Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Heritage Books Genealogy Cruise - On The Boat

Linda and I were on the 7-day 10th Annual TMG/Heritage Books Genealogy Cruise last week from Los Angeles to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas, and return to Los Angeles.

In this post, I will focus on the non-genealogy ship activities.

1)  The Crown Princess is BIG - 950 feet long, 118 feet wide, 28 foot draught, 113.561 gross tons in weight, with maximum passengers of 3599 and maximum crew of 1201.  The Captain was Justin Lawes of Wales.

Our stateroom was on Deck 5, the lowest deck with staterooms, and just forward of midship.  It was very convenient to the forward elevators, the dining rooms, and the Atrium.  The pools were on Lido deck 15, as was the Horizon Court buffet restaurant.  There are several specialty restaurants, cocktail bars, a casino, a spa feature, workout rooms, etc.  Strangely, there was no one deck with a continuous track - walking on the Promenade Deck 7 required going up to Deck 8 to go the full circuit.

2)  We celebrated Linda's birthday on board, and the Stateroom attendant installed two balloons on our mailbox and a sign on the stateroom door:


In the evening, the dining room staff provided a special dessert for Linda - in the picture below our waiters Jerry and Michel give Linda the chocolate cake (it had a candle but she blew it out).  Linda couldn't eat it because of her allergies, so the table shared it (um, actually, I had most of it):


3)  There were two large pools on the Lido Deck 15 - one of them had a really big screen TV that showed some TV shows, some concerts, and some movies at night.  Linda is in the hot tub on the right:


Here's a closeup of Linda in the Hot Tub with her hands up - I shot the photo anyway:


4)  When on the ship, we usually lunched at the Pizza stand and had an ice cream cone for dessert.  I had a hamburger once at the nearby stand.  Linda bought a Soda drink package that provided all that she could drink.

5)  There were two formal nights, so I wore my only suit and Linda wore her beautiful long dresses.  Here we are at the dining room table:


6)  Besides the 3.5 days of genealogy presentations, I checked books out of the library to read, walked quite a bit on the decks and in the ship, even climbed some stairs, and took some naps.  We did not do much after dinner - we didn't see any shows, didn't gamble, didn't dance, etc.  On most nights, Linda went to bed early and I went to the One-on-One consultations and Stump Craig sessions.

7)  My typical at-sea routine was: go to breakfast with the other genealogists at 7:30 a.m. in the Horizon Court; then to the genealogy presentations at 8:30 a.m. to 12 noon; then met Linda for lunch on Lido Deck 15; walked or read or napped; attended the genealogy presentations from 2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.; then to dinner in the Da Vinci dining room; and then to the One-on-One or Stump Craig session at 8:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m; then to bed.

On port days, we went on-shore and took city tours with a local tour guide rather than the cruise ship tours.  On the last night, there was a cocktail party where Craig announced the plans for next year's cruise, thanked the speakers, and we took a group picture (which I haven't seen yet).

8)  In the next post, I will highlight the genealogy related activities during the Heritage Books Cruise Genealogy Conference.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/12/heritage-books-genealogy-cruise-boat.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver




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