Port of Miami

When we arrived at the pier the dockside was all bustle and confusion, with luggage piled everywhere and ragged lines of tourists were stretched out everywhere with no immediately apparent purpose to them. The still and imposing shapes of the row of cruise ships in the port stood in contrast to the maelstrom of people on the quayside. More interesting though was the array of amazing t-shirt slogans, luggage and props making Star Trek in-jokes, leaving no doubt about whether we were int he right place.

The lines to board were long, and to be honest seemed unnecessary (as there was no use of any virtual queue system) but a mere couple of hours after arriving at the port we were closing the gang plank to board Explorer of the Seas. As we started to look around the lower few decks to find our cabin we were delighted by the various bits of theming - Qua’ plagh (the Klingon pub), Quark’s Casino and pictures of Jean Luc Picard in a napoleonic naval uniform on the walls. Soon we had added to this by placing our custom sign on our stateroom door; it showed our names and the compartment number for our stateroom which I had worked out by looking at deck plans and applying the TNG tech manual.

The numbers in the sign are 14 because its the 14th deck counting from the top (ventral) most deck; 5 because it is in a long section (as opposed to a saucer, neck or nacelle), another 5 because it is in the 5th of 9 equally sized sections along the length of the vessel (starting at the bow) and 18 because it is the 18th compartment in the section (which I counted as even to port side, odd to starboard).Read more