Halloween Pumpkin Display

Our 34-day pacific crossing on Holland America Noordam from San Diego to Sydney didn’t originally include Halloween. Not because of the time of year, but because of the timing of crossing the international dateline.  This cruise actually crossed the international dateline 3 times – going to Kiritimati, going back from Kiritimati and then later for real. That’s because the dateline doesn’t run straight down the globe, but rather takes a jog around Kiritimati. The over and back had already been completed about a week prior to Halloween so at that point we were crossing the dateline for good.

international dateline goes around Kiritimati

The schedule on the booking pre-cruise gave October 30 as a sea day, with the next day November 1 and no October 31^st. Once we were onboard they passed out a new schedule for all of the dateline crossings which changed the original days skipped and added for the first crossings as well as dropping the 30^th and adding Halloween. It was a sea day so it really didn’t matter what date they called it and since the ship crossed the dateline during that day it could go either way. I guess they decided they’d rather have Halloween than skip it. All of the passengers were happy about that. It’s kind of a bummer to miss a holiday even if you didn’t have any plans to celebrate.

a small sample of our Halloween ducks

Halloween on a cruise ship isn’t ever a huge affair, but they always do something for it. We had our own Halloween bit in that some of the cruise ducks we brought to hide were Halloween themed ducks. Little witch ducks, vampire ducks, cat ducks, pumpkin ducks, and that sort of thing, some of which glowed in the dark. We also found some Happy Halloween duck tags to go with the Halloween ducks. Instead of our initials where the tags say cruiser on the Frankenstein and vampire ducks, I wrote Frankenduck or Duckenstein and Duckula. I did not think of anything Halloweeny to say on the other ducks though.

Halloween Spider with a Halloween duck tag

I also had a few spiders that we bought at one of our port stops in Hawaii to hide as well as ducks for Halloween.

The Lido buffet had different Halloween characters on light fixtures

Starting early Halloween morning the Lido buffet was all decorated up for Halloween with carved pumpkins and decorations all around. One of the decorations they put over a light fixture looked like a witch doctor so I hid a little witch duck under it early in the morning, which was still there at lunchtime. If no passenger ever found it then whoever takes down the decorations got it. Some of the crew collect ducks too and it always makes their day when they find one so it made someone happy whether passenger or crew.

witch duck hiding in a witch doctor

The first onboard Halloween activity was a pumpkin carving demonstration on the pool deck, but we didn’t go figuring it would be a madhouse crowd and hard to see anything anyway, plus there was a shark lecture from the naturalist onboard at the same time that we wanted to go to.

Halloween cake at the Lido buffet

At lunchtime there were a couple fancy Halloween cakes in the dessert area at the buffet. People had already cut into them before I got there even though lunch had barely started so I only got photos of partial cakes. One was about half gone and the other just had a corner missing.

pumpkin display at one dining room

At dinner there were pumpkin carving displays in front of the dining rooms, a different one at each of the two levels. They did not have a special Halloween dessert like ships sometimes do.

pumpkin display at the other dining room

I did not hear anything about having the kids trick-or-treat to the ships shops as has been done on other ships sometimes, but there were only 5 kids onboard so if they did that sort of thing they may have just sent them invitations directly rather than announcing it to everyone.

bird witch on our cabin door

A lot of people put Halloween decorations on their cabin doors. We had a witch bird that we bought at Target at one of the port stops in Hawaii earlier in the cruise. It was pretty small compared to what some of the other people had on their doors.

Halloween decorations on 3 different cabin doors

The last activity for the day was a Halloween party and costume contest, which we also didn’t go to. It was at a relatively small venue so they must not have expected too many people. We did see some people wandering around in costumes during the day and wearing them at dinner so some people brought them in spite of the original schedule not including Halloween. Or they bought them at one of the previous ports. The next day a door to a cabin down the hall from ours had certificates for the best costume hanging on the door under their tiny Halloween decorations so they obviously dressed up and attended the party.

another decorated light at the Lido Buffet

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