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 Travel & Outdoors | September 2005 
Mystery Afoot on High-Seas Adventure to Mexican Riviera
 Arline Bleecker - Orlando Sentinel
Passengers on an upcoming Oosterdam cruise might be just digging into their dinner when a guy at a nearby table appears to slump over dead.
Splat! He lands face down in his soup with a dagger protruding from his back.
Not what you would expect on the menu, unless you're on a murder-mystery cruise.
These entertaining, well-plotted diversions, popular in shoreside versions, have migrated to sea. When the cops and a homicide detective show up on the Holland America ship, they could cast their suspicious eyes on you.
Keith O'Leary and Margo Morrison, founders of Murder Mystery Weekend, a California-based company, will choreograph the mayhem for would-be Columbos who want to pit their wits against the plot's creators and fellow Oosterdam passengers.
During the ship's seven-day Mexican Riviera itinerary, "you won't know who's who," O'Leary says.
About a dozen actors "will show up on the cruise, checking in just like any other passengers," says Linda Wolf, CEO of Cruises Cruises Cruises, the tour operator and co-conspirator with Murder Mystery Weekend. "At the outset nobody knows who they really are."
Trying to separate the suspects from the passengers is part of the fun.
Would you, for example, know whether that lovely lady sitting next to you at the bar is a passenger or a pretender?
On days at sea, it's like living out the pages of a Sherlock Holmes tale. Only the plot's authors and the ship's security force know what's up, and they're not telling.
In fact, you're likely to find more red herrings on ship than in the sea, with clues planted everywhere from passageways to powder rooms.
Nothing is off-limits.
When a handwritten blackmail note turns up, handwriting analysis would be helpful, O'Leary suggests. With seven days for all this, cliffhangers and all, to play out, the event's dynamic "takes on a life of its own," O'Leary says.
Or death.
In fact, several "murders" will occur during the Oosterdam cruise. "At just about the time everybody thinks they have it all figured out, the prime suspect gets knocked off," he says, with tantalizing circumspection.
He also thinks the high seas are an ideal venue for these high jinks. After all, no one's exactly going anywhere. If the cruise begins like an Agatha Christie tale, it ends up more like "Spy vs. Spy." Everyone is a suspect, as passengers surreptitiously slide notes under stateroom doors or lurk behind poles at the pool.
According to an announcement by the tour operator, a script will be written specifically for the Mexican Riviera sailing, and the actors will be rehearsed for their parts in the plot.
Before the cruise concludes, participating passengers, which O'Leary expects to number in the several hundreds, will be invited to submit solutions to the whodunit. Then, as in the final scene in any Hercule Poirot plot, the detective dramatically will tie the pieces together and - ta-da! - unmask the "murderer."
If you're a clever enough sleuth to have guessed right, a prize is in the offing, says Cruises Cruises Cruises' Wolf. But what that prize will be is itself a mystery. (The organizers won't say.)
The weeklong cruise sails Jan. 14 from San Diego and calls at Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta. Fares start at $911.10 per person, double occupancy.
You must book the "Murder on the High Seas" cruise through Cruises Cruises Cruises to participate in the murder-mystery's events.
Details: 1-800-745-7545 or tickettocruise.com. |
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