That's What She Said: Star Trek cruise

OMG! How to even start? We just got back from one of the most amazing vacations. Maybe it's because I'm a bit (at least a bit) of a nerd and a Star Trek fan from way back in college. Maybe because THE George Takei was the honorary captain, so exciting to meet him! Maybe because we love cruising. Maybe because I've never been so close to real-life celebrities, with a chance of running into a TV/movie star anytime we walked down a hallway. Maybe because all of those folks are talented, not just as actors, but in other ways, and are willing to share and interact with us. Maybe because all our fellow cruisers were like-minded and super nice. Every day, all day, it was a week of "can I just stay in this alternate reality for the rest of my life?"

So, one confession is that the only Star Trek I've really ever known was The Original Series. Spock, Kirk, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu (George!), Chekov. We watched the reboot movies and it took me awhile to forgive JJ Abrams for blowing up the timeline, but I can mostly watch those movies now and appreciate the excellent cast and storylines.

We had some catching up to do. Over the last several months we used Netflix (DVD's and streaming) and the DVR to find and watch as much of the other series as possible. Kip suggested focusing on the most highly rated episodes, a good idea since we couldn't possibly see everything. I'm quite taken with Voyager, Kip appreciates the story arcs of Deep Space Nine, and we found some redeeming episodes of Enterprise. No Discovery yet - more to watch in the coming months.

That helped a lot to get to know the actors coming on the cruise, and especially to understand many of the references that would have gone over our heads otherwise. It still took until after the cruise to realize what the word "DISCO" meant on Jonathan Frakes' hat (and other T-shirts). Hint - it's the show we haven't seen yet.

The other awesome thing is that Kip's friend Rodney and his wife Siobhan joined us! They are also Star Trek fans, plus fun travel companions. It's always great to cruise with friends. So! - there is another Star Trek cruise next January, in case this sounds like something you would enjoy:
http://www.startrekthecruise.com/

Before all that craziness even started, a brief note about our motel in Fort Lauderdale. We stayed at the Rodeway Inn near the airport, and it was unique enough to warrant a mention. The courtyard was fun to walk around in. Giant chairs are great:

As are these things (what are they called, anyway?):

Ready to go on a cruise!

A lovely courtyard full of greenery:

The gift shop at the motel is eclectic and full of interesting items:

Waffle House for breakfast! That's usually the highlight of any day, but somehow other things topped it this time.

We piled into a Lyft van for the ride down to Miami, and Siobhan captured this fun photo:

By the way, we took a bunch of Lyft's in that area and it was so easy to get around. Big fan now.

We squeezed in a visit to the Fox in a Box escape room before boarding. This turned out to be good use of our time, as we boarded the ship after the rush and it was super easy getting on.

Even better, Rodney and Siobhan are excellent at escape rooms. We were an effective team, and we managed our first escape room win ever (for me, John and Kip)! We successfully robbed a bank! This day was getting better and better. And we hadn't even boarded the ship yet.

Fox in the Box was great, highly recommend them. They even made a cute little video for us:

OK, let's get to the Star Trek part of the program!

On the way up the gangplank - the lighting wasn't quite what we expected, but we decided that you have to look at our mugs enough as it is, so here's a photo of the ship with our silhouettes in front of it:

The friendly staff was dressed for the occasion:

It's real, we're actually here!

Waiting on the pool deck for the launch party - this guy has a good seat (an inflatable captain's chair):

Hello Levar! We also had a great view of the celebrities waiting their turn for introductions:

Gates McFadden describing her tap dancing classes:

Robert O'Reilly who played Klingon Chancellor Gowron and who hosted an awesome Pub Krawl:

Rene Auberjonois, Odo on Deep Space Nine, and one of many of these actors who I'd like to watch in other roles because they seem very talented:

Armin Shimerman! We knew him from Buffy and as a Ferengi, now we also know him as a Shakespeare professor and excellent addition to the Rat Pack singing group (more on those later):

Ethan Phillips from Voyager, super funny comedian:

I didn't see enough Connor Trinneer on the cruise, happily he's one of many returning next year:

Robert Picardo, one of my favorites from Voyager, and one of the busier actors on the cruise:

I didn't even get a picture of George Takei (besides in the background behind Levar), I was too focused on listening to him speak when he was on stage. Hello George!

And there were several more actors introduced, I think about 20 in total. What a great group! I'm impressed they all stayed for 2 cruises back-to-back.

Hey, Jean-Luc Picard made it too! Thank you, kind sir, for letting me get a photo with you.

I started gradually switching from my normal Team Vignette "V" sign (previous picture) to a "Live Long and Prosper" salute; it took a while to get more natural. Welcome to the cruise, yay!

We didn't have much time those first couple days to wander the ship, but we did check out the game room briefly. Dave, how about this for a Borg Rubik's Cube!

There were tons of great costumes on display every day, I wish I could have gotten photos of all of them. I couldn't resist stopping this guy and he didn't seem to mind:

We had just enough time for the sit-down dinner, which wasn't the case every night. There was so much to do in the evenings and even without eating there was no way to fit everything in. Double (and occasionally triple) booking of various events made it hard to pick which ones to attend. And all of it was awesome.

The special show the first night was a reading by Levar Burton, a children's book he wrote plus an adult story. Then Rene A. and Nana Visitor took turns reading short stories, making us (and each other) laugh. I was enthralled.

Other goings on - artist J.K. Woodward talked about his Star Trek paintings (he did a live demonstration another night) and the rest of the crew got introductions - including author Robb Pearlman, astronaut Rick Searfoss, and one of our favorite astronomers Phil Plait. Later in the evening we listened to Karl Urban talk and answer questions and I was again starstruck (it happened a lot that week).

Some of the souvenirs from the trip - even the napkins were branded:

We tried our hand at the first trivia night, not really expecting much, but it was fun to listen to Max Grodenchik along with host Jordan Hoffman:

Umm, yeah, we love Star Trek, but no one will ever mistake us for Super Fans with photographic memories. We ended up doing OK, each of us pulling out at least one answer to help our group score. Mostly I was happy to at least understand what all the questions were referring to. Not your normal cruise trivia!