A couple weeks ago, I visited the Queen Mary in Long Beach with a group of friends of my boyfriend’s friend… It was a fun, but expensive visit. Still, it was an enjoyable and interesting outing. That ship has a long and interesting history and considering how many people have died or committed suicide on it, it really must be as haunted as everyone says it is. I really did enjoy the Haunted Tour, in which they slightly exaggerate how haunted it is. It reminds me of the London Dungeon and how amusingly cheesy that is. I really do want to go back there some day.
Though this was my first time taking the tour and learning the history of the ship, I’d visited the Queen Mary for the Ink n Iron Festival that BRMC played a few years back. Most of my trips in recent years are thanks to traveling to BRMC shows, so it actually is a nice change of pace to go somewhere for reasons other than them and seeing my other BRMC fan friends.
We got there at 3 PM hoping to do the more expensive Behind the Scenes tour, but ended up going with the General Admission which we had $10 off coupons for. So we were there before and after the sun set, which is really the best time to be on a huge ship in Long Beach. The views of the sunset over Downtown Long Beach were really nice, and it was interesting going through the self-guided tour of the Queen Mary – which is more of a museum with a lot of info on the history of the ship. I took a ton of pictures, which are on my Flickr set.
This reminded me sort of a school field trip since it was a large group of mostly people me and my boyfriend were meeting for the first time, so it was also an interesting way to see how people break the ice and get to know people. Some of them went to the same school and some worked at the same place, but it was pretty diverse group over all. Dinner ended up being the most expensive part of the night because we ate at the Chowder Restaurant, and the only thing under $10 was the Clam Chowder! At least, the portions were huge for the burgers.
