Chapter 22
Boo, Seals!

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After our amazing Palo dinner, we changed out of our fancy clothes and then headed back down to Deck 4. Looking down into the atrium, we could see that Minnie was back.

I realized I’d never really gotten a good picture of the entrance to Triton’s.

And the Ariel statue. We never managed to be in the right place at the right time to have no one else by this statue, unfortunately.

We were en route to the Walt Disney Theater because we’d decided to check out tonight’s show: Robert Creighton in Concert, Presented by Disney Theatrical.

We knew this show had the potential to be totally hit-or-miss because you never know what you’ll be getting yourself into with solo cruise line performers, but the guy had a pretty impressive Broadway resume, so we decided to give him a shot.

Before the show actually started, we were told by the disembodied announcer voice to welcome our cruise director Jimmy to the stage (cue the applause!).

Jimmy spoke fondly about our day in Sitka and how he enjoyed visiting this new port for the first time. Then he moved on to talking about what was on the docket for tomorrow’s visit to the Tracy Arm Fjord. He explained how it was still very early in the season and we would be one of the first cruise ships of 2014 to make a trip into Tracy Arm. As a result, much of the ice that had accumulated throughout the winter would still be in fairly large bergs that we would need to try to avoid.

After the mention of icebergs, Jimmy specifically took a moment to clarify that this wasn’t going to be like the Titanic. Instead, we would need to use the ship to gently shove some of the ice aside so that we could keep plowing through the waters. At some point, however, we would reach a spot where the ice got too thick for us to navigate through it, and then we would have to turn around. Without actually being there in Tracy Arm, there was no way of knowing whether we would get right up next to the glacier at the far end of the fjord or if we’d have to turn around almost immediately. It was totally a crapshoot.

The other potential hazard we might have to deal with, Jimmy continued, would be seals up near the glacier. This area is too far inland for whales to swim, so the seals are safe within the fjord. As such, this is where they often come to have their babies. We were told to keep our eyes peeled for seals because we might get some great photo ops, but Jimmy also warned us that the ship would need to turn around rather than getting too close to the seals and either frightening them or injuring them.

At that point, someone a few rows behind us loudly booed, and the whole crowd burst into laughter. Jimmy stopped his spiel and said, “Really? You’re booing the seals?! I think this is the first time that has ever happened before.”

We were proud of Jimmy for calling out the woman, but then he launched back into his speech and explained that we should make every effort to see Tracy Arm from out on deck. While there are plenty of windows for you to look through, he pointed out, unless you are actually out there to take in the cold air and and the smells and the sounds, you might as well be watching this on the Discovery Channel. Jimmy specifically mentioned Decks 4, 9, and 10 as being excellent spots to sit/stand outside and enjoy Tracy Arm, but then he also pointed out that if we were lucky enough to have our own verandah, we should definitely use it. The Tracy Arm day had been one of the top reasons why we’d opted to upgrade to a verandah stateroom, and we were looking forward to getting the most of it tomorrow.

When Jimmy was done previewing the day ahead, he talked a little bit about how excited he was to have tonight’s performer on board, and then he welcomed Robert Creighton.

Creighton came out and the two projection screens on either side of the stage showed still photos of him dressed in the costume of Chef Louis from The Little Mermaid. He then proceeded to do a very funny rendition of “Les Poissons.” Creighton had taken over that role at some point during the Broadway run and played it for at least a year, so it was fun to see him get into character once more.

After his introductory song, this performance turned into something a little more akin to a cabaret act, with Creighton chatting for a bit about his childhood and his history in the business before launching into the next song. He had just released a CD with lots of old standards on it, so he sang several of those songs. To appease our crowd, however, he also interspersed a few Disney songs here and there.

We enjoyed the act, but there were several people around us who seemed to take issue with this style of entertainment. I fully blame them for being idiots/not taking the time to read their Personal Navigators, but they seemed to be expecting a full-fledged show like we’d gotten earlier in the cruise. I can only sort of fault the kids who were being brats and loudly asking, “When will it be over?” Of course, it’s almost always the parents’ fault, and some of them were behaving much worse.

At one point, the same woman who had booed the seals (I think she’d had one too many at dinner) started literally yelling about how awful she felt the performance was. Luckily, she and her family got up and left not too long after that.

With most of the hecklers gone from the crowd, the rest of us were able to enjoy the rest of the show. Creighton himself was really very talented. If I thought there was one fault about the show, it was that the man definitely had a bit of a self-centered streak, but if you could see past that, it was quite entertaining.

It was starting to get late by the time the show was over, so we went back to our stateroom to find the latest towel animal from Jay.