Let The Games Begin!

Before boarding the ship I had already decided that I was going to attempt to win as many tokens as possible. Let me tell you a little bit about this because even after cruising for a week and a half I still met many, many passengers who had no idea what a token was and what to do with one if they won it!

Rather than give out silly plastic visors, water bottles and other tchotchkes, to the winners of the shipboard games, Regent awards tokens which are basically a generic plastic poker chip with the Regent Harp logo imprinted upon it. On the last full day of the cruise, a booth opens up where you can exchange your tokens for Regent logo merchandise that is NOT sold in the store. Well, let me clarify that.....first of all, the company that was the consignment for our store had ended their contract with Regent and the new company was not scheduled to take over until the end of the month. So for all intents and purposes, we really didn't have any onboard shopping available to us. What we did have was a 90% off store which would have been great if you wanted to buy a shot glass with a pewter Regent logo, or a glass beer stein with a pewter Regent logo, or a small t-shirt with an embroidered Regent logo, or a travel coffee mug depicting a map of Alaska..... you get the picture. Great buys, not much selection. Anyway, so back to the tokens! The items "for sale" the last day included: polished metal bookmark (2 tokens), magnetic memo holder (4), metal luggage tag (8), leather bound journal (12), jewelry roll (16), tote bag (20). You don't know what the items will be in advance -- I just knew I wanted to claim that I won something so therefore I knew that I had to get my hands on some tokens.

There are generally 3 ways to win tokens. There are two early afternoon activity games each day around 2:30 and 3:30. These games are conducted by the Social Staff (Bradley and Elsa) although when Bradley's contract expired he left the ship in Grand Turk to head home. As an aside, if anyone from Regent management happens to read this: SEND BRADLEY ANOTHER CONTRACT -- he was great fun and a definite asset to the Regent experience!!! The activity games include things like shuffleboard, golf putting, baggo, ring toss and require some skill. They would generally play these in teams -- at least they did after the first day when I got involved in organizing them!! During these games, you see a lot of the same players so if you are looking to meet new people, this is a great place to be! It was clear from the very first Baggo Bean Bag hurl that Jennie and Alan were out to give Mike and I a run for our money and what a grand time we had all week long competing against each other.

Another token opportunity for the more sedate set is the afternoon Trivia game. This game takes place during the 4pm tea time and is another great chance to meet people. You can set up your own team (believe me, some of these teams I think have been together since Nixon was president) or you can just go in and find other people in pods of 1, 2 or 3 and join up with them. Concept is simple: Host asks a series of 15-16 questions, you write down your answer on an answer sheet and then exchange papers with the closest team for "grading". The team who gets the most answers correct wins a token for each team member. After 10 attempts -- my team finally tied for 1st place the last day! A picture of my winning team (minus me because I'm taking the picture) appears at left. Left to right: Gudrun (Guti), Robbie, Bonnie and Joel. A motley crew yes, but we emerged victorious!!!

A third token opportunity arose on the 2nd to last night of the cruise when Assistant Cruise Director Handre hosted a Name That Tune contest. The premise of this game was that Handre would play a couple of notes from a song and then ask you to write down the title and/or which movie it came from or who was the composer, etc. Strangely enough, one of the friends I had made (Bill from New Mexico) was an ace at this game back when it was on tv so of course I recruited him for my team along with his wife Sue and another couple Sue & Henry. I had high hopes for us UNTIL I discovered that the team sitting next to us was made up of predominantly gay men and I thought to myself that to remain competitive I would need a gay man on my team as well in case we needed help on the Broadway questions. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince any of them to "defect" to my team :P In any event, Bill came through for us and we tied for first place (although we still maintain we were shorted a point because Smoke Gets In Your Eyes did in fact appear in the movie American Graffiti) so we should have scored 23 out of 25 instead of 22. No matter....we got our tokens! Best of all, my amazingly wonderful teammates gave me ALL the tokens saying that they only played the game for me anyway so I ended up with 5 for that challenge. Oh, and as for the boy's team -- they scored a shabby 15 which I teased them about mercilessly for the rest of the night! A picture of my winning team appears to the right. Beginning from the left we have Sue who belongs to Bill, Henry, Me, Sue who belongs to Henry and Bill.

There are two other games that are played on the ship (not for tokens) and I highly recommend them both. One is the Liars Club game and I don't want to give away too much but suffice it to say that it is one of the most entertaining events to be found during the cruise. Seriously....I laughed so hard I think I may have bruised a rib. Tears were rolling down our cheeks from laughter! Do not miss this whatever you do! The other game that is played most afternoons is bingo. And the wonderful thing about this bingo is that it is not a money-maker for the Corporation..... 90% of what is taken in through card sales goes back to the players in cash prizes, the remaining 10% is donated to the Crew Fund. So when you play bingo, not only do you have a good time and a chance to win some serious money (prizes on our cruise ranged from $120 - $501) BUT you are also helping to contribute to the Crew Fund which is a most worthy cause. Here are some of my bingo friends Rose, Georgie and Sid. Notice how happy we all are because at this point we still really believe we are going to win! Actually, by the end of the week, both Rose and I had each won a game; no such luck for Georgie or Sid.