Goddess, DW, and DYT (yours truly?...) enter the Surial Bath. Exotic like the Rain Forest room, there is tile everywhere, floor to ceiling - and as that other room, it's like entering another era. Hmm, maybe these rooms are - what did they call the rooms in the Next Generation, Patrick Stewart vintage Star Wars Series - the holodeck rooms??
Against and built into the far wall was a tiled, sculpted bench. Within the wall to the left, was an alcove for a shower, without door or curtain. On the wall opposite a glass door to the steam bath room.
Goddess asks if we've ever been in the Surial Bath before. We reply and she explains the routine. First the mud. She waves the up-turned palm of her hand over a table, on which are three bowls of mud and various tubes and bottles. The mud looks more like thick lotion than, say, mud of the earth. There are two kinds, each of a different color. She explains that one is for the facial area and the other for the rest of the body. As for the products in the tubes, she welcomes us to try any and all of them. What they are - she didn't say.
She waves her arm towards the shower alcove, then to the towels stacked on the bench, then to the button on the wall for steam, then to the red button by the door for emergency (!), then to the lock on the door to the real world. I'll knock on the door, she says, with ten minutes to go, any questions? Then she's gone.
Door locks. Robes off. Suits off.
We stand at the table. We look at the mud and the lotions. We look at each other and say, What did she say?
We don't know.
What are in all these tubes and bottles and what are they for?
We don't know.
They all have labels, for sure. But realize that DW and DYT are now in our birthday suits. We are both well into our reading-glass years. We are not carrying reading glasses. Do you think we can read even the name of the products on each bottle??
Did she say?, we ask each other.
Do we use these lotions before the mud?, with the mud?, before the steam?, during the steam?, after the steam? Apply them together or shower between? Apply them after this whole event and leave them on for the real world, for the Walt Disney Theatre?
We hadn't a clue.
Oh well. It was a little late to ask questions. At least we knew where the mud was going.
But then - Was it the dark mud for the face or the light mud? Must be the light for the face: there was much more of the dark.
The fun begins. Going at the bowls of dark and light mud, we smear the mud all over each other. All over. Except for in the hair. Giggling like naughty school children we are, we reading-glass children. Mud everywhere, but for the top of the head and the soles of the feet.
As I said in Rambling Part 9 or 10 - this ain't nothin like I've ever done with DW in our 22 years together! Unlike any other Disney experience.
But wait. Here's where the real fun begins.
The mud bowls are empty, we're looking like Zulu warriors, and it's time to move on to the steam room. It's time for mud to come off. Right?
I turn on the shower. I should say, I rotate the handle for the shower.
What I never told DW was my knowledge of the only complaint about this holodeck experience. Here it was - staring me in the face - two feet above my face.
No way, I thought to myself. Surely, surely, surely, this wasn't going to happen to us.
Somehow, I thought my knowledge would arm me from seeing the cause of previous complaints happen to us. You see, I had learned from you prior cruisers, you prior holodeck users, that the shower sometimes doesn't work.
I couldn't believe it was happening to us - that the shower wasn't working!! This yours truly Zulu warrior was standing frozen, stock still, looking straight up at the drops of water dribbling out the faucet. Not unlike the Maxwell coffee cup, upturned, with the one drop falling out.
DW says, "The shower doesn't work?"
I wrote earlier about anticipation. Is it destiny that the more you wait for something and the more momentous you expect this thing out to be, the more likely you are for a fall?
I just couldn't answer: No the shower doesn't work. I stood silently, head tilted all the way back, letting the drops of cold water fall upon my Zulu face.
DW asks, "What do you think we should do?"
After a few moments I look at her - this obviously female Zulu warrior standing in the middle of this Roman bath - and I look over at the locked door leading to the real world - and I try to envision my Zulu head sticking out the door, meekly crying, "Hello? Hello?", down the empty passageway -...
Not this Zulu warrior.
I rotate the shower's handle each way, all the way, several times. I stare at the Maxwell faucet overhead. Drip, drip. Cold! drip drip.
What do we do?
Stand patiently for the goddess to return? For the next forty minutes? Shivering?
I look at the red button on the wall. Yes, the emergency red button. Do I push it?
No. No, absolutely not. It probably sets off an alarm on the bridge of the ship. Mabye an alarm in Captain Henry's stateroom - and he might be sleeping. It might even set off the General Alarm of the ship!
I could picture our server Eddie leading the team to rescue us - he in helmet breaking down the door with an axe - Goddess standing nearby, serenely, hands afolded at the chest - oh heavens!, no, I could not push that red button!
"What do think we should do?" DW asks.
"Ahhh, I don't know," I reply.
I think back on what I'd read on these message boards, trying to remember what those people who'd suffered this same catastrophe did next. What did they do? Think, think.
But guess what - it occurred to me that none of them explained what they did next. If I'd done my homework and read everything!, then these seasoned cruisers had failed me!
"I don't know," I admit to DW.
I look down at all the mud all over my body. I look across the room. Leaving the shower handle all the way open, I cross the room.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Steam."
"What?"
"Steam. Might as well get warm," I say. Mud or no mud, might as well make the most of it.
We stare through the glass door into the steam room, waiting for the fog to appear. And as we watch, waiting, behind us the Maxwell shower faucet drips away. And we wait, and we wait.
"No steam?," DW says after awhile.
I wasn't going to answer that one, either.
It was getting kind of chilly, waiting for something to happen.
All in all, we were having a great time on this cruise. Grandparents were having a great time. DS - younger DS - seemed to be happy and excited. Teenage DS - if he ever said anything, I would expect he might say he was having a good time. To think that four days were already gone and only three to go.
We waited.
I pushed the steam button a few more times, you know, like on a vending machine when it won't give you what you put your money in for, and you've got nothing else to do but to keep pushing the button.
"So I guess there's no steam," DW adds.
"Well, I don't know. It takes a while to boil water. Give it a chance," I suggest.
The Rain Forest was awful nice.
DW goes over to the table. Picking up the bottles of lotion we might get a chance to try, she says, "I wonder what all these products are for."
Maybe one of them is for removing mud.
Maybe the Goddesses won't charge us, I hope.
...tbc. Steve.
