Aruba today, but unfortunately, even before we got on the cruise we’d been notified that we were losing an hour in our stop in Aruba. So we were getting in at 1pm, and leaving at 6pm. Coming into port, we passed a few other cruise ships already there. The Scientology ship Freewinds, a Pullmantur ship, and a Crystal ship. As we were pulling into the spot that we were going to tie up to, I also noticed a sailboat that really was looking like it wasn’t being maintained real well. A closer look, and I realized that it was the Polynesia, which was one of Windjammers ships before they went under. 
Apparently it’s been there ever since then, and it really shows that it’s not getting the maintenance that it needs. Really kinda a shame, it was looking pretty sorry. As a side note, a couple of people that we’d met had been on a Windjammer cruise once, and it turned out that was the ship they’d been on.
Up to this point I’d never really felt like the Coral felt very crowded. It seems to manage the balance between number of people and space very well (other than the masses of unruly kids). That illusion came to a crashing halt on our arrival in Aruba. The problem with having such a short stop in Aruba and getting in at 1PM is that everyone wants off the ship immediately. They had set up a line to get off the ship than pretty much ran down the entire corridor of the ship past the casino, all the way back to the lounge at the back, looping back and running a fair distance forward too. And god forbid if you came off an elevator and didn’t look like you were immediately heading towards the back of the line, because there were people ready to lynch anyone that even looked like they might try cutting in the line. We didn’t get in the line right away since there didn’t seem like much point in standing in a line that wasn’t going anywhere, and instead stood watching on the Promenade deck waiting to see evidence of people emerging from the ship. Eventually after it looked like a fair number of people had emerged we headed for the line (which was still quite long), and eventually made it off the ship at about 1:45PM.
Our plan for the day was basically to walk our way to the beach and swim for a little while. Didn’t have a huge amount of time, but we did walk on the way there. Not the most scenic walk initially, since you walk past a large cargo terminal. Eventually we reached a point where we could turn to walk towards the ocean, but that probably wasn’t the best place to do so. There was some beach in that area, but not kept real well since it was in front of an abandoned resort, which appears to have become the haven for a lot of squatters. Wasn’t really the most comfortable area to walk through. 
Eventually we did come to a fairly nice stretch of beach though that we were able to use. Not a huge number of people around (weather was a little iffy, which probably contributed somewhat to that, since we did get a couple of light showers). The water was excellent here though, you could go out a ways and still stand.
Spent a while here, then started walking back until we’d dried off some and caught the bus back to town. Got on the ship and changed clothes, then wandered around town looking at some of the shops. All too soon it was time to head back to leave.
Tonight’s entertainment was the hypnotist Tim Triplett. This would be the third hypnotist we’ve seen on a cruise ship. I don’t know if it’s just the act starts wearing thin after a while, or it’s just that we’ve seen a declining quality of hypnotists. The first one we saw back on our first Crown Princess cruise was actually pretty good. This guy was really the least interesting of the three. Now, I’ll give him some benefit of the doubt, because a hypnotists show is really only as good as the audience members that he gets. This guy just didn’t seem to get a very susceptible collection of people (or he just wasn’t good at putting people under). But really, only a so-so show.