JoCo Cruise Crazy 2: Cruise Crazier!

On the beach in the middle of February!

In late February I was on a week-long cruise on the Holland America Westerdam in the Caribbean with over 500 fellow geeks, featuring a 24 hour game room; stops in Half Moon Cay (Bahamas), Aruba and Curacao; entertainment by Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm, Wil Wheaton, John Hodgman, Marian Call, Vi Hart, David Rees, Paul F Tompkins, John Roderick, Chris Collingwood, John Flansburgh and MC Frontalot; and plenty of unofficial events created by our fellow "sea monkeys" (what JoCo cruisers call ourselves. The other passengers are officially dubbed "snorks"). Like last year, the other seamonkeys were the highlight of the trip: a wonderful community of intelligent, friendly, geeky, awesome people that I wish I could spend more time with. Words cannot encapsulate how incredible this experience was, but I will attempt in this post to describe it as best I can for posterity. Warning: this will be long. TL;DR: the JoCo Cruise is incredibly awesome and all geeks that also love travel should come on the next one!

JoCo Cruise Crazy 1 and 2

The JoCo cruise is most easily understood in terms of a convention. It has some celebrity guests, performances from them, Q&A and other events, and there is a large group of fellow fans who are all "my people" - the afore-mentioned sea monkeys in this case, who are all intelligent, funny, courteous, and sharing many common geeky interests like games, scifi, computers, and so forth. We engage in plenty of gaming and other activities. Only instead of being at a hotel or convention center for a weekend, we're all on a huge floating resort that travels to exotic destinations in the tropical climate (which is nice in the middle of February) and we're all hanging out together for an entire week, celebrities included. There is plenty of space for a lot more interaction with the guests, plenty of time for the development of tons of memes, and every night a sit down dinner where you get to eat with a different group of sea monkeys each night and discover that every single one of them is a really awesome person that you have a lot in common with.

The Performers!

The Sea Monkeys

I brought Christina on the original JoCo Cruise with me last year, intending it to be one big expensive vacation that we couldn't repeat for a long time, but we both had so much fun that when they announced the second one I just couldn't stomach the thought of not being on it. Thankfully there was a deal to add a third and fourth person to a cabin for $100 each (not including entertainment package or other taxes and fees), so we found another couple, Christina and Simon, to room with via the forums and facebook group, and ended up going again for much cheaper this time around. And yes, having two Christinas in one room was sometimes confusing. Having roommates worked out fairly well except that it turns out the room only had one large bed, and single-size sofa bed and pull down berth bed. Since we found out they replaced the linens halfway through the cruise, we ended up compromising and switching beds at that point. As luck would have it, our roommates were extremely nice, considerate, and friendly people and there was no drama despite cramped quarters and little time for sleeping. We did all agree that if we return next year, we'll get cabins of our own though, because it's nicer not having to share. But having roommates this year allowed us all to afford the cruise, and it worked out well, and we are happy to count our roommates amongst the good friends we made on the cruise.

Finding the ship in Aruba

The second cruise was able to build on the success of the first, and make improvements on all fronts. For instance, prior to this cruise inventive seamonkeys came up with a solution to the communication problems from last year. Last year lots of spontaneous events were organized, and the only way to relay information besides word of mouth was the "morning" announcements prior to each concert at 4:30pm. Disconnecting from internet-based communication was a challenge for the tech-savvy crowd on the ship, so this year a statusnet server was setup on a laptop and connected to the ship's wifi (with permission). Since it was intranet, rather than internet, we didn't need to pay to use it, and it generally worked great. Just before the cruise, a poll was setup to vote on a name, and I nominated Twitt-arrr as an additional option, and my name won the vote, a point of pride for me. :-) If you've ever seen Paul and Storm live (perhaps as JoCo's opening band) you'll get the reference. (Or if you use an unhealthy amount of pirate-based puns.)

There are many more things I want to discuss from the cruise while the memories are still relatively fresh. So that I will remember as much as possible, I will attempt to organize the memories by day in a recap.

Sunday, February 19: Fort Lauderdale departure

Christina and I spent the night at her Mom's house, since she was driving us to the airport bright and early and taking care of our animals while we were gone. I had crazily booked a flight for the morning of cruise departure. Luckily any impending snow wouldn't be until the afternoon, so our 7AM flight on Southwest went great. This is my first time on that airline, and I loved not having any baggage fees, but disliked that seating was open, since it made it a mad scramble to ensure Christina a window seat (due to her anxiety with flying) and myself a seat beside her. Everything worked out, we landed and arrived at the cruise port in plenty of time to get checked in with the cruise and then wait to be allowed to board.

Posing at the Pasta bar

Fooooood!

Before going to our cabin, we headed to the Lido deck to eat at the buffet, before realizing that as returning Holland America cruisers we were entitled to a luncheon in the main dining room, and leaving for that. I had shrimp cocktail and a delicious avocado burger and fries there, and got Christina a plate of fries as well. One of my favorite things about cruising is the fixed price dining. You can order whatever you want, and however many things you want, and it's all already covered by what you paid for your room. This ability made the cruise a wonderful value, and it is something I would take much advantage of over the rest of the week. Instead of spending a long time agonizing over menu decisions, I simply ordered everything I thought sounded good, or even like it might be something I'd enjoy that I wouldn't normally risk trying. Often I was pleasantly surprised. Since I've already digressed on the subject of food, I'll say that overall the food was pretty good, but not everything was spectacular, and a few dishes were disappointing (including the entire "Chocolate Extravaganza" Dessert Buffet). Overall there was enough good food that the cruise meals felt indulgent. And (jumping even more ahead of myself now) I ended up not gaining any weight at all on the cruise this time. (Last year I gained 5 pounds which were quickly lost again.) I think all the excess calories were offset by all the additional physical activity.

Once we had eaten, we went to pick up our badges in what would become the 24 hour game room of the cruise, and finally went to our room. I don't want to dwell on any negativity, since overall the experience was largely positive, but there were a few problems with the room that clouded the experience (peeling wallpaper, stained linens, lumpy pillows, broken faucet handle, peeling toilet seat, and annoying noises at night and in the early morning, mainly resulting from the room being fairly old or poorly maintained). Over the course of the cruise we complained to the front desk a few times about these and other problems (breakfast orders arriving incomplete), and they did their best to resolve the issues, although not everything was taken care of in a timely fashion. Basically, it seemed to me like they weren't quite the 5-star resort that they thought they were, and the Westerdam was a bit poorer in condition than the Eurodam the year before was. There was only one other real complaint about the ship, which is that while they had limited the smoking sections, the smoke easily escaped from the casino and made certain hallways and sometimes even the gaming room itself, on a deck above it, unpleasant. But these issues did not detract too much from our experience, just like the psychedelic carpets at the Hunt Valley Inn didn't detract too much from having a great time at Farpoint.

5:30PM: Sea Monkey Orientation was our first event of the cruise, and Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton managed to make it highly entertaining. Here is the awesome orientation film featuring Storm and some towel monkeys:

6:45PM: "The First Transport is Away" Cocktail Reception was at the sea view pool. Drinks and appetizers were provided for free, and we met other seamonkeys, including some old friends from the last cruise who we reminisced with. We also hunted down Randal Schwartz to claim a spot at one of the Pinnacle Grill dinners he was gathering sea monkeys for, and reserved Friday. Randal cruises often and is a 4-star mariner on Holland America, so gets half price meals at the Pinnacle Grill (the fancier up-charge restaurant on board), and he offered to book the largest table for several nights and invite seamonkeys to join him and treat everyone provided they buy his drinks.

Dinner!

8:00PM: Dinner was every night in the Vista dining room. There were a bunch of tables, on both floors this time, set aside for sea monkeys. Within these sections there was open seating (except for a few groups who requested to sit together the whole cruise). The open seating with other sea monkeys was one of the great things about the cruise. Each day we sat with new people, and found everyone we talked with to be uniformly awesome. Dinner is the perfect way to sit down with a bunch of fellow sea monkeys and really get to know them and have geeky conversations. Plus, as stated above, the food was mostly very good, and had the cruise advantage of being able to order whatever you wanted, as many things as you wanted, and not pay any additional amount for it all.

We spent some time unpacking at this point, since the cruise line took us a very long time to get our luggage to us (which was a problem since Christina's meds, including sea sickness medicine, was packed away).

10:00PM: You Know, Just Chillin' by the Sea View Pool Every night at 10:00PM the sea view pool was designated as a hang out spot for sea monkeys. Unfortunately, the cruise line closed the pools and hot tubs earlier than this, so we couldn't actually take advantage of them. We stopped by very briefly to see if anyone was hanging out, then went to the game room, where we would often spent our free time on the cruise in the week to come.

Monday, February 20: Halfmoon Cay, Bahamas

JoCo shared a tender with us to Half Moon Cay

The first port was Holland America's private island in the Bahamas, Half Moon Cay. It's basically a great big beach with not a lot else to do, although there are numerous pricey excursions you can book through the cruise line. We had booked snorkeling by boat, and brought our snorkeling gear with us. Last year we tried snorkeling without an excursion, and there was nothing to see but sand and the occassional sand-dollar. There weren't even many shells. We hoped to see more with the excursion. Since we had booked the latest possible time for it in the afternoon, we journeyed to the unofficial "Nerd beach" section, all the way at the end of the beach. We ended up walking down with another sea monkey, who I found out was the creator of an online multiplayer game (I think it was Kingdom of Loathing) and had a great chat with him.

Digging out a channel for the moat to "Skullcrusher Sand Fort"

Last year Half Moon Cay was very boring because there was no designated place for the sea monkeys to hang out, and there were two large HAL cruise ships docked at the same time, so it was basically a standard beach experience and impossible to find our group to hang out with. This year was a massive improvement. Vi Hart was doing some kind of activity with a large group of sea monkeys in the water where they were making shapes with their bodies or something, but we ended up joining a small group of sea monkeys who were building a massive sand fort. The group ended up growing as more and more sea monkeys joined the project, and we built a moat, and towers were constructed nearby.

Waving the Star Wars Parts over the completed sand fort

We had to leave to head to our excursion. When we asked at the desk where to go, we discovered that our excursion was cancelled due to poor conditions. We were disappointed that we had lugged all our snorkeling gear around with us and wouldn't get to actually use it on this island, but decided to do some snorkeling at one of the other stops and save money (we got refunded this excursion). Ultimately this worked in our favor, since this excursion was $50 each, and we spent a lot less to snorkel in Curacao later on.

Since our excursion was cancelled, we were able to participate in the sea monkey group photo at the pirate bar. You'll see the shot at the top of this blog with all the sea monkeys and the Westerdam in the background.

Christina wrote "JoCo" in the sand

After hanging out here for a little while, we headed to the BBQ lunch provided on the island. We sat with some other sea monkeys, including one couple, Christopher and KC, who had apparently been confused for us by mutual seamonkey acquaintances. Can you see the resemblance?

Lunch with our "doppelgangers". You can't tell in the photo, but both of us guys have long hair in ponytails.

4:30PM: Concert: Paul and Storm & Chris Collingwood The first show of the cruise featured our intrepid hosts and eternal opening band Paul and Storm, followed by Chris Collingwood (of Fountains of Wayne fame). Paul and Storm opened with a hilarious song about George RR Martin.

8:00PM: Dinner we ate in the "Monkey Pit" this time, which is the nickname for the lower level section that is in a circular part of the dining room surrounded on all sides by snorks. We had intended to locate a Twitt-arrr announced DC/MD/VA-area seamonkey table, but unfortunately couldn't find it so instead ended up joining another random group of sea monkeys for more food and geeky conversation.



11:00PM: Joseph Scrimshaw and The Comedy of Doom was one of the unexpected highlights of the cruise. Joseph Scrimshaw had been an unannounced guest performer on the first cruise, and played opposite of Bill Corbett in the play My Monster. This year he was an "official" performer, and put on his own comedy show in the Culinary Arts Center this evening. He parodied every geek property from Star Wars told entirely in a twitter feed, to Lord of the Rings if Dumbledore was the wizard telling Frodo what to do. Wil Wheaton was seated behind Christina and me, and a joke was made by our host Paul Sabourin that we needed to keep the aisles clear so that they could get drinks to Wil. I quoted "This feels strange, but also good!" and got a guffaw out of Wil himself from the line.

Wil himself volunteered to play Star Trek: Oregon Trail during a segment of the comedy. This is worth watching.

Also here is the rest of Joseph Scrimshaw and the Comedy of Doom:

12:00PM: Rifftraxed Star Wars: The Holiday Special was foolishly voted by the seamonkeys as the movie we wanted to watch for our movie night rather than the original unadulterated version of Star Wars: A New Hope. Yes, I was one of the fools. I had to see just how bad it was, and what better way than with the Rifftrax commentary and a crowd of fellow geeks around me. After having seen most of it now, I don't fully understand what I have just seen. I'm not even sure if I was really awake or just having vivid trippy nightmares. Christina gave up part way through and headed back to the room. I walked her there and then returned again, and felt like I didn't really miss anything. Also, they left the commercials in the recording and riffed those as well, and they were just as crazy as the special itself. Was everyone high in the 70s, or was there just some special brand of crazy? Unfortunately the movie ended at 2AM and there was little time for sleep. Fortunately, despite reports to the contrary, we didn't actually lose an hour that night due to timezone shifting (that would be the next day instead).

Tuesday, February 21: At Sea, First Formal Night, Mardi Gras

We had breakfast delivered to our room so we could wake up early in time for....

 9:00AM: Q&A with JCCC2 Performers. All the performers sat on stage, rearranged their chairs into a semi-circle of sorts, and managed to be very witty while answering questions on very little sleep. I'm sure this will be on YouTube somewhere, so I'm not going to try to recount the questions and answers here.

11:00AM: Official group photo directly after the Q&A all the seamonkeys headed to the bow of the ship to get our group photo taken.

Where's JoCo?

4:30PM: Concert: Marian Call & Paul F. Tompkins Christina got seasick and was very tired so left the Marian Call show early. During intermission I went to check on her, and she decided to sleep and skip Paul F. Tompkins as well.

Formal Attire!

8:00PM: Dinner - FORMAL this was the first of two scheduled formal nights, so we dressed up in our formal wear and headed to dinner. Unfortunately, once we found our table, Christina was feeling too seasick to stay, and I had to take her back to the room again, where she ordered room service and a movie to watch (both complimentary, the wonders of cruising). I had let my tablemates know my order (two orders of the Land & Sea, Filet Mignon and Jumbo shrimp that had been my favorite meal on the prior cruise), and returned to eat with them. Unfortunately, the dish that had been the highlight of my meals last year was mostly a disappointment this time, overcooked, flavorless, tough in parts, and fatty too - not the way Filet Mignon should be at all. Fortunately I would be getting much better steak at the Pinnacle Grill on Friday.

10:15PM: Molly Gras (Concert: Molly Lewis) Christina ended up staying in the room for this as well, but I went to this sea view poolside concert and watched Molly Lewis play a small set and hung out with other seamonkeys all wearing formal wear. Molly gave out beads to anyone who brought a ukelele, and at the end of her show had all of the other ukelele players join her to play Something.

When I returned to the room Christina and I ordered a movie (Get Smart with Steve Carrell) and ended up watching about half of it before getting too tired and turning it off to go to sleep.

Wednesday, February 22: Oranjestad, Aruba


Thankfully, today was a good day to sleep in and recuperate, since we would be docking in Aruba in the afternoon and staying there all day, with no official events planned.

Our submarine

We all (don't really) live on a yellow submarine

2:00PM: Atlantis Submarine Adventure Last year we had done a scuba diving introductory course in Grand Cayman which was great, except that Christina ended up having to snorkel above us for health reasons, and I couldn't see very well underwater since I couldn't get contacts in and don't have a prescription mask. So I thought that the Submarine excursion being offered in Aruba this year would be the perfect solution to both of these problems - we could both go underwater to see cool sea life and a shipwreck (and I could actually see it clearly)! Also a good number of other seamonkeys were coming with us on this excursion. We went down to 130 feet under the sea and saw a couple shipwrecks (a metal one that had been made home to much aquatic life, and a wooden one that had almost entirely decomposed and was mainly evidenced by the broken mast and a few planks). There was some sea life to look at, but they used only natural light, so we couldn't see the vivid colors, and frankly the reefs here were far less impressive than those at Grand Cayman were. Also unfortunate is that Christina started to get seasick in the sub (once we resurfaced they ended up letting her out first). In the end this ended up being a fairly expensive let down, at $90 a person, due to the sickness Christina felt and the relative lack of interesting things to look at, but it's cool to have been under the sea in a submarine.

The photos from the sub didn't get much more exciting than this

Natural lighting only on the sub tour

After the submarine we decided to wander the city and check out shops, but were fairly disappointed to find that all the duty-free-souvenir shops basically sold exactly the same inventory. Christina did buy a nice hat and a wooden mortar and pestle for crushing everything. Once we got bored of the series of souvenir shops, all alike, we spent a bit of time wandering the twisty passages, trying to find our way back to the ship.

Arrr-uba! Hey look, they sell Rolex

We headed to the game room to find the first Dominion opponents that were lined up for us to play against in the tournament we had signed up for. Christina and I lost our respective matches to Matt and Lisa, but had a lot of fun, and we then played a four player game with them both that I ended up winning. While we have all the expansions at home, we haven't played with them all yet, so many cards and strategies were completely new to us. We would play more Dominion on the cruise, as we were participating now in the losers bracket of the tournament. Spoiler alert: Our first match was versus each other, which I won. I then won another match against my next opponent before losing. This was on Friday, I believe.

8:00PM: Dinner We decided to eat this night in the officially dubbed "Peninsula of Lookie-Lous", which is the small subsection of sea-monkey tables that stretched around the outer edge of the celebrity table section. Since we were in Aruba until the night, and no official events were scheduled on this day as a result, there weren't many famous people there that night, but we got to chat with a nice family about board games, and exchange 3DS friend codes, and had a great meal with great company once more.

After dinner, I played Exits Are Out, a Parsely Engine game run by the Nathaniel, the writer of the game up in the lounge we had renamed Ten-Forward (which was conveniently literally on deck ten, forward). Parsely games are basically old school-style text adventures where one person takes the places of the computer (parser), and a group of participants take turns issuing a single command to the parser (push red button, go left, examine goo gun with bicorder, save game, etc.) Christina opted out and played her 3DS while I joined the large group in solving the mystery of what was going on in a spaceship where we were playing the only surviving crewmember. The game had lots of great humor, and some truly challenging puzzles, but we ended up escaping in the end, after dying and reloading our save numerous times (including when music being played in the cantina caused an alien inside us to grow and burst through our stomach, the bouncy ball that hit us in the head, the giant alien on the bridge that killed us, the gash in the bulkhead to space on the tactical level, and the many times we kept shooting our dissolve goo cannon and laser to create holes into space.) The game was very entertaining, and afterwards we went to the game room to try and play some Telestrations, but couldn't find any players so ended up playing Cards Against Humanity, which was a constant fixture of the game room. This is basically Apples-to-Apples, only all the cards are really evil (often very inappropriate and adult in nature). Since going for the joke answers in Apples-to-Apples is my favorite way to play anyway, I really enjoyed this version of the game.

Thursday, February 23: Willemstad, Curacao

Curacao was the last stop of the trip, and it ended up being the best island experience of the cruise and featured the most memorable highlights of the trip.

Since we had missed out on the snorkeling excursion in Half Moon Cay, we really wanted to do some snorkeling. Our extra bag that we checked for free on Southwest was mostly filled with our snorkeling gear, watershoes, and sandals, and it would be a disappointment to not get to use them. Since we had booked no excursions on Curacao, we decided to find a place to snorkel on this island. Once again, Twitt-arrrr proved it's value, since I logged in and found a couple mentioning they wanted to share a cab ride to the beach for snorkeling. Thanks to the service we met up with Laura and John and headed to the dock to find a taxi.

Just as we got a van and determined our location, a small group walked up also looking for a van to the beach. This group consisted of Wil Wheaton, his wife Anne, son Ryan, and performance stage manager Dammit Liz. Christina and I sat in the first row of back seats, and the others filed in. Wil was the last to board, and the driver pulled down an extra seat in our row for him to take, so we ended up sitting next to Wil Wheaton. I opened a conversation with him by mentioning that his performance with Scrimshaw the other night was great, and we ended up conversing for the entire trip to the beach. Wil was incredibly friendly and down to earth and if he weren't one of the celebrities on the cruise, I could easily see him as just another geeky seamonkey with a lot in common with us to discuss. We talked about improv, how Paul and Storm manage to have an almost 'telepathic' link from working together so long that they can read each others signals, why Felicia Day wouldn't come on the cruise (needs to stay connected to the internet and doesn't like beaches and the sun), but why her castmates on the guild might be a good fit. Christina asked if any of the castmembers of the Big Bang Theory were actually geeks, and ironically it turned out that Kaley Cuoco was a big scifi geek, the other castmembers who actually play the geeks on the show weren't actually geeks, although they could be considered theater geeks (as most actors are). Christina said Kaley should come on the next cruise, but Wil said she was too famous, and that you needed a certain lower level of fame to do this, which makes perfect sense. I asked Wil how he was enjoying the cruise, and he said that it was like all the good parts of a convention, without any of the bad things. It was great to hear confirmation that all the performers were having as great a time as the attendees. Wil is blogging about his cruise experiences here.

Time flew by as we drove around the island to the beach, and I was proud that I managed to hold a conversation without once becoming star struck or awkward. Once at the beach our snorkeling friends discovered they had accidentally forgotten to bring cash with them. Wil Wheaton offered to loan them any money they needed, which was incredibly generous of him, but they ended up borrowing the money from me. The cab ride cost $5 per person, and beach admittance was $3. With a return trip also to cost $5, this ended up being a tremendous value compared with official excursions. Luckily I had carried just enough cash to cover all of us. The van driver said she could pick us up again to take us back to the boat if we picked a time. Wil said because he had a show that night he'd have to leave a bit early, at 2:30, so we all agreed that would be plenty of time for us and we'd share the van ride back as well. (It was about 4 hours from that time).

On the beach with Wil Wheaton and co.

Christina Snorkeling

Once we got to the beach, the Wheatons went their separate way, and we got into our snorkeling gear with Laura and John. There was a line of rocks that you could swim out to, and according to the staff at the beach the best snorkeling was on the other side of it. We swam out to it and saw all kinds of fish and coral. Christina foolishly tried (and succeeded!) to get to the other side by climbing the rocks, and got cut on them. I tried to follow and gave up much sooner, and Christina had to come back. Eventually we all realized we could just swim to the end of the beach where there was a nice gap in the rocks to get to the other side. So we swam with Laura and John in a group and saw lots more cool sea life. There were schools of fish, sea urchins, coral, bizarre aquatic plant-life, and things I don't really know how to describe because I'm not a marine biologist, but which were amazing to see up close and personal. It felt like swimming inside an aquarium tank, with all the interesting life you see there continuing as far as you can see. You can move freely and explore this unearthly environment. It was truly spectacular.

From John's snorkeling pictures, notice how much cooler this is than anything we saw from the submarine

Passing a school (Christina swam through them!)

Unfortunately, I eventually started having a bit of difficulty continuing, my nose and head were really starting to bother me, especially since I couldn't really take a break to stand anywhere - so I signaled to Christina and we swam back to the beach. Sure enough once I removed my mask a huge amount of mucus poured out. I decided to take it easy for the rest of our time on the beach, and had seen and enjoyed enough while snorkeling. So Christina snorkeled around in the shallower areas looking for sea shells, and I swam and waded around, eventually discovering another sea monkey and his family, who live in Switzerland and work for Google, which is pretty cool. He was the one that had two very rare puzzle pieces on the Super Mario 3D land puzzle that we had collected in Streetpass puzzle swap on our 3DSes, apparently he got them on a trip to Japan. (Now Christina and I were missing only one piece to complete all the puzzles). I talked with him and his wife, who were there with a toddler, for awhile, before taking a 'long walk on the beach' with Christina to explore.



Neither Christina nor I are beach people. One trip a year is more than enough to get our fill, generally. But this beach on Curacao we both really enjoyed. There were fish that swam all the way to the shallows, the sea life was plentiful and gorgeous way beyond what we had seen in the submarine the day before, and snorkeling was wonderful. Laura and John had ended up snorkeling much longer than we had, and had apparently even seen a lion fish (an invasive species) out there, among other cool sites. They had an underwater camera and took plenty of pictures. The climate was very hot, which ended up giving me bad sunburn despite applying sunblock liberally both before and after snorkeling. That was the only downside, generally it was a great time. Next time we're going to invest in better sunblock and take even more care to apply it everywhere.

Curacao Cabana Beach

Towards the end of our time there, we encountered Wil Wheaton and Dammit Liz in the ocean, and chatted with them again. I ended up being asked to take the Wheaton family+friends picture for them on the beach with their camera. I had set my watch alarm to let us know when it was time to go, and informed them as it approached, and we all set back to the entrance to meet the van again. This time because Christina, I and Wil had wet bathing suits and towels, the driver made us sit in the back row on our towels. So I ended up sitting beside Wil yet again for another cab ride, and we had another long awesome conversation, about clock alarms we can't figure out how to turn off (my watch alarm kept going off again, it turned out I was hitting snooze rather than disabling it), about how great a time we had on this island, about beers he enjoys (he's a connoisseur, he didn't really like what they had on Curacao, and yes I had to look up how to spell connoisseur), about his book series Memories of the Future, and how well he's sold on Kindle. Generally it was great to be able to have a standard geeky conversation with someone who just happens to be a famous actor (/writer/blogger/podcaster). That, coupled with the amazing beach experience and wonderful snorkeling, made Curacao the best part of the entire vacation, even with the sunburn that would still plague me for weeks to come.

While we waited for the show that evening, we hung out in the game room, and played some games.

5:00PM: Concert: Wil Wheaton & MC Frontalot Wil Wheaton read several of his stories. MC Frontalot sang nerd-core rap, and included Marian Call memorably as a backup singer in one of his songs (joking that he was wasting her singing ability in a rap song). I dislike rap, but found myself enjoying MC Frontalot in spite of myself.

8:00PM: Dinner due to exhaustion and my painful sunburn, we opted to eat dinner in the room today. We took advantage of the complimentary room service to order dinner, and watched the rest of Get Smart.

Not really that good

After relaxing, we headed back to the game room and played more Cards Against Humanity until it was time for the Chocolate Extravaganza, which was a great big chocolate and dessert buffet on the mid-ship Lido Pool area. It ended up being mostly disappointing, as there were long lines to get desserts that weren't actually that good. Sorry, but Bananas Foster shouldn't just be scooped out of a bucket into a bowl. Disappointing. Eventually we made our way back to the game room and attempted to engage a few other players in a game of 18+ telestrations, and played a few rounds of that before moving on to other games.

11:00PM: A Night at the Empty Orchestra: The Rees/Tompkins Karaoke Invitational we could hear going on and decided to check out some of it despite our exhaustion, since we wanted to give our roommates a bit of privacy. What we saw was more entertaining than Karaoke has any right to be, including John Flansburgh singing karaoke.

Friday, February 24: At Sea, Second Formal Night, Mustache Formal

9:30AM: Concert: David Rees & Vi Hart was crazily early, and Christina didn't want to get up for it, but I went. David Rees did a very entertaining bit on artisinal pencil sharpening, and Vi talked a lot about wave forms mathematically and formed volunteers from the audience into shapes, and played a piano in patterns that mimicked wave forms and were incredibly beautiful. I was so tired and the music so pleasant, I sat back and closed my eyes a few times. After the show I collapsed back in bed and ended up napping for much of the afternoon, and missing a couple of spontaneously organized shows for Marian Call and for Scott Barkan, her very skillful guitarist, which I heard good things about afterwards. We dressed up in our formal wear after I finally awoke from my napping, just in time for the afternoon tea.

Tea with Marian Call and Yoda

Marian Call posted (on Twitt-arrr and the game room boards) about doing a fancy hat tea party and gathering to take advantage of afternoon tea in the main dining room. I had no idea they served afternoon tea on the boat! Seamonkeys in hats ended up taking over a small section of 4 large tables in the dining room and having tea and East Asian inspired snacks.

4:30PM: Concert: John Hodgman & John Roderick John Hodgman was introduced by a performance of TMBG's "Yes, The Deranged Millionaire", which was sung by John Flansburgh, finally putting in an appearance in one of the concerts. There had been several TMBG covers done by other performers with no involvement from him, so it was nice to see him contribute. Since Christina and I didn't make it to either of the dance parties he DJed, his presence on this cruise was greatly diminished for me, only seeing him at the Q&A, karaoke, and this small performance now. Hodgman was hilarious in his persona of deranged millionaire/expert on all topics. It's all on YouTube. We only stayed for a few songs of John Roderick's. While we enjoy his presence on the cruise and like Roderick as much as any of the other famous people, we aren't really fans of his style of music, so ended up leaving early to play some games in the game room.

Pinnacle Dinner group. Randal is the one who looks a bit drunk ;-)

8:00PM: Pinnacle Dinner we ended up squeezing about 14 people into a 12 person table, probably because Randal forgot how many people he invited to dinner that night, but the more the merrier. We ended up having a small section of the restaurant to ourselves, and had a wonderful time, enjoying some of the best food the cruise had to offer, plying Randal Schwartz with drinks, and having many great discussions amongst fellow geeks. I enjoyed a lobster bisque, filet mignon and jumbo shrimp so jumbo I actually had to take bites out of them. Dessert was a delicious baked Alaska with cherry garcia in it that they lit on fire for us, amazing dark chocolate (and white chocolate) truffles, and my favorite, the creme brulee that Christina ordered, which had three flavors, coffee, custard, and a very rich chocolate. This was a truly amazing meal, and Randal was incredibly generous to treat everyone. We didn't all end up getting to buy him a drink, so I sent him some virtual drink money over Paypal after the cruise as thanks.

Mustaches were provided!

10:00PM: The 2nd Annual Paul F. Tompkins Memorial Moustache Formal and Feztravaganza was conveniently scheduled this year for one of the formal nights, so everyone gathered on the sea-view deck in their finest, put on some fake mustaches, wore fezzes and other fancy hats, and engaged in villainous conversation. I had wanted to meet up with other DC-area sea monkeys and had mentioned a meet-up at the Mustache Formal on Twitt-arrr and on the scheduling boards in the game room. At first we couldn't find anyone, but finally Paul Sabourin announced that we would be gathering for a photo op, so luckily we got to be in a picture with a bunch of other DC-area seamonkeys (I have yet to see this picture online). It turns out that there are a lot of seamonkeys from our area! There was also a Canadian seamonkey gathering, and a photo of the Beardalos (all bearded gentlemen, I was in this photo), followed by Paul F. Tompkins and Paul Sabourin (I think?) judging of best natural mustache and best supernatural mustache from their 'stage' on the elevated hot tub areas. They made one contestant shave because his mustache wasn't disconnected enough from his beard for them. The best supernatural mustache ended up being a fancy steampunk mustache holder+mustache that was very impressive.

Mustaches for everyone! With Andy Looney of Looney Labs, Yoda, and Oboewan

This unfortunately bled in to the timeslot for...

11:00PM: Open Mic Night we ended up being a bit late as the Mustache Formal ran late, and we couldn't stay for the entire thing because Christina wanted to go back to the cabin, but what we did see was highly entertaining. The sea monkeys are very creative people, and there was a powerpoint presentation of a robot cat feeder (feeding the attendee's cats back home), several comedy and music and dance performances, and more! A human zendrum / a capella group performing Jonathan Coulton's Mr. Fancy Pants was a highlight, especially when JoCo himself was called to take over conducting them:

Saturday, February 25: At Sea, Last Night

9:30AM: Live Podcast: Paul and Storm (featuring Web-comic artist guests, Joseph Scrimshaw, and Paul F. Tompkins) was bright and early, and we missed the first 10 minutes or so, but the podcast itself can now be downloaded here, and I recommend giving it a listen to get a sense of some of the sense of humor from the cruise (and an explanation of "the burn").

Over the Edge with Keith Baker

11:30AM: Over the Edge RPG with Keith Baker Keith Baker, the designer of several pen-and-paper RPG campaigns hosted a couple of games during the cruise, with limited slots and sign-ups conducted prior to the cruise by email. Christina and I signed up for this one. Unfortunately there was a time slot mix-up so we missed the beginning of the adventure, but we ended up being able to jump in with no problems. There were several pre-made character sheets we used, and a lot more role-playing than dice rolling, which is something I really enjoy. I was the meddling kid, a young boy that loves adventure, is very sneaky, and can usually get away with anything for being so darn cute. I had a lot of fun with the role. Christina was a female private eye who got very drunk and enjoyed going against the rest of the group whenever she could. Everyone ranged from different tv archetype characters, and we were all in a very unusual bar where the main entrance opened somewhere new every time. I narrowly avoided death when the door opened to a volcano, and we all held a "survivor" vote to determine who went into a volcano that resulted in a tie between me and the non-player-character annoying kid who ate everything in sight (whom the guy playing "Santa" had stuffed into his sack and beaten up). I ended up using an ability that let me get several random words and having to work them into a story that explained what I did (as if those words are my dice), and the DM judged me the victor when I distracted the other boy with a cookie, then stabbed him with my pocket-knife and kicked him to the volcano. Fun times!

Playing Ascension, a deck-building game like Dominion, with Creighton and Cassidy after lunch

4:30PM: Concert: Jonathan Coulton finally, after 6 days worth of opening acts, Jonathan Coulton himself takes the stage for two sets. He brought along a bassist and a drummer for his first set, this is the first time we've seen him with a band. They rocked pretty hard! Then the second set was acoustic, although Paul and Storm provided additional back-up on a couple songs as they usually do during his shows, and Molly Lewis and John Roderick joined in on different songs. In order to do the "First of May" without cursing, JoCo decided to sing the song as "It's the first of May/Sluice box mucking starts today" in reference to the worst job John Roderick said he had during the Q&A (A sluice box mucker for a gold mine). It's references and memes that develop from them like that which make the cruise experience so special.

With the (randomly chosen at the beginning of the cruise) Monarch of the Seas, Troy, and his royal consort. They received the Stepto army, a group of bald men with goatees (and one bald woman) to escort them to the nicest seats in each show, and passed rulings such as whether crunchy or soft tacos are the best kind.

The last supper

8:00PM: Dinner was back in the Vista Dining Room this day, and we sat with the last group of sea monkeys we would eat with that cruise, and all took extra advantage of cruise ship menu ordering.

Farewell Cocktail reception with Matt and Lisa (from Dominion)

10:00PM: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Drinks!" Cocktail Reception everyone and all the performers gathered for free drinks at the Lido midships pool area. There was a very strong wind, and the ship was tilting to one side to the extent that the wading area of the pool on one side was completely dry. I talked to Paul, and later Storm, who I got to sign their cd which I had hurriedly purchased from the ship store minutes before it closed prior to dinner. (A couple days earlier I also got Marian Call's cd and got her to sign it when I saw her in the game room). I also got to thank Wil Wheaton again, and he actually mentioned Christina by name and said to tell her goodbye from him (she had gone back to the room). I hung out with other seamonkeys after they took away the free drinks, trying to drag out the moments so that the cruise didn't have to end.

Sunday, February 26: Fort Lauderdale arrival

This airport has a Sea-monkey infestation!

Alas, it was disembarkation day. Somehow we ended up picking the slowest of all lines at customs, and ended up being passed by all the other lines. Wil and his family were in one of the lines and waved to us. JoCo's bassist was near us in line and we talked with him a bit. Christina awkwardly told him that he looked much older in person than she thought he was on stage, which embarrassed everyone. At customs we found out that the ship neglected to give us our customs forms, so we had to step out of line to fill them out.

Waiting in line for a cab, a van became available to go to the airport, so we ended up getting in a van that was then boarded by John Roderick and his adorable baby daughter. We really had a lot of good luck with vans that cruise! Roderick was very kind and friendly and we enjoyed talking to him on the ride to the airport.

Unfortunately, our flight out wasn't until 8pm, so we had a long time to wait. We couldn't get an earlier flight, and we couldn't check our luggage until 4 hours until the flight, so I found a luggage storage service that would hold on to our bags for us for a fee. We kept our carry-ons and boarded the airport shuttle to head to a terminal that I knew seamonkeys were hanging out at (thanks to 3G reception and the Facebook page.) The Chili's Express was there, but Christina wasn't feeling well, so I got her a donut while she waited in line for a table, and we ended up getting our own table and eating alone, even though other seamonkeys were in the restaurant.

After eating we found John and Charlotte, a couple of seamonkeys we had met on the cruise, and claimed a section of seats to attempt to gather seamonkeys for some gaming. Unfortunately, other seamonkeys had moved on to yet another terminal to eat at a hamburger place there, so we staked out the territory, took advantage of outlets to charge our phones, and I played Gin Rummy with Charlotte and John cause we didn't have any games other than the deck of cards I found in my backpack. Christina took a pillow out of her carry-on, borrowed my jacket, and napped while we played. Eventually more seamonkeys found our small group, including our doppelgangers and we chatted until it was time to head back to our terminal, taking a break to check our luggage and then return once more to hang out until it was time to actually head to our gate. We used the airport shuttle bus many times during our stay.

Once more due to Southwest's open seating policy -- and Christina's nervousness about flying -- we were worried about getting a window seat for her, especially since this time our boarding number was near the end. By a stroke of luck, we ended up getting the very last window seat at the very back of the plane. The flight home thankfully went smoothly and we got picked up very late at night at BWI by Christina's Mom, who generously drove us home. I was so exhausted I slept in the car, and was incredibly thankful that I took off work on Monday. There was not enough time for sleep on this crazy cruise, and I needed a vacation!

JoCo Cruise Crazy 2013!?


We had such an amazing time on this trip, got to be part of such an amazing community for the second time now, and I cannot imagine not being part of the next cruise now. I've pre-registered with a deposit for the next trip, and I really hope we get to go back!