Poppy Survives Halloween Horror cruise.
As a gay comedian I usually work for the gay cruises, Olivia, Atlantis and R-Family. This year, I thought I would branch out into the straight world and try to work on some of those.
It was a Halloween cruise from West Palm Beach to Freeport, Bahamas. It was a dark and stormy night and the cruise was actually running a haunted house down on the lower decks.
At 8:30 I was grabbing a bite between shows with the magician when all of a sudden the ship leaned way over to the right and stayed there for an unusually long moment, then it went back the other way. Seconds later the lights flickered and the engine shut down.
Now we were in total darkness. I said to John “In all of your thirty years of performing on cruise ships, have you ever experienced being dead in the water like this?” He whispered “Never”.
When the captain came over the intercom, not even trying to mask his fear, his voice cracked saying “we’re taking on water please go to your muster stations and put on your life preservers.” You gotta be kidding! Is this a Halloween prank? I don’t even know where my life preserver is.
It can’t be in my room unless my mattress is my floatation device. I was put in “crew quarters” which means my room is a quarter of the size of the regular passengers rooms. It was so small I had to stand up to change my mind.
After finding our life preservers in the hallway closet we were told that our muster group would be exiting the ship out a small door, then hurtling down a hundred foot rubber slide, depositing us into a rubber life raft that will be deployed below. Now can we freak out?
People were fainting, having panic attacks – a lady in a wheel chair was transported to another deck. I could see that scene happening: “The Wheels are ripping the rubber! Get her out of that slide!” Some people on board paid no attention to emergency protocol. They stayed in the dining room and finished their dinner – and even worse, when those people were told to go to their muster stations, instead they went and looted the bars. Sinking schminking.
The last frightening encounter happened as we were finally getting off the ship at 2:30 in the morning. The tug boats had successfully towed us back to the dock and as we were patiently waiting our turn to drag our belongings down this steep, rickety, one hundred foot long gangway, the structure unexpectedly tore away from our severely listing ship. This added another hour to our already unending Halloween nightmare. You can bet they were not passing out those comment cards at the end of this trip.
But the photo shop was giving away our welcome aboard photos as a parting gift. How nice. Our background choices were sinking ship or ship on fire. Celebration Cruises, where the fun never starts.