I was so sure we only had 6 sea days in a row on the itinerary, so where did this one come from? Today is Day 8 aboard the Regal Princess, which I’ve counted as Embarkation day plus seven. It’s been great, and very relaxing despite a couple of days of rough seas, but I’m ready to walk on land again.

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Beyond watching other people do yoga, and Zumba, and play organized crew vs passenger games in The Piazza, it was a quiet morning of reading and catching up on email. The wifi on this ship has been significantly better than on either Viking Ocean or Holland America, much to our delight. Of course, there was also some chatting with fellow passengers.

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At 2:00 p.m. I headed to the Princess Live! Studio for The Wake Show, filmed each day by Cruise Director Allie, along with an occasional guest, as a televised introduction to our cruise days. Today, as a look behind the scenes, passengers were invited to the filming of tomorrow’s show.

Today, Allie was joined by the Hotel General Manager, Shane, and had a secondary theme of “cruise confessions and questions” to get the audience involved. The show was filmed out of order to allow Shane to get back to work, and will be edited into transmission order later.

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Shane talked about how happy he is with his staff on board the Regal Princess, and how important the post-cruise surveys are to ensuring that staff get the recognition and promotional opportunities they deserve. Related to the fact that he advanced to his current role via the food service career path, he’s a foodie who travels the world through tastes. Naturally, he recommended Portugal’s pasteis de nata, those crazily good Portuguese custard tarts, as a priority when we reach Lisbon.

Allie’s second guest was Hein, one of the fitness trainers, newly promoted to Assistant Spa Manager. He demonstrated a stretching exercise called “the inchworm”, much to Allie’s delight – especially when he enhanced it with a couple of one-armed pushups.

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After those great guests, it was time for the “main event”: the portion of the show that normally comes first. she was joined by Assistant Cruise Directors Matt and Jed, who prior to filming painstakingly stacked Jenga tiles on the anchor desk.

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Time for some Q & A.

Q: What would you change about your job? A: Salary! (the guys) and closet size (Allie)

Q: What is your favourite port ever? A: Honolulu, Barcelona, and Cork (Jed), Barcelona, Rome, and the Alaskan ports (Allie), Liverpool (Matt).

Q: Is Matt really obsessed with Milk Duds? A: Yup.

Then there was more information about coming events. The guest entertainers who boarded in Fort Lauderdale disembark in Ponta Delgado, and new guest entertainers come on, including The Trawlermen from the UK doing folk and Celtic-inspired music.

Because this was a “live” taping, it took much longer to record than usual, meaning that I was late meeting Ted for afternoon tea.

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After another drink and chat with Jenny and Chris, we enjoyed the first of our two Princess Plus package included “casual dining” meals at Alfredo’s, the ship’s pizza/pasta parlor.

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Then it was time for the second big production show of the cruise, Fiera, the Italian word for a fair/carnival. It was incredible staging for a mid-size cruise ship – a cross between Cirque du Soleil and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. The costumes and effects, including a tilt-a-whirl, carousel, and roller coaster wowed us. Combine that with a love story, carnival games, a beautiful baby contest, a sideshow, and terrific singers and dancers and the show deserved the adjective “spectacular”.

The dark theatre and moody lighting made photography conditions less than ideal, but here we go:

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Tomorrow we need to be in the theatre by 7:50 a.m., ready to head out on a full day excursion in the Azores. Volcanoes, pineapple, gardens, architecture, and wine are all part of the plan… and all of it will be new to us!