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[Carter-Orange]

You don't have to take part in the theme nights if you don't want to.  On our cruise they had black tie night and celebration night where you had to dress up to get in to most restaurants.  We dressed up for the celebration night as I already had a nice dress and Tim had a suit.  But we weren't dressing up really fancy for the black tie event lol.  So on that night we ate at one of the casual places and wore jeans and a t-shirt.

Not everyone wants to take part, so you'll be fine

[mare]

I joined a FB group specifically made for this cruise. I didn't know they did things like that but virtually there's usually one person who will make a group for your cruise. It's been really helpful to read info. One of the things I had NO clue about until two days ago was how the main dining room worked. When I booked this cruise with a travel agent, which also happened to be an old friend from high school, she never mentioned anything about tables and how the MDR works so I was under the impression this whole time, that each night you could either choose the buffet or the MDR and that if you chose the dining room they would seat you like they would at a restaurant.

Turns out most people were asked if they wanted early or late dinner and if they wanted to sit in a group or just by their own party. I missed out on all of that. There is a dining room called my time dining, but you have to reserve a table each night. Well, by the time I found this out and tried to reserve tables, the earliest available on most nights was after 8! I managed to book about 5 nights out of the 9 but the earliest we were able to get was 6:45. The majority of them are at 7:15. I usually eat dinner at 5.

I have been kind of annoyed about this. I mean, the buffet is well and good, but I was really trying to avoid having to go there for every single meal. The other thing that sucks with this plan is because of the lateness, we are pretty much missing out on all the shows because they schedule them at around 8 on this ship and we'll be eating when they are performing.

I guess it's my fault for not asking further questions. She had asked me what do you feel about dining, and I had answered we would want to just sit the two of us and be able to go whenever we want. It would have been helpful if she actually explained the whole reservation thing. Sorry I'm ranting here. She's my FB friend so I don't want to complain on there. LOL

Other than that, I'm pretty excited. I'm almost all packed. Tomorrow morning, we drop of the animals at their little pet hotel and then around noon we're making the 6 hour trek to Newark NJ. It's only about 30 minutes to the port from there and then on noon Thursday, we get on the boat! 

[Carter-Orange]

Mare, I'm sure once you're on the ship you'll be able to go to the MDR and ask them to change your meal times.  They are very helpful.  When I tried to book meals before the cruise I could only pick crappy times like 8pm (I also like to eat earlier).  But when we were on the ship we found we could eat whenever we wanted really.  On ours you had to join a virtual queue and when your table was ready you get a notification, we never had to wait long.  I don't know if yours will be the same, but I'm sure you'll be able to eat early as most people want to eat about 7pm before the shows start at about 8.30.

Have an amazing time

[RokofAges75]

Sorry I haven't been around here since school started!  The first two weeks are so exhausting.  I just come home and mindlessly watch TV until I fall asleep LOL.  Last night (Friday night), I lay down to take a "nap" at 7 p.m. and ended up sleeping the whole night.  I woke up a couple of times but didn't actually get up until about 9:30 the next morning.  I figure I got around twelve hours of actual sleep, which was lovely.  Thank god we have a 3-day weekend!

Mare, I did watch your TikTok video, and you did a great job talking about books!  It doesn't have to be anything fancy.  I often think about how cringey most of those TikTok dance videos are going to seem ten years from now.  A lot of them give me secondhand embarrassment now - usually the ones with teachers doing random dance moves in the middle of their empty classroom with captions that are totally unrelated to their weird dance moves.  I don't get it. LOL

I hope you're having an amazing time on your cruise!  I saw that your travels got off to a rough start, but I hope things got better once you boarded the ship.  I didn't realize it was so complicated as far as reserving tables for dinner and all that.  We didn't have to do that on the BSB cruises, but I've never been on a regular cruise, so I would have had no idea.  I'm with you on the white night thing too.  They had a white party in Cancun, and I did buy a beachy white dress to wear off Amazon, but I will probably never wear it again outside of another white themed event.  I am super pale, so I don't look good in white.  It was hard to find a white dress that wouldn't make me look like a bride, a ghost, or a marshmallow.  Steph, I'm with you on not wanting to dress up fancy for black tie night either.  I like casual dresses, but I hate having to buy something really fancy that I'm only going to wear once.

[mare]

I hope your school year is off to a great start and the beginning year exhaustion has gotten better!

Overall, I had a great time. I highly recommend getting a balcony room. That was the highlight for me, sitting out on the balcony and reading and just watching the sunrise and sunsets. The first day was rough. Right before we got on the boat, my sister decided to check in on the pets to see how they were doing and to see how Pugsley did with getting his shots from a stranger. He gets insulin twice a day. Well, this lady didn't bother reading directions and was giving Chloe the insulin! Which means Chloe got three doses of insulin and Pugsley didn't get any! Needless to say, we found this out literally an hour before we were to get on the boat. My sister almost didn't get on, but thankfully she did. We managed to find someone to take Pugsley to the Emergency Vet and they kept him for the entirety of the trip. So yeah, what we didn't want to do because it was hella expensive, we ended up doing anyway. We had no choice but to leave Chloe with her. Thankfully she came home in one piece although she was missing her favorite calming stuffie, some of her tee shirts and water bowls.

Then, after being on the boat for an hour, I'm on the balcony and decide to leave to go to the sail away party. There was a ramp that comes down when the door opens, for some reason the ramp didn't come down and I tripped and fell. So instead of going to the sail away party, I was on the floor and had to wait for Security to come and help me up. My left foot and leg were completely bruised!

Thankfully things got better after that, although my sister's mood never recovered from the whole Insulin thing.

I'm probably going to make a video about my cruise experience as a handicap person because as I've said before, I wish I had someone talk about this stuff when I was doing research. Sadly, it wasn't all that accessible. There were scooters everywhere, but we were all complaining about the same thing which is lack of help. For instance, at the buffet, there were designated handicap tables, but no one ever came over to help or anything. I did the main dining room once, but it was so crowded in there, I couldn't maneuver the scooter, and they asked me if I could walk to the table. Lots of stress like that. The doors to our staterooms were so heavy that I couldn't open it. etc...

It wasn't all bad though. The staff overall was incredible! And I met a lot of great people, and not once did anyone make me feel guilty about being on a scooter when it came to the elevators. We had spectacular weather every day. It didn't rain until we were disembarking on the final day. I enjoyed the ports of call although the gangways were friggin terrifying. I'd cruise again, but not on this particular ship and only if they were really completely handicap accessible. It's definitely something I can't do alone, and it made me realize that I absolutely can't do NY alone to see Kieran. I'm just not able bodied enough. The hotel room the night before the cruise, I couldn't get on the bed because it was too high up, so I ended up sleeping on the chair with my head on the dresser. 

[RokofAges75]

I'm glad you had a great time, despite a few hiccups!  I've been looking forward to hearing about it.

Shame on your petsitter!  I get that mistakes happen, but when it comes to medication, getting the dog and cat mixed up is a pretty big mess-up!  I'm so glad you guys figured it out at the beginning of the trip. That could have been bad for both Pugsley and Chloe!  And what happened to Chloe's stuff??  I would not be trusting this woman with my pets again!  I'm sorry that happened and that you ended up having to pay for Pugsley to stay at the vet anyway.

Also sorry to hear about your fall on the first day!  Not a great start.  I'm glad you weren't hurt other than the bruises and that it got better from there.  The photos you posted were beautiful!  Looks like you got to go to a lot of cool places.

It's too bad that the ship wasn't more accessible or the staff more helpful.  I guess they assume that most people would have someone with them to help, but the goal should be to make it so that most disabled people could navigate the ship independently if needed.  I saw your post about not being able to get onto the bed at the hotel.  That's terrible!  Did you book an accessible room, or was it just a regular room?  Either way, there's no reason they need to make the beds so high.  Is your sister willing to go to NY with you to see Kieran?

While some places are better than others, the world definitely has a ways to go when it comes to accessibility.  I won't pretend to know firsthand the struggles of being disabled, but between planning field trips in years when I've had students who used wheelchairs or walkers and researching for the story I'm writing, where my MC is a quadriplegic, I get the frustration on some level.  Just this week, I was looking for wheelchair-accessible places to stay in Aspen, CO for the chapter I'm writing.  I like to look up real locations to use as inspiration when describing the setting, especially when it's somewhere I've never been.  I chose Aspen because they have an adaptive skiing program, so you'd think they would also have plenty of accessible lodging available too, right?  Wrong.  It was hard to even find suitable hotel rooms, let alone something bigger and nicer like a cabin that was fully accessible for someone with limited mobility.  And that's in 2024.  My story takes place over ten years ago, when the options were probably even more limited than they are now.  I was frustrated just trying to plan a fictional trip, so I can only imagine how difficult and frustrating it must be to do it for real.  Hopefully it gets easier the more you travel, as you learn what to look for and ask about that you may not have thought of the first time.

I hope you're able to rest, relax, and unwind this week!  Enjoy sleeping in your own bed!

[mare]

We heard back from Amy (pet sitter from hell) she said she found a bag that had most of Chloe's things in it and she totally forgot to put it aside. Her teddy bear wasn't there though. She said I never even saw her playing with it followed by a laughing emoji! It's like the girl has no clue how horrible she is. Meanwhile we told the vet about her so this way she knows never to recommend this lady to anyone. When we asked her to drop the stuff off to us, she had the nerve to say we lived too far away (literally 20 minutes!) so could we come and get it. Needless to say, after our reply back she'll be coming here to drop her stuff off! 

This ship was one of the oldest ones in their fleet and will be refurbished in 2026. According to a lot of people in our trip's FB group, the other ships are a lot more handicapped friendly. This one is behind the times. They shouldn't just assume people had help. If my sister did end up getting off the boat, I'm convinced I would've ended up spending the remainder of my trip just stuck in the stateroom. I couldn't even open the balcony door without help.

It is sad how inaccessible things still are this day and age. That room we booked was a handicap accessible room. I even bring a small step stool with me wherever I go since my left leg is basically dead and even that didn't help. The bed was that high up! The only reason the bathroom was 'accessible' was because they had bars in the shower but there was nothing at all by the toilet to grab onto to stand or sit which was another nightmare for me. Even my totally handicap accessible stateroom's bed was too high. If I didn't have my step with me, I wouldn't have been able to get on the bed. The bathroom in my stateroom was awesome though.

Like you found just doing research on this stuff, it's absolutely exhausting trying to find places that are accessible. Even something as small as getting your hair done. I never talked about this story but a few months ago, I booked an appointment to get my hair cut because it was getting really long and when I got there, I had to leave because there were stairs leading up to both of the entrances. It's not always on my mind to find out if places are handicap accessible. I don't always mentally see myself as handicap and it was a complete bummer when that happened, to know that something as trivial as going to get a haircut or going out to eat, now involves research or even worse, a phone call. So many restaurants aren't handicapped accessible either. I even have to ask people who invite me to their houses if they have stairs. There have been so many BBQ's and parties I haven't been able to go to here because of stairs and if I hadn't asked, the embarrassment it would've caused everyone because I would have to leave.

I am heartbroken about NYC. My sister might be willing to go, but even if she did, there are so many obstacles standing in the way. This trip reminded me I can't do long distance drives anymore. My legs begin to cramp after about two hours so we'd have to stop so I can get out of the car, but then my legs also give out if I get in and out of the car too much. It's like a no-win situation in the car department. She's really anti flying and honestly to ask her to spend all that money on a plane ticket to see a play she has no desire to see wouldn't feel right. my first thought, before I really thought it through and the reality of my situation hit, was that I could fly into NYC and stay right in the heart of the Broadway district. I'd have to finds a hotel that had a shuttle directly from the airport and it would have to be within a very short walking distance to the theater. I wouldn't be able to do a wheelchair solo, so I'd have to use the walker. For this to be successful, I'd need to find a hotel within a block of the theater that used a handicap accessible van and then also have a handicap accessible room with a bed not the size of the Empire State Building. I can hardly walk using my walker anymore. Maybe I can take about 20 steps before I need to sit down. But even if we ignore that fact, just the price of the hotel alone would kill me. Looking them up right in the heart of Manhattan, the cheapest was about $200 night and that's probably really nowhere near where I'd actually have to be and most likely no shuttle service. The ones I had to really think about staying at range from $400 and up a night. It's just not feasible and I cry whenever I think about it. It is what it is. Maybe he'll change his mind and they'll move it up to Buffalo? lol

Okay enough poor me-ing. I need to get myself back into writing mode. I haven't even thought about writing in almost two weeks. And every time I do try, I think about me missing out on Kieran and Bob Odenkirk together.  I'm fine...it's fine.

[mare]

I had to come back and add this on. After saying this morning that I wished he would come up to Buffalo, this afternoon I see Macauley make that post about his little Home Alone talk and where is the first stop? Buffalo! I am taking that as a huge sign. It’s the wrong Culkin, but close enough. Just pray for me that I’m able to get tickets. There is a presale going on but whenever I tried to get handicap accessible it says the tix are already taken. When I called the box office to make sure it was wheelchair accessible the lady said to call back for tickets Wednesday. Yes, I did make a phone call. The things I will do for a Culkin lol

[Carter-Orange]

I'm glad you enjoyed your cruise Mare, apart from the negatives.  From your photos it looked lovely.  It is a shame the ship wasn't more accessible, but maybe next time try one of the bigger newer ships.  I'm pretty sure you would find the newer ships to be more accessible, I know ours was.

It's also a pain that you have to call to make sure places don't have steps.  Over here, all houses built from 2000 onwards had to be wheelchair accessible and have a downstairs toilet too.  But there are plenty of older houses and shops that would probably be a complete nightmare

I hope you get to see a Culkin

I'm quite disappointed today.  I was supposed to be going to London with my daughter to see a k-pop singer but his whole European tour got cancelled last week (6 days before the show).  We had paid not only for concert tickets, but train fare and a hotel which are non-refundable.  We will get the concert tickets refunded though.  I decided to cancel my time off work and save it for another time rather than have 2 wasted days off work as I've already been to London a couple of times recently.  So instead my daughter and her friend are going rather than waste the train and hotel.  That's a lesson to me for next time though.  Don't book a hotel and train unless I can cancel last minute.

[mare]

Ugh, that sucks! Sorry Steph! Everything should always be refundable. Things happen. This seems to be happening more and more lately. People cancelling shows and tours at the last minute. I have seen this happen time and time again when it comes to BSB doing all these cons. They always seem to cancel at the last minute. Unless it's some kind of medical emergency or death or something, these artists when they cancel at the last minute, should have some kind of consequence. Not like oh sorry, I decided there was something else more important or fun I'd rather do, sorry about that. They all must realize all the planning and money people pay to get to these things. It's so rude!

I'm not sure if I'll ever really get to cruise again, but if I do, I definitely want to do a bigger ship.

I'm hoping I get to see this Home Alone thing. I'm not even a huge fan of the movie to be honest. I maybe have watched it three or four times tops in my life. It just seems like something that I shouldn't pass up. I think Macauley is a lovely person and he and his brother have similar personalities and mannerisms and maybe he'll talk about Kieran. Who knows, maybe he'll make a guest appearance, he is in the movie! lol wishful thinking. I'm still totally heartbroken about Broadway, but at least this would help a little.

[Carter-Orange]

That's really sad you can't go to Broadway and see Kieran, fingers crossed he does make a guest appearance with his brother though.  It's so annoying when you can't do the things you want to do for whatever reason, like health, money, distance etc.  It's a real shame

[mare]

Thanks, Steph! good news. I did get tickets for Macauley's show on November 30th. I'm in terrible seats. It's a small win, but I'll take it.

[RokofAges75]

I'm glad you got most of Chloe's things back, but wow, Amy sounds terrible!

That makes more sense why the ship wasn't as accessible as it should be.  I get that it takes time and money to bring older facilities up to code when it comes to current ADA guidelines.  I'm sure the newer ships are much better in that respect.  Not sure how old the hotel was, but that's pathetic that they can just put bars in the shower and call it "accessible."  I've come across the same kind of issues in my research, too - showers that are supposedly roll-in still have a lip/step, beds are too high or too low, toilets don't have enough space to allow a transfer from a wheelchair... but, hey, as long as there are bars on the wall! 🙄  And there usually aren't as many photos as you'd want to see when trying to assess whether or not a place would be accessible, or the photos they include are not representative of the actual room you're reserving.  It has to be so defeating to only discover places are inaccessible when you get there.  That seems like an ADA violation to only have stairs and no ramp or elevator, but I know older buildings that haven't been renovated since ADA was passed can get away with more.  And it's even harder to find private homes that don't have any steps to get inside.

I'm sorry about NYC!  Planning a trip can be stressful enough without having to figure out all those logistics you listed.  I would be overwhelmed by it all too.  I'm glad you at least got tickets for the Macauley thing in Buffalo!  That sounds fun!

I hope you can churn up some inspiration for writing!  It's always hard for me to get back into my writing groove after a vacation.  Speaking of fanfic, I don't know if Tracy DMed you too, but Whatever the Night May Bring was mentioned in a BSB fanfic thread on Reddit!  https://www.reddit.com/r/BackstreetBoys/comments/1fdms7b/lost_fanfiction_from_early_2000s/

Steph, I'm so sorry your concert got cancelled!  Did the artist give a reason?  That is so strange to cancel it six days before the show!  Very frustrating that everything else you booked was nonrefundable too.  I'm glad your daughter will still be able to use the train and hotel, but that's still very disappointing.

Like Mare said, it does seem like this happens more often lately.  I could understand it when live events started happening right after Covid, but that wouldn't explain canceling a whole tour.  Between BSB canceling their Vegas Christmas shows and all Nick's canceled shows and convention appearances in the past few years, they've gotten kind of flakey lately.  It makes me more reluctant to travel long distances to see them.

[mare]

We still haven't gotten Chloe's things back. She hasn't dropped anything off yet. This woman!

Thanks for letting me know about the reddit post. At first, I was just going to give her a like until I saw her asking if I was a Trump fan! Yikes!!! Now I'm thinking maybe I need to put an Author's Note at the top of that story to explain the reason I picked him was because I was confident the man would cause an apocalypse!

My house isn't accessible either. There's no way to get into or out of this place without having to climb at least 5 steps. I can't even use my wheelchair in the house easily because the hallway is too narrow. I can't access the basement or the upstairs bedroom so I can only really hang on the first floor. I have to depend on my sister to do my laundry since the washer and dryer are in the basement, but that's fine because I'm the only one whoever washes the dishes in this place. Eventually we're going to have to decide to either invest in a ramp or move. 

How has your first few weeks of school gone? Do you have an easy class this year?

[Carter-Orange]

Mare I can't believe that pet sitter still hasn't brought the things back to you.  I hope you left her a bad review!  And I hope you manage to sort out your house too or move somewhere more accessible.  I can't imagine what in inconvenience that must be.

Julie, no the singer didn't give a reason for the tour cancellation, he just said he only found out it was cancelled when we did.  His management said something about the local promoter, but to cancel the whole European and Dubai tour seems a bit harsh.

It seems a lot of singers/groups cancel these days.  I was supposed to see Shawn Mendes last year with my daughter but he cancelled too.