Hawaiian Radiance: Day 12

By Saint Greg

November 28, 2025

Good morning. Today is yet another sea day as we make our way to Ensenada, Mexico. The coffee line is five deep this morning.

I headed to the Pig & Anchor for the 8:30 nature walk and nobody was there.

I hung around to catch the wake.

Within five minutes the naturalist is there with five other people. I know some people came up saw nobody there and left. I ended up spending half an hour with him.

He mentioned that last night at star gazing they caught part of the. Northern lights. I mentioned I came up and nobody was here. Then walked to the front and nobody was there. He said they were at the front for an hour. I went back and looked at my pictures from last night and it looks like there were people on the other side of the Pig & Anchor. I just didn’t walk over there.

After the nature walk I headed back down to the Java Blue for more coffee.

Then down to the atrium bar for a screwdriver.

I took that into the theater for The Wave morning show.

After that I stopped by the room to find it had been cleaned already.

This is our current position as we work our way to Ensenada.

Next up is a horse race competition in the theater.

I got a spicy bloody mary at the bar.

Next is a Hotel Q&A in the theater.

After that I headed to the Limelight Lounge for Steve the Naturalist’s Reef Romance presentation.

For all of the slides please check out Reef Romance.

Next up is the knobby knees competition on lido deck.

And these are the winners.

While I’m here I decided to head up one deck to get a coconut kiss at the Serenity Bar.

The water is getting rough. We may drain the pool again.

We can’t have the bathing suit ping pong ball challenge in pool like that so they’re using the hot tubs. A bunch of disappointed kids had to get out.

And we have a winner! It was either 113 or 130 balls in his bathing suit.

One disappointing thing is on my transatlantic we alternated sea days having sea day brunch and breakfast with a special lunch menu. I thought we would have the same this cruise. I think we had the lunch once last week. This week we had brunch yesterday, brunch today, and we’re scheduled for brunch tomorrow. Brunch ends at 11:30 now.

I got a Shaq Attack from Big Chicken.

Then I went back upstairs and got a Mai Tai.

They refilled the pool over lunch and now we are going to attempt the frog races.

We had a seriously long race. The frogs kept getting turned around. Finally we got a winner. But that was just the first of five races.

You can see how the pool water is getting a bit rough.

Occasionally someone would have to jump in the pool to force the frogs along.

This is the final.

And we have a winner. Cruise Director Kieran jumped in to get a frog across the finish line.

After frog races I headed down to the Alchemy bar for some dirty martinis.

Nikola has a chess game going on.

I headed down to the theater for the Captain’s Cocktail Party.

After that I headed to the Hero’s Lounge where the Mets are on the big screen.

I got a Thirsty Frog Red.

This time I got Sam Adams.

I was going through all of my Carnival gift cards between innings and I found one with money on it so I applied it to my account.

And the Mets win!

Tonight is an elegant night and I got one of those 30-40 minute wait deals but I was seated in about 10 minutes

Lobster bisque

Brioche crabmeat

The lobster for the Captain’s Gala is like it used to be before the cutbacks. Served with shrimp and mushroom risotto.

Baked Alaska

After dinner the Alchemy was slammed so I just headed to the comedy club.

Comedy host Billy

A comedy club dirty martini.

This is the White Hot Night party on lido deck.

I was finally able to get a seat at the Alchemy.

I’m trying the stargazing again. While waiting I found out the aft pool changes colors.

I ran into two other people who were like “well nobody is here.” I told them give it five minutes. Sure enough.

We went to the “secret deck” at the front of the ship. He covered the light with a blanket to make it darker. His uses an app called sky guide.

The cloud cover was really bad. We could only see one star between the gaps. But he had a laser pointer and pointed out where the planets are.

He said he will do an unadvertised star gazing event for us tomorrow night if it’s clear. It was just me, the hypnotist, and this girl Elena who is everywhere…except the bars. The hypnotist was trying to get me to volunteer for her show. She said she’s going try to get Phil Hughes to come to star gazing tomorrow night. He’s the ventriloquist.

Ron Mitchell is in the theater.