MEMORIAL DAY SPECIAL
In honor of Memorial Day 2018, the operators of The Queen Mary Hotel offered free admission to military service members and veterans all Memorial Day weekend long. With proper military ID or proof of service, that person could purchase up to six additional tickets at 20% off. Since I had never been and I chose to take a day off from work, I went with a friend down to visit The Grey Ghost.
THE SCORPION
Docked alongside the Queen is an old Soviet-era Foxtrot-class submarine. Unfortunately, visitors can no longer tour the Scorpion as detailed in a news article here. If you’ve ever been to the USS Pampanito in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf area (article here), it’s significantly different. Just the observable size and shape show the technological advances in the thirty year span between the two. But the Scorpion was not the reason I was in Long Beach: it was the Queen Mary.
LUXURY LINER OR CRUISE SHIP?
As we walked alongside the ship towards the ticket booth, we both laughed about whether or not they had a “Gopher” (the ship’s purser from the 1970s show The Love Boat), or a “Doc”, a “Julie” (the cruise director) or an “Isaac” (a bartender who was one of the main characters). After all, there certainly must be a difference between a luxury liner like the Queen Mary and a cruise ship like the Love Boat, right?
TICKETS AND TOURS
I purchased tickets that included two tours: a Haunted History tour (not the paranormal version) and an Historical tour (but not the WW-II specific tour they just introduced). The tours included a free 4-D movie back near the engine room (a movie I missed, by the way, because they close that area at 6:00PM). This weekend they are also showing multiple instances of the 2017 Dunkirk movie (but I didn’t see that, either). A helpful individual scanned our tickets and we were off to the fourth floor entrance.
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS WITH A THUNK
We had time before our first tour and I wanted to see the radio room. I asked a guy I thought would know: an employee with four gold stripes on his epaulets. He told me to take two rights, go up the stairs and the radio room was forward on the deck above us. Easily done. From the starboard side of the ship, with the bar to our left and the first-class nursery to our right, we turned aft. We walked by all the cut-away models of other luxury liners from the Lusitania to the Queen Mary and then turned toward port into the first entryway we encountered. This satisfied the “two rights” command.
The only stairs we saw were to our left, which bore the sign “Historical Staircase”. Historical it was. You can only ascend in single file and they don’t provide the same level of comfort and sturdiness all the other stairs do (until you go on the Haunted tour and have to descend an almost ladder-like wooden staircase). Anyway, I made it to the top of the very dark staircase and pushed open the door at the top. Thunk! The door hit a large trash dumpster and only opened about two feet wide. This, my friends, should have been my first clue something was amiss.
THE FORBIDDEN WORDS “OOPS” AND “UH-OH”
My friend and I exited the staircase through the somewhat blocked door onto a deck covered in blue tarp. In any other circumstance this would clearly indicate to any casual pedestrian that something else had gone wrong, also. But, caught up in the emotion of exploration and history, it didn’t register. The adventure had deposited us onto the deck above where we started but not quite high enough. There was another flight of stairs we needed to take to get to the deck we wanted. A quick trot up the stairs brought me face-to-face with a solid wooden barricade. Clearly, this was not the path we sought. I made the “Opps” announcement to my friend who then added the “Uh-oh” statement to our situation. The door from which we exited did not have a handle on the outside and it locked upon closing. Suddenly, it all came together.
We were on whatever deck was above the Promenade but below the Sun deck in an enclosed construction area situated between lifeboat stations 3 and 5. Blue tarps covered the deck and eight to ten foot tall braced plywood blocked our exits. The exit door had no handle and we did not want to get booted off the ship for climbing over the barricade at the top of the outdoor staircase. My friend went back to the top of the stairs and called out to some other guests for help. I called the hotel’s front desk and was put on hold. Two women came to the railing above us and said they had called security. Meanwhile, the front desk finally answered and I described our location. As the woman was telling me we were in an area closed off to the public (really?) the security guy appeared on the deck above and let us know he would get us out.
Security Guy not only got us out but subtly showed us the sign telling us not to enter. Unfortunately, because there were no lights on the Historic Stairway you can only see the sign when the door is open. Security Guy then showed us the correct path to the radio room. Considering his knee was in a brace and he limped in a manner with which I’m well accustomed, my hat’s off to him for negotiating all the stairs he had to take for our sake, let alone everyone else.
CONFRONTING THE CAP’N
This first adventure put us dangerously close to missing the rendezvous time for the Haunted tour. When we arrived at the check-in desk, the same individual who had given us the “two rights and a left” set of instructions was there. With Security Guy right behind us, I informed “Captain Jack” (or whomever he was) that his instructions had landed us in a locked construction area and Security Guy had just rescued us. He gave me a blank look and said he wasn’t aware that the route was blocked off. I think the truth is that he had probably never gone the way I interpreted his instructions but I did, in fact, complete the “two rights and a left” exactly as he had said.
THE TOURS
Take the tours. I don’t want to spoil them. Robert was our guide for the Haunted tour and Cody was our guide for the History tour. I found both tours worth my time. They have a number of tours from which to choose, by the way.
COMING AND GOING
My friend brought lunch in a cooler left in the car. If you exit the ship you can reenter the same day by presenting your entry ticket again. If you do plan a visit and want to take lunch or snacks in your vehicle, just keep your tickets handy.
RADIO ROOM FAUX PAS
Properly navigating our way to the Sun deck, we went by the communications room and the radio room. Up until this point, any of the displays had been limited to “things”; not goofy displays with mannequins or stuffed animals. Books, models, photographs, antique receiver-set radios; that type of display. When we stood outside the glass of the radio room, however, it was different. My friend even said, “Look, they have a dummy in the radio room.” Turns out it wasn’t a dummy but a real amateur radio operator who was scanning through the channels listening for chatter. I apologize here and now for my friend’s comment if you were or know that radio operator. I know his call sign but I won’t disclose it. We spoke with the operator for a few minutes and went forward to the bridge.
THE BRIDGE
Again, I don’t want to spoil it. If you can get to the bridge and the officer’s quarters, do it. Take pictures.
THE BOW
We worked our way around and made our way to the bow of the ship. From the bow looking aft, this is the view:
UNINTENDED SHENANIGANS
We decided to have a drink outside the bar at a table overlooking the entire forward section of the ship. We sat down and waited for menus or a someone from the food service staff to help us. After a brief discussion it was determined that I would get menus and let the staff know where we were. I went in and spoke with an extremely helpful individual who said I should take a seat and he would be with me in a moment. This started a series of conversations which resulted in my laughing harder than I have in years. But first…
SENSITIVITY DISCLAIMER
Ages ago when I was in the military, we used to create an Electronic Order of Battle (EOB) overlay to our maps. Units we knew were TUDs (True Unit Designators) and units we did not know were AUDs (Arbitrary Unit Designators). I kept this system of identification in my head to help me remember details about someone in a kind of mental dossier. If you were a motorcycle enthusiast, I might call you Pauly (like Paul Teutul Sr. from American Chopper). If you were a mechanic and a bit scatterbrained, I might call you Iggy (like the character Jim Ingatowski from the 1970s TV Show Taxi). In my mind, I have assigned many, many people AUDs to help me associate them with something. Believe me, it’s not a derogatory thing, it’s a mechanism that helps me remember characteristics about someone that might be important later. Calling a tall guy “shorty” or a big guy “slim” is entirely different. I hope that makes sense. Anyway,…
PRETZELS AND BRIE
I returned to the table and said I had spoken with Isaac and we would have our menus soon. Who is Isaac? The lovable bartender from The Love Boat, of course! I did not realize at the time that my friend had already ejected the conversation we had about that show and had moved on to other things. We ordered drinks and an appetizer and took in the view of Long Beach. “Isaac” came back a couple of times to check on us which was very nice. On his last visit I told him we were ready to close the check. He validated my parking pass and returned the bill with my credit card for signature. Rather than leave it on the table, I asked my friend if we should just give it to “Isaac,” which became the plan.
WHO?
As we reentered the bar, I looked for “Isaac.” I did not see him anywhere. My friend suggested we give the packet to the female employee by the door, which I did. Unfortunately, I should have immediately engaged my friend in some type of conversation to divert her attention for the next two nanoseconds. My intent was to hand the paperwork off and walk away. Everything would have been clean and done. But my friend, trying to be helpful, said, “That’s for Isaac.” I freaking lost it. Did I mention one of the characteristics shared by our bar staff waiter and the actor from The Love Boat is they were both black? No? I honestly, honestly, honestly, referred to our guy as “Isaac” because he was a bar tender on the ship and my friend and I had been talking about The Love Boat earlier in the day. It was not because of the color of his skin; it was the job he performed. But when my friend said, “That’s for Isaac” and the waitress said, “Who?” I could not control it any more.
FIGHTING FOR AIR
I bolted around the corner from the bar and started laughing hysterically. When I calmed down enough, we went to see the continuous-loop 20 minute film about the ship. Every so often I would hear the woman in my head ask, “Who?” and I would have to hold back my immature giggles all over again. I explained the “Isaac from the Love Boat” rationale to my friend who didn’t think it was nearly as funny as I did. Then again, I wasn’t the one who said, “This is for Isaac,” either.
LEAVING
At this point we had been at the Queen Mary for over eight hours. It was time to go. We assumed the validation received at the bar would be good for three hours. You automatically receive 30 minutes free so I was looking at paying for about five hours worth of parking. I don’t know if it was my good looks and charm or the yellow sticker Isaac put on the parking pass, but we didn’t have to pay anything for parking. Which brings up an important point. If you visit the Queen Mary, bring your parking pass with you. The stores, restaurants and bars will validate but you have to have the ticket with you.
That’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed the story. It’s embarrassing but completely true.