Daily Activities- Did I miss something?
 

I recently returned from the 16-day Sunshine Holiday cruise aboard the QE2. While overall I had a nice time (the ship herself being the best part of the experience), I was very disapointed by the lack of daily activities and I'm wondering if I missed something. As far as I could see from our Daily Programmes the daily (non-evening) activities were limited to BINGO, ballroom dancing, a film matinee (mostly old b&w classics such as Casablanca or the occassinal film dud like the J Lo/ Richard Gere turkey SHALL WE DANCE), and an occasional 45 minute lecture. The lectures did not inlude any covering the ports of call, and one billed as a lecture on marine Search and Rescue operations was given by a passenger who discussed his coastal England youth volunteer "rescue" organization. Not exactly stimulating. Most people seemed to sit on the deck or inside and either read or chit chat. I don't need rock climbing walls, but everyone had told me there'd be so much to do on a cruise ship. Is the QE2 that different? I'm mid-thirties and traveled with my parents, who were also a bit underwhelmed on sea days. We did a lot of deck walks, reading

Addendum: Did a lot of walking, reading, and made many visits to the Internet room. What did we do wrong or was the ship just not a good match for us?

I found similar lack of activities that interested me on NCL cruise Boston-Bermuda 2 years ago. But I was very happy to have several days of forced inactivity. There were a few times when my daughter and I were looking for something to do and ended up playing one more game of Bingo.

I guess it has to do with your own interests. I am not the type of person to participate in on-board amateur talent show, have real limits to how much money I will waste gambling, can skip the ice carving demonstration. I had a wonderful time, but husband and I are fairly sure we are not cruise people unless it is to use the ship as transportation to various ports - which is why we went.

Regarding "Shall We Dance" - I was trapped into watching that while crossing the Atlantic on flight - must be something about the North Atlantic that makes them play that movie.

On cruises where there are mostly days in port there is a lot less to do because they figure that everyone is off the ship. On the transatlantic crossings there is so much to do that I actually found myself running from one activity to another. One afternoon there were 4 things going on at the same time, and I had to choose one.

It depends what you are interested in doing. For example, on one of the cruises I felt so left out - most activities were for friends of Dorothy and Bill W.

Add trivia and sexy legs contest for men, folding of towels and ice carving... pretty much everything is covered :))

I've never sailed on the QE2, but I'm speculating that perhaps the number and type of activities offered will vary, depending on the cruise line and its target audience.

For example, I've sailed Royal Caribbean several times and on the sea days there were multiple activities going on at the same time throughout the day. I usually had to make a choice between interesting activities because they were scheduled at the same time.

I've sailed on Holland America once and they had a good number of activities, but very few interested me, so I spent a lot of time watching movies in the movie theater.

Sailed on Celebrity last year and I found the number of activities offered to be less than Royal Caribbean, but enough that were interesting and I didn't feel as though I was rushing from one place to another.

I think that maybe the ship wasn't the best match for your interests and activity level.

Friends of Bill W is code. Bill W is short for Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA.

As to Friends of Dorothy, you really don't want to be at their meeting. Here is a link to tell you more about "friend of Dorothy". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy

Eschew, I know, but I still felt left out :))

Dayenu, go ahead. Crash the party! :D