period, a lot of the questions were really good ones. In short, I learned that it is true that some of the performers do perform on multiple shows, i.e. members of the Ocean Aria cast were part of the Blue Planet cast, and members of the Chicago cast were part of the Blue Planet cast. That for Blue Planet, when they had those 4 solo songs during the show, those were sung live, all the other songs were just a recording, of course they will sometimes use a recording for the live songs as well, if the stars are not feeling that well.

The performers are contracted and each contract varies, from 6 months to about 9 months, currently with the production we saw, the casts contract is for 8 months, they usually move along as a group or a ‘family’, there is a rare situation where someone will leave and pursue other opportunities. They practice on land for each show, then when they come onboard they do actual rehearsals, however the rehearsals are done usually late at night. It takes a very long time to set up for each show, because they have to change the backgrounds, adjust the lighting and the camera work. 

Once the Q&A period concluded, we broke up into two smaller groups and were given a tour of the backstage; we got to see their costumes, their change rooms and learnt that they only wash the costumes every so often, but of course some people sweat more than others, so some are washed more than others. RCI has a team of seamstresses that they employ, and those seamstresses pretty much get flown all around the world, wherever and whenever they are needed to alter or fix a costume for a show. The performers don’t really have an understudy, however since they’re all so well trained and experienced, the majority of them can usually just pick up the missing pieces and continue or sub in if required. In terms of show accidents, there hasn’t been any mechanical errors yet, just human errors, but all were minor ones. 

Once the backstage tour concluded some people left, and some people stayed, I was one of those who stayed, for those of us who stayed, they took us up to their control tower where we got to see the very expensive 3D projector, we learned that they’re currently tinkering with adding 3D effects into the live shows. For example, during the Blue Planet show, when they turn the whole theatre into an aquarium, they would use the 3D technology to make the actual fishes float around. #Excited!

Once that tour concluded, I once again checked the cruise compass and found out that there was going to be a Captain’s Corner, a very similar event, however this time, it would be the captain and his crew members answering questions about the ship. So I made my way over to the aqua theatre to attend that as well. 

Once again, very interesting, there I learned that, they don’t’ re-stock the food at every port of call, they only do it once, at the beginning of their trip. Based on past experience, they are able to calculate how much food they will require and they usually have just enough food for everyone on board, with the remaining, discarded food that people leave behind, they grind that food, but no clue on what they do with it afterwards. 

At night time or during the day, when the ship is set on ‘cruise control’ it only requires about 3 people to man the boat. The boat has stabilizers that can be put out if they’re traveling over rough waters, this helps decrease the rocking of the boat, and also helps the performers during shows.

Once that concluded, I met up with the rest of my cast over at the Park Café to enjoy our second lunch meal there. While there, I had two cups of the cream of mushroom soup and one of their famous salt bun roast beef sandwiches, I also had a cup of hot coffee sitting out there to cool down, and while I left my table to go back inside to get my second cup of cream of mushroom soup, I came out to find that everybody had left and more importantly my coffee that I had worked so hard on cooling was taken away by the server. 

I knew where we were all headed after, the Wipe Out Café for more food, but it just hurt that my coffee that I worked so hard on was taken away, so I had to start the whole process over again.

After lunch, it was time to take it easy and do a light activity, as we had our second dodge ball tournament of the trip coming up @ 2PM. We made a minor roster change this time, we bounced Eric and replaced him with a more active, younger, candidate, Derrek. 

This time the competition was not a Round Robin like the last time, this time it was strictly elimination, once your team lost, you were done for. The Sitting Ducks were up first! I wanted to call our team “I Like Balls”, however when I registered our team name, some stupid kids around us kept saying it over and over, kinda like mad gab, and laughing at me going, ha ha, he likes balls. Idiots! They said it so much in fact that the announcer/host realized what was going on. By having this as my team name, every time he would make an announcement looking for us, he would be on the microphone declaring that he liked balls. So that got ruined and I just went back to the default name of Sitting Ducks. 

We were up against a team from New Jersey, I think it was the same team that we played during our first tournament but not too sure, long story short, we lost. So our cruise Dodge ball record is 0 for 3.

I stayed along with some of the others and watched the remainder of the dodge ball tournament unfold, man, there were some shitty teams, we definitely could have taken those teams out, oh well, this will leave something to look forward to next time!

Once the tournament concluded, I went back to my room to change, ‘cause I wanted to go on Flow Rider, I wanted to go on this thing since Day 1, but never got the chance, ‘cause the lineups were too long, they were still long today, but I had absolutely no choice. So I toughed it out, I rode it all the way up until it was time to go back and get ready for dinner. 

But before that at 5:55PM in the Royal Promenade area, there would be a “surprise” Flash Mob dance experience. It wasn’t really a surprise, since they announced the classes and right before the event started, they even took over the PA system and announced that something was going to happen. So much for a genuine flash mob experience. 

After that I quickly made my way over to dinner, and surprisingly, I was only a couple of minutes late. Once again, we had our final 2 hour dinner session and gave our waiters Gio and Dennis a standing ovation and round of applause. 

After dinner Alfred and I were suppose to meet up with the Doctor/Lawyer set at one of the clubs, Dazzles and attend their Dancing Through The Decades dance event. However, tonight was also the last night for the Comedy show, and I wanted to do that more than meet up with them two. I ran into them on one of the main decks and told them that I was going to go watch the comedy show instead, and that maybe I’ll see them around later. 

It was a good decision, the comedy show was excellent! They had two main comedians, the first guy was easily forgettable, he wasn’t remotely funny and I saw several people walk out, if it hadn’t been for others telling me about the comedy show and how the second guy, AJ Jamal, is much better, I would have walked out too, but I hung in there and in the end it was worth it. This guy was genuinely funny. Once the show concluded we left the comedy club but stood right outside of it, he came out and started taking pictures with people who wanted one, and he sat down at a bench near us and we just shot the breeze for a good half hour, we made him laugh, he made us laugh, it was all good. He even gave Quenton some career advice about becoming a comedian. 

Once that session concluded, I told everyone that I was going to go up to Dazzles and try to see if I could find Alfred and them, lo and behold there they were right there, sitting, drinking and just chatting, so I joined them. We hung out for probably a good hour, before the party concluded, we were then going to move the party to another club, Blaze as that’s where it was suppose to be the “it” spot, but Alfred and the Doctor wanted to go to the casino and play some roulette, but the Lawyer and myself wanted to go to Blaze instead, we could have easily split up, but then the fun and atmosphere would have been ruined, and we all knew it, so no one suggested it. 

So we all went back to our rooms to grab some money and headed down to the Casino to play some roulette, and me to play some more blackjack, with the Lawyer quietly standing there watching me play. None of us came out on top, but it was a good time overall. 

We only left ‘cause they closed down the casino, it was already 3AM in the morning, wayyy past the Doctor/Lawyer’s bedtime. Alfred still wanted to go check out Blaze, but we didn’t think anybody would be down there still, so we just called it a night, since we had to get up early tomorrow morning to have breakfast and leave the ship.