Sofonda Peters: GRUELING!
Hello Darlings, Sofonda here, and I have just finished another grueling sailing on the Freedom of the Seas. Grueling is just the beginning of what this trip truly was. Lets just take this from the beginning…
When Mama’s limos pulled up, and she exited the car, instructing the bellman to send the luggage to her suite, she entered the terminal and saw so many of the regular (and I do mean regular) faces all smiling and checking in for what they thought was going to be the vacation of a lifetime. These boys were in for a surprise of un-proportional dimensions upon entering The Drug Tug. Smile, smile, smile for the camera my dear boys gives new meaning to what eight passengers encountered after entering security. They turned the corner and low and behold someone had lost their pet. OH SHIT that is no PET…it is attached to a man in uniform! I’m so glad that Sofonda planned ahead as she waved goodbye to eight complete strangers looking like deer in headlights who were now going the wrong direction for a photo session to show off their new silver bracelets. Fellas, that was one photo shoot in which I am glad I am not going to be featured!
Now check out my cabin. I open the closet and wonder where the hell I’m going to fit everything? My walk-in is the size of a closet and my living room has only furniture with
no bar. How am I supposed to mix a cocktail now? I need a bar, my dears, a bar, so up to the deck I go for the “Sail Away Tea” but it, of course, was not that kind of tea that everyone seems to using, I mean drinking. Now let the games begin!
Bump, bump, bump and away we go. All of the parties on this floating gay island are truly a spectacle, umm make that spectacular time for all. That is because they are produced by another company. I was visiting our first destination for a little shopping when I heard a horror story about Royal Caribbean Staffers calling people “fat” as they tried to enter the zip line tour. These Circuiteers had purchased the zip line tour and were told if you were over 200 pounds you could not ride the zip line but printed on the tickets was a 250-pound weight maximum. The group as a whole opted not to ride and the people under 200 pounds were told that “only the fat people” would get their money back. Even after telling the cruise line of this, no one so much as bothered to apologize. Oh well, I guess people over 200 pounds should not take Royal Caribbean Cruises because they do not like fat people on their boats. If you want to diet, this Royal Caribbean cruise could be the place to do it because the food on this trip was horrible anyway, so losing weight on this cruise could truly be possible. But be careful, my little darlings, because on the last day of this Royal Caribbean Diet Cruise we were walking back to our cabins as daylight had broken and noon was approaching when we heard
“ALPHA, ALPHA, ALPHA” over the ship’s system alerting the boat to a medical attention emergency on Deck Seven. Oh boy, some party boy really over did it this time. Maybe he should have eaten a little something more then the Tic Tac diet, which my children consists of a lick of the Tic Tac in the morning a second for Lunch and a sensible glass of
water for Dinner. I immediately began to wonder if this was the same person that
caused the ship to interrupt the Theme Party on deck the night before by cutting the music three separate times in order to ask that Party Boy come to the ship’s desk right away. Rumor has it that the cameras on the outside of the ship had allegedly shown this person climbing up the balconies on the outside of the ship. Once again, my dear darling ones, Sofonda is passionate about her play time and this was not the way she wanted to spend it.
Now for my favorite parts of this trip…the DJs and Andy Bell (of Erasure). Warren Gluck, as always, spun his heart out for the passengers on board. His Under the Sea Party was off the hook. He delights me and makes me smile (and that is hard to do.) Wayne G is a God. I heart him. Oh, and my dear friend Andy. He can truly make the most of “ALWAYS”. Any time spent with these men is more pleasurable than bumping to the beat of the music.
I know I started this with Atlantis but now let’s go into the real sinking city of New York. I was on the floor for DJ Boris and I could not do anything to make the sounds, sound
like, well, music. DJ Eddie Elias has played for Alegria in the past and has definitely turned it out but not this time. Now on to the real show…Junior Vasquez! At approximately 11:28--exactly 58 minutes later than his supposed start time--in came what could only be classified as the Juniorettes. Junior’s security team came in and did the first sweep of the booth and stage looking for land mines and recording devices. Next came the architectural team to redo the layout of the booth to accommodate the music. Then came juniors lighting guy and I do not mean Guy Smith. As the DJ was
about to go on…lights, camera but no action! Everyone on stage was frantic and chaos had occurred, with everyone flipping through books of music, searching the floors…and
this went on for another ten minutes until finally, the twenty-six-minute intro disc had been located. Thank God, I think we could get this party started now but it skipped and a looping of more sounds went on until he could locate another CD. All I can tell you is that I wish I had never gone. I found myself in a state of Thank God I left.
Until next time, my Chiclets ~
