If Surreal and Nostalgia had a Baby

1/5/26

In 1993, my parents sold the New Jersey family home they purchased in 1957.  I entered the picture in 1963 so it was and still is today the home I’ve called home the longest.  I’ve returned once in the 30+ years since they sold it to join us in Georgia.  Driving down our street was both surreal and nostalgic.  So much was familiar which I breathed in like the smell of freshly brewed morning coffee.  Other parts were unrecognizable, not because I had forgotten but because the change was so dramatic.  In our New Jersey suburb of New York, McMansions had become all the rage.  Some houses were significantly appended (like mine) and others were completely razed and rebuilt.  My favorite willow tree was gone, replaced by a children’s playset that was almost the size of our original house.  Memories of playing kickball and flashlight tag and building snow forts out of the berms created by the plows (and the ensuing snowball fights with neighboring forts) flooded my mind and my soul almost immediately.  So much so that I had to pull over, despite the concern of Ring doorbells alerting the neighborhood and the police of an intruder.  But I wasn’t an intruder, just a ghost from the past remembering life then and since.

Touring the Coral Princess on Day 1 was a lot like that.  For a bit of historical context, we spent 111 days on the Island Princess for WC23.  The Island and the Coral are sister ships, meaning they were built at the same time with the same everything, like identical twins in every way.  But over time, the renovations have turned these identical twins into fraternal twins.  As we walked the halls of our new home for the next 131 days, it was like returning back to a childhood home.  The basic structure was still there and evident; and yet somehow different.  Memories of WC23 came flooding back along with a heart-warming succession of “remember when’s”.  I love the “remember when’s” and in fact, wrote an entire entry on them in my WC23 Blog.  There are some memories so precious they reserve a permanent place in your psyche, whether or not you even realize it.  But a glimpse or an aroma or a sound can bring you back instantaneously to the “when” in remember-when.

Our stateroom is the mirror image of our stateroom on the Island Princess, same deck and in fact, next door.  The dining room and buffet are also familiar as are the central atrium, the theater, the indoor and outdoor pools and most of the outlets (both food and merchandise).  They’ve completely redone the casino, the spa and the fitness center…..not surprisingly all revenue generators 😉.  But the biggest difference is the Universe Lounge, an additional venue for shows and comedy that didn’t exist on the Island Princess.  On that ship, it had been converted into staterooms and the fitness center during one of the many renovations.  I’m anxious for our first show in there.  I think it will be amazing, large enough for productions of almost any sort, but small enough to be considered intimate.  I know there will be a lot of “remember whens” from the Universe Lounge

Logistically, embarkation was a breeze, it always is.  We arrived at 9:30am, early by most standards.  We were about the 30^th couple in line to go through security, which opened at 10am.  Within minutes we were comfortably seated in the Elite lounge awaiting the ship to finish its final preparations, which was at 10:45am.  Regardless of your loyalty level, Princess has made the embarkation process so seamless that this process engineer gives it 5-stars.  Being Elite, Princess’s highest loyalty level, we were directed to a lounge with beverages and pastries for our very short wait.

Once on board, we found a bar and ordered a few drinks, yes, alcoholic and yes, it was still only 11am.  It’s another ritual we have to acclimate to our new floating home and get reacquainted with the Princess App, connect to the internet and begin the embarkation drill, which involves watching a video and then going to our muster station.  All things much more enjoyable with a drink in hand.

Then we went to our room and dropped off my guitar (more on that later).  We met our steward, to whom we gave a huge basket of Christmas cookies Sherri had baked.  They work on the ship for about 9 months and then have 2 months off.  Our steward missed the holidays with his family and so we brought a little bit of the holidays with us.  We then proceeded up to the buffet for a light lunch.  After lunch, we returned to our room and our luggage was already there, so we unpacked.  There will be an entire blog entry on packing for a trip like this, but suffice it to say that packing most everything on hangers makes unpacking as efficient as Princess’s guest onboarding.  Yes, I give us 5 stars.  We were done unpacking by 2:30, a record even for us.

We then explored the ship, ran into a great couple we met on WC23 and imagined life for the next 4.5 months.  Before we knew it, it was time for dinner in the Bordeaux dining room.  We sat at a table of 8 which had an eclectic group of passengers, a widow, 3 gay doctors and 2 brothers.  The conversation was lively and we even touched on some politics civilly, which I shouldn’t even have to point out but it’s more the exception than the rule.  Dinner was my usual salmon over fettuccini.  It was outstanding.  A great first meal!

The show was outstanding too.  It was a tribute to Motown with 3 male singers who were so talented I’m surprised they’re on the cruise circuit and not American Idol.  After a drink in the Explorer’s Lounge which featured a guitarist singing Croce, Taylor and Denver, we retired to our stateroom.  A modest but respectable 9:30pm for this early riser.

Tomorrow and the day after are sea days, a nice way to acclimate to the ship and find our “routine”.  I’m always amazed at how quickly we like to establish a routine.  It’s comfortable and familiar I suppose, our human condition.  As with WC23, I’ll experiment with my routine.  The fitness center doesn’t open till 7am, very late by most standards and I’ll probably check at guest services if that can be advanced to 6am.  But all in all, an absolutely amazing first day.  It still feels simultaneously surreal and nostalgic…..but I still can’t believe we did this…again.  That little kid from NJ never even dreamed of this.