November 27, 2004: Rockin' Roll Report -- Cruise Diary, Day 1

Miami, FL and The Caribbean Sea
Carnival Cruise Ship Triumph

While on the Rock & Roll Holiday Escape Cruise in 2004, I made sure to keep a diary on my laptop to record the events of the 7 day cruise so that I would be able to do a complete write up for my anticipated "Rockin' Roll Report" upon returning to dry land and available Internet access. Here is what I journaled and later used as basis for my two reports on the cruise.

Cruise Day One.

Flew in to Miami yesterday and met Janice at the airport. We caught a cab to our hotel then dashed across the street for dinner at the Hard Rock Café. Weather in Miami wasn't too bad… mid 70s both in temperature and humidity – humid enough for this California girl to notice.

After a late nite of gossiping and getting to know each other, Janice and I headed down for the breakfast buffet. The elevators on cruise day were an interesting challenge. Frequently full of guests and luggage. By the time we were ready to check out, it took us about 15 minutes to get downstairs. All the elevators were full, and when I finally got on one, I went down 2 floors before going all the way back up to the 8th and then back down – stopping at every floor. Once we finally got to the lobby and met Debbie, Krystal, and Krystal's boyfriend Andrew we got ourselves checked out and into cabs to the port.

The port was an absolute zoo with cabs and shuttles and buses going every which way for the half dozen or so ships making ready to set sail. Janice and I lost Debbie and her crew in the cab shuffle, but arrived at the dock right behind Journey's road crew. While waiting to board, we did see one of our "celebrity" passengers – Ricky Phillips from Styx boarded the ship shortly before us. A pleasant surprise since we'd heard Styx would not be on board at all. Turns out only SOME of Styx would not be on board. Later in the day we saw Chuck Panazzo (Styx), Dave Amato (REO), and Bruce Hall (REO.) None of the Journey boys were on board, and they aren't expected until Thursday in Jamaica.

The ship is a total maze and god knows if we'll ever find our way around, but we managed to find our room successfully and drop our bags off. We explored the ship looking for people we knew and kept running into Rocko Ready – Journey's stage manager. We found the check in desk for the Rock & Roll Holiday Escape (R&RHE) and to get our registration materials – passes to the concerts and a T-shirt – but they had just gotten in themselves and weren't ready for us, so we headed up to the Lido deck for a quick snack (encountering more Journey crew members in the process.)

We hadn't seen any of our friends since boarding the ship, so kept exploring. When I pulled out my cell phone to call Mom, however, I discovered I'd missed a call from Darla – she and Emerson were on board an up at the Lido deck with Cat, Jenn, and Debbie and the kids. We headed back up and visited for a few minutes before the whole crew of us trooped back down to the Promenade deck and the registration for the R&RHE. The line was amazingly long, so we got to hear the story of how Cat got a call from Steve Augeri on Monday asking her if she wanted to go on a cruise. Lucky girl!

There was lots more exploring to do, but first we had to pass the muster – our drill should we need to abandon ship! Standing around with bright orange life vests – oh so attractive! We killed some time after muster by picking out our shore excursions. I really only wanted to go snorkeling, so I signed up for snorkeling at the reef with the stingrays in Grand Cayman. Cozumel and Jamaica will be improvised. Janice signed up for an island tour, and the rest of the gang signed up for various other activities.

The R&RHE cocktail party was at 7 and there we ran in to Styx fan Sharon and her Journey pals Julie and Judy. Sharon reported that Tommy Shaw was on board ship – WOO HOO! A full day tomorrow to see if I can find him. The cocktail party was quite nice and we met up with a bunch of other Journey fans and got our official "group photo" – my camera and about 35 others! LOL! A couple of nice people volunteered to take pictures and it took a good ten minutes to get them all done! Hopefully they'll turn out. We did find the couple from the Netherlands, but none of the UK folks unfortunately.

Then it was off to dinner, which was delicious, but the ship was a little wobbly around then. Fortunately I felt fine – don't think the motion of the ocean is going to be much of a problem. After dinner, it was off to kill some more time checking out the shops which had finally opened before meeting up again with Darla and Emerson for the "welcome aboard" night which was an enjoyable comedy show. A little cheesy, but fun.

Then it was back to the room to finally finish unpacking and getting ready for the next 7 days at sea. Tomorrow is a "fun day at sea" – so basically I plan to hang out at the pool and get some sun! (I hope! It was a little cloudy when we pulled out of port with showers in the distance.)