Ghost Of Christmas Past: The Queen Mary

With the current inability to travel, I find myself reminiscing on my last Christmas travel adventure. Had *you know what* not happened this year, I would currently be enjoying a Christmas break in Los Angeles, like I did in 2018. It was by far one of the best Christmases I have ever had.

We spend Christmas Day on the Queen Mary in Long Beach – a ship that has been permanently docked and serves as a hotel/tourist destination. If you have seen any TV show filmed in LA have a cruise ship episode, chances are it was the Queen Mary e.g. S.W.A.T, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Castle and The Last Ship (to name a few).

You can take tours of the ship, explore on your own, stay the night and eat in the restaurants. At Christmas time, they hold a number of extra events to keep you festive. Unfortunately, the ship is temporarily closed due to the current health crisis. But I will tell you about the amazing time I had in 2018 so you can add The Queen Mary onto your Los Angeles bucket list, and if you go at Christmas time, even better!

Things To Do:

• Explore the history – there are replicas of ships and information presented as if you were in a museum that you can observe and read. It was pretty fascinating for me as I knew nothing about this ship or what it was used for. I have to be honest, I don’t remember much of it now but I did enjoy reading about it at the time.
• Take a ghost tour – there are a number of tours that you can choose to go on (or go on multiple!) but we chose the most interesting – the ghost tour! This tour takes you around the most haunted parts of the ship while a tour guide tells you stores about the people who died many years ago. It was creepy at times but all in all, not too scary. That is until after we ended the tour and found ourselves around the engine area of the ship. Around an hour earlier the tour guide had told us a story about a man, named John, who got crushed to death at door 13 (which was near the engine). He was apparently one of the ghosts that haunts the ship. Anyway, my dad, my sister and I had just existed the showing of the Polar Express (one of the Christmas activities), everyone else went one way and my dad decided to go the other way. We had to follow him and we ended up in a small room by ourselves. I can only assume it was some engine area as he was fascinated by it but it didn’t phase me what-so-ever. I stood there talking to my sister about our New Years plans (which was to go to Universal Studios, if you were wondering) when I suddenly felt a huge tug at my hair. I immediately felt uneasy, saying that I ghost just tugged my hair and that we needed to get out of there. I pushed my dad and sister around the corner to get out of there as soon as possible and what was the first thing that I saw when I turned the corner? Door 13. I still, to this day, believe that it was John who tugged my hair. All I can say is that I’m glad that was all he did!
• Get some souvenirs in the gift shop
• Take a photo in the gazebo

At Christmas, there were also some more specific activities like a 4D showing of The Polar Express (not the whole movie but a clip) where we had the smells of hot chocolate, bubbles and snow coming out at us. It was magical. They also had an ice skating rink on the deck and while I didn’t get to skate in there (I can’t remember why), it looked amazing too.

So please enjoy my photos from the Queen Mary and make sure to add it to your ‘when travel opens again’ bucket list.