Siobhan picked up her photos taken with Brent and Levar - awesome!
We all got photos with George Takei (YAY!) and when we receive our digital copies I'll add them here.
Update - here they are! Thank you George, it was fantastic to meet you!
The Star Trek folks were so gracious and nice and engaging. Even when we accidentally walked through Rene's photo area (so sorry!) or kicked John de Lancie (so sorry!), they said "no worries". A nod and a "Hi" while walking down the hall. Staying after their talk to answer more questions, sometimes gathered in the hall after getting kicked out of the room for the next show.
On top of that, I don't know if I've ever met a nicer crowd of fellow cruisers. Everyone was so polite. People went out of their way to help each other. No cutting in at the buffet, no elbowing to get better access to the stars. Smiles, hellos, meeting fun people. And you kind of got the impression that everyone appreciated not just science and science fiction, but diversity and the best interests of humankind. It was akin to arriving at college and feeling like "we're all in this together." I loved it.
OK, on to the agenda!
We caught the beginning of Armin's 2nd Shakespeare talk and would have loved to listen to it all again, but Astronaut Rick was talking about the future of human space exploration. Rick looks great in his blue jumpsuit - and it kind of makes some of the deck hands look like astronauts too. He had lots of thoughts on what might be possible in the future, quite interesting:
We missed the ship building contest and tap dancing with Gates McFadden, just too much overlap in all the happenings (is "too much awesomeness going on!" a valid complaint?). We also picked up the "Search for Spock" scavenger hunt clue sheet from Robb Pearlman but really didn't have time to go hunting around the ship in the middle of the day.
Instead, we headed up to 13 Forward to hear astronomer Phil Plait talk about the planets and missions to explore objects in our solar system. Lots of great stuff. He was excited to explain some things about Pluto, but ran out of time. So Rene finally decided it was time to take over the stage, with help from his Deep Space 9 cohorts. Phil tweeted a fun photo about the incident - he got a kiss on the cheek from Nana for it and didn't seem too upset!
I had fun listening to the DS9 crew talk for 30 minutes, then went to grab a quick bite from the cafe. On the way I found one of the scavenger hunt items - Duck Spock!
The big event of the afternoon - the Klingon Pub Krawl! We were excited to score tickets for this, it wasn't easy to get into.
Robert O'Reilly as Chancellor Gowron was hosting, and he was in full costume and makeup. He gathered us together in the Klingon Karnivoria restaurant to kick things off:
Several other Klingons in attendance:
We moved down to Bar City for our next drink options and a round of learning the song "We're the Klingons!"
Siobhan with a bit of 2-fisted drinking while sporting a most awesome T-shirt - Geordi LaForge as Reading Rambo!
Last stop in the Krawl - the Atrium, where Gowron spoke again to his loyal crew, inspiring cheers, singing, and toasts.
Qapla'!
Next up - George is back! George Takei and his husband Brad took the stage to tell stories, answer questions, and playfully pick on each other like an old married couple. It really was awesome being on the same cruise with them.
We missed the main entries in Riker's chair mounting competition (hosted by Jonathan Frakes, of course), but at least we saw the "run-off" and the winner - a guy with two women assisting, quite funny. I think you had to be there.
The entertainment for the evening was Robert Picardo and his friend Jordan Bennett, singing songs and explaining some of the hijinks of their youth. They were fun to watch together, and wow, Jordan can sing Broadway as well as (dare I say better than?) Robert can sing opera. Quite entertaining!
It's not often I get to watch a podcast being taped, so I listened in as Jordan Hoffman interviewed Armin and Ethan for the "Engage" podcast. Those two are always fun to hear anyway, and Jordan asked good questions.
One more trivia contest - with Connor Trinneer, yay! John and I were surprised to get a reasonable number of answers right, but it's never going to be enough to win a Star Trek trivia competition around a bunch of Trekkies. I was mostly there to watch Connor anyway :)
And...that's a wrap! We had to drag ourselves off the ship and back to real life the next morning...
Thanks for following along as I relive this amazing journey. It may not surprise you to hear that we're signed up for Star Trek Cruise III next year - hello Wil Wheaton!
https://www.startrekthecruise.com/
Come join us!
I also decided I should go to the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas in August, in the name of research. It can't possibly be anywhere near as awesome as the cruise, but I will go check on that and report back :)
Live long and prosper.