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montydollcrew2 · 9 days ago

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SD Owner’s Tokyo Bay Cruise 2024

Time for me to write another ‘experience’ post, about a month later, because it’s something I like to do. So back when I posted about my Omukae Ceremony last year, I said (on Instagram) that I’d always wanted to go on one of the Volks cruises. I had no way of knowing that they would announce another one that December for the following year!

This post is pretty in-depth so it’s very long and rambly and more for my own memories than anything else, but I hope it’s a little informative to anyone who is vaguely interested in the cruises.

Some background info, the Volks Cruises (or Super Dollfie Owners Appreciation Fair in Tokyo (or Kobe) Bay Cruise have happened at irregular intervals from (I think?)2005, to 2017, so it’s been a good while since the last one. They are mini events taking place on a short bay cruise, and going on them allows you to order certain dolls related to Oath of Silver Coin, Volks original line about pirates and the navy that gets lore added to it with every release.

Oath is one of their most popular lines and has been going for a while (the 2024 cruise was actually announced as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations). It’s cool to look back on the history of the line and see the change in the house style! I won’t say much about the lore other than the fact that Captain Cecile is the main character of the pirate side (and also my favourite Volks sculpt family) and Williams is the main character of the navy side and their relationship seems to be these first and last Kate Beaton strips. There’s fanficfion. I own a printed copy of some.

Anyway the 2024 cruise just happened to be around the time I was planning to be in Japan anyway for Magical Mirai Osaka, so entering the lottery for it was a no-brainer. Since the boat has limited capacity, entry is lottery-based. I genuinely didn’t expect to win - it’s the first cruise in a long time, the two limited dolls are particularly stunning (a 2024 version of Reisner, Captain Cecile’s obsessive first-mate, and new character Abelia, the navigator), there was only one scheduled cruise for sunset whereas previous years had 2 (day and sunset), so I figured competition was going to be very steep, but then I got a nice surprise in my inbox in late August.

Fast forward to the day of the cruise (3rd of November)

I attended a pre-cruise lunch with a small handful of other participants organised by usagicamera/usakame, a mutual of mine (and also the person who wrote and made printed copies of the gay pirate fan fiction), and since we were all kinda nervous it was a nice icebreaker. After that we went to the waiting area at Hinode pier. Here’s Cygnus waiting with usakame’s Captain Cecile in a maid dress and Teddy’s(another lunch attender I met that day) Elizabeth (Williams’s younger sister.), unintentionally looking like two rich siblings and their maid.

After some amount of time checkin began. They gave the GL (global) members a separate checkin line to make things smoother. I think besides me there might have been around 15-20 GL members present, but it was hard to tell because people were arriving all the time, and I was near the front of the queue so couldn’t see who joined after I’d checked in. We received a clear pouch on lanyard that contained a map of the boat, a numbered ticket, a voting slip for the best dressed contest and another ticket that told us which floor (of 3) we were assigned.

Because of the limited space on board, we were advised not to bring too much luggage onto the boat, so there was a cloak room for that reason. It also meant most people checked in their bulky doll bags and carried their dolls in their arms while they waited, and it was fun sitting and waiting while looking around at all the dolls suddenly appearing. (most of which were Oath related, although that wasn’t compulsory).

This was particularly funny because the waiting room was actually divided in half down the middle, with the other chairs for a different cruise that was around the same time - a wedding cruise, to be precise. So half of the room is people in evening dress and tuxedos, looking over in bewildered confusion at all the people - half of which were dressed as pirates, lolita or lolita pirates - carrying giant dolls.

While waiting to board a lot of people were using the photo-op space for the ship, including me. (Although our was a Symphony too the ship directly behind this was the wedding cruise, not ours)

When it was time to board, our assigned groups went in one at a time, starting with the first floor which had included me. Walking towards the ship, I spotted Volks mascot Komame (pirate edition) and Reisner hanging over the deck to welcome us aboard. I completely non-ironically love the Oath kigu cosplay that appears at these events, and the Reisner was really hamming it up, waving and gesturing for people to hurry up and board. (He also did finger guns at one point, but I wasn’t able to get a pic)

We walked past a string quartet performance as we entered the ship, which felt very fancy. I don’t have a photo of them but you can see them in the official event report. I’m not sure if it was something Volks organised specifically or just something that comes with all the Symphony cruises.

We were guided into the area with the main stage, which is also where the buffet was. I later learned that the 2nd and 3rd floor buffets had a giant screen that showed what was happening on the 1st floor stage, so I’m kinda glad I got to see the actual stage. Once everyone was on the ship, there was a welcome and a toast as we set sail - and then we were all allowed to move freely around the boat.

Me and my friends went straight to the Oneoff display (photos not allowed but they’re also on the official report), and it’s probably a good thing we did, because it meant we were among the first in and this didn’t have to spend a huge chunk of the cruise waiting in line like a lot of others did. They would only let a few in at a time and handed us a clipboard and pen with the entry form. After looking at the models in filling in the form, we put it in the treasure chest shaped entry box. On one hand, it was a good method to stop the area becoming too crowded, but the drawback was that it took longer and I later saw that the line was so long it snaked down the stairs and into another room.

The box was out on deck, so after coming out of the oneoff room I got to enjoy the deck with my friends right as sunset was beginning. There were some convenient places (drink rests?) to sit dolls on the railings which I was thankful for because I had so many visions of dolls falling overboard lol.

I was on deck for a while because it was fun, and because it was such a clear day you could even see Mt Fuji in the distance.

I then went downstairs a floor to see what the photo spaces were like, figuring I probably wouldn’t use them as there might be too many people, and I could see a huuuge line…but it turned out to be for the one-offs, and there weren’t too many people at the photo area at all. It was cool because they had combined the photo area with the Oath dolls display, so you could actually pose your own dolls amongst them.

Here is Cygnus standing awkwardly between Captain Cecile and Abelia. As for Reisner, he was on the other side of the display by himself. It was my first time seeing him in person. Actually now that I think of it, it was probably okay to sit a doll next to him on the seat, so I wish I’d done that. But there will be plenty of time for photos of Cygnus with a Reisner later.

I realised i hadn’t touched the buffet at all, so went to get my moneys worth at the closest one, which is when I saw the big screen - it was currently showing the tail end of the Best Dresser contest happening on the 1st floor which I had completely forgotten about until then. It seemed like the people who had registered for it were on stage explaining their outfits, but I’d missed most of it and was also too preoccupied with eating, so didn’t end up using my voting slip.

After wandering a little more and meeting some friends here and there, I went back to the first floor for the big treasure raffle, which is what the ticket we were given when we checked in was for. There were a lot of prizes up for grabs and the winners were decided by the numbers randomly drawn out of the treasure chest. There were small accessories, doll outfits and a bunch of special Tenshi (the tiniest Volks dolls only ever available as raffle/bingo prizes.) As usual, I didn’t win anything (I have never won anything at Dolpa Bingos either), but it was still fun seeing how excited the winners got.

The boat was coming back to the dock now, so it was time for the closing speech - which included a surprise announcement for the next Volks release. Everyone did the countdown together and then the Volks staff lifted up the giant placards to reveal the new Macha and Yumepi, a collab with Baby, the Stars Shine Bright! The dolls look spectacular and it’s been many years since a Baby collab, so there was a lot of hype and cheering. It was exciting to be among the first people anywhere to see these new dolls! And one lucky person won a Dolpa priority pass.

It was time to leave now, so everyone had to return to their assigned floors and wait until their group could leave, in reverse order to how we got on, so I was in the last group to leave. Volks staff on the docks were handing out goody bags for us as we left - they contained the newest issue of Volks News - 2 days before it would come out officially for everyone else, a letter of thanks from the Shigetas (the Volks owners, who unfortunately couldn’t come on the cruise this time) and some cute little trinkets in a $ bag.

I guess I’ll let my Reisner play with them later (Even though I’d paid for him at the time I won my cruise ticket, the dolls themselves weren’t sent until nearly a month after the cruise, and mine was stuck in postal limbo for a bit and only got to me the other day). Some people were disappointed they couldn’t collect and take home the dolls from the cruise but I’m personally glad I didn’t have to manage to get another giant doll back with me, seeing as Cygnus was taking up a lot of luggage space as it was.)

So that was my first Volks cruise! I had no idea what to expect, but I had a ton of fun. The Volks staff were fantastic / they brought a lot of fun energy and were often mingling with the crowd - I even got to briefly talk to Ciera (one of the faceup artists). I got to hang out with some of my friends from Instagram and take photos with their dolls, and also meet some (although unfortunately not all) of my Twitter mutuals. The food was pretty good too, even if I didn’t get to eat that much of it.

But, there were some drawbacks that I hope will be addressed on future events. Mainly, it was very short - only about 2 hours - and that seemed to pass extremely quickly. With the amount of things to do, I really wish it had been at the very least an extra hour long. And I was one of the lucky people who didn’t spend most of it on the oneoff queue! Now, I didn’t win a oneoff, although it doesn’t bother me much as I didn’t expect to - I just knew I’d regret it if I never entered and I will take any chance at a Captain Cecile for RRP that I can. But I also was only in the line very briefly. I imagine it must be extremely frustrating to have been the people stuck in line for ages and ages, sacrificing so much of the time they could have spent enjoying the cruise, only to win nothing anyway - with only 10 one-offs total it was way more likely than not that you wouldn’t win.

The length also affected the Best Dresser contest - I was kinda interested in it, but like I said, was too preoccupied with trying to do other stuff that I missed pretty much all of it and so didn’t get to vote, and I imagine that lots of other people didn’t either (like the ones stuck in the oneoff line or out on deck). Some of the people who watched the whole contest may also have missed out on the oneoff line.

Otherwise, I noticed that Volks did multilingual announcements - Japanese, Chinese and Korean, but not English. I’m not sure how many English-only GL members were even present so I can’t say whether it was truly necessary, but it may have been confronting for someone if they didn’t know what was going on during some of the announcements. (However during the raffle when numbers were being called out they did call them out on English too, which they also do during Bingo at Dolpa)

But something I was a little more personally disappointed in was that I genuinely was looking forward to seeing the silly kigurumi cosplayers on board at some point, but Reisner was only visible when we boarded (and only from a distance). Looking at the event reports of past cruises, the cosplayers mingled with the participants and had photos taken with them. But this also could have been a time constraint thing.

The last cruise also had a giant cake with Williams and his midshipman Cain on it that looked like a wedding cake, so I was really hoping for something like that, but I didn’t see any large cake like that (there were lots of smaller cakes though, and they were very tasty - as well as a mystery plate of macarons somewhere that I only know about from other people’s photos - but I really wanted a pirate wedding cake 😔)

The time constraints would have made more sense had there been two cruises in the day like in the past, but this time only had the one, so there didn’t seem to be much reason to keep it so short (unless of course the time restriction was imposed by Symphony Cruises, which is likely)

But in all, it made for a great and unique memory. If I’m ever lucky enough for them to do another one during a time that works for me I’d gladly do it again.

#super dollfie #event report #bjd #ball jointed doll

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