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1    Introduction & at-sea days
2    Lahaina
3    Nawiliwili
4    Honolulu
5    Kona
6    Hilo
7    Dining
8    Entertainment, days at-sea, Ensenada, & home
 
 

Entertainment

During the afternoon and evening hours there was usually music in the atrium.  There was a string quartet, a couple of pianists, and a classical guitar player.  It always provided a very relaxing background.
 

There was often a string quartet playing in the evening in the atrium.
	There was a pianist playing about as often.

The shows on the ship were excellent.  There were 4 production shows featuring the cast of 13 dancers and 4 singers.  Of course the dancers could sing and the singers could dance.  There was a show called "Piano Man" featuring numbers from Billy Joel, Neil Sedaka, Barry Manilow, and others.  Another show was "Undercover" which was based on the music from many of the favorite spy shows.  A third was "Let's Dance" or "Dance with Me" (or something similar).  As I said, I did not take notes, and we threw away all the daily "Princess Patter" bulletins.
 

Here are pictures taken from 3 of the 4 full production shows.  They were all very well done and quite enjoyable!.  (I didn't shoot any pictures of the first show we saw.)

Some of the other shows we attended are highlighted below:
 

This young lady has Celene Dion's speaking voice, singing voice, and mannerisms down pat.  If you listened to her with your eyes shut, you would have a hard time realizing was not Celene herself.  In real life she has a strong British accent.

Seamus Earley has an excellent singing voice and put on a great show. When she first came out on stage she asked how many people expected to see an Irish man instead of a lady.  She said her folks just wanted a child named Seamus and didn't care if it was a boy or a girl.

Bayone Bacon put on a great show with a combination of comedy and singing.  He sang straight numbers and he imitated several other singers, and he was funny.  We thoroughly enjoyed his performance.

Alexander, a magician (Illusionist) put on a show early in the cruise which we missed, but then at a later show he and Bayone Bacon shared a performance.

Willie Tyler and Lestor are a ventriloquism act (Lestor is the wooden one).  They put on a very entertaining act. Before they came on stage, they showed a brief video clip of them appearing on the David Letterman show, the Flip Wilson Show, and Laugh-in.  They have been around for a long time and have been performing continuously.

.	When we were in Honolulu, we had a dance troup of young Hawaiians doing various Hawaiin songs and dances.  As we were in port until 11:00 PM they were able to come aboard just for the performance.  At every other stop, we left port before the evening show.

We also attended the performance of Tim Triplett, a hypnotist in one of the lounges.  It was a fantastic show!  He hypnotized most of about 15 volunteers.  He sent several back to their seats when they did not go under properly.  There was one lady in the audience who was hypnotized as he put the volunteers under.  She fell off her seat.  The hypnotist went into the audience to make sure she was OK, and while there told her that whenever she heard the phrase "New Car!" she would think she just won a new car and run onto the stage.  When she did that, he brought her out and asked her what she was doing there.  She replied that she had no idea, and she didn't want to be there.  He did this several times.

He told another girl on stage that she was a shoe burglar, and was to sneakily steal the shoes from the other volunteers, then hide them under her blouse.  She would slowly crawl up to a volunteer and remove his shoes, then slip them under her blouse.  When she had no more room there, she started hiding them behind the chairs.

Another man was told that he was the security guard, and that there were people in the audience trying to disrupt the performance.  When called, he came out to the audience and sternly told us that there was a show going on and that we should be quiet and not disturb them.  When told, he returned to his chair and blew his whistle.  This put him under until again called.

It was an excellent show, and truly amazing.
 

Tim Triplett is a remarkable hypnotist.  We really enjoyed the show! The following day he presented a seminar on the facts and techniques of hypnotism where he explained the basics of hypnotism.  You cannot be "stuck" under hypnosis,  you cannot be made to do anything against your will, and  you are always aware of things around you.  If an emergency were to arise, you would immediately come out and be fully capable of dealing with it.

Groove Line is a jazz group which performed almost every night in one of the lounges.  We saw them briefly several times.

One afternoon, near the end of the cruise, Staff Captain Michele Tuvo (2nd in command behind Captain Tony Yeomans) gave a talk on the operation of the ship.  This was very informative and I found it quite interesting. Here he is discussing the power flow from the generators to the propulsion system and to all the lights and appliances aboard.

After the main show near the end of our cruise, there was a crew talent show.  This was very good and ended with a hilarious and somewhat bawdy skit called "If I were not upon the sea".

The final night, there was a passenger talent show which we did not attend.  There was also a champagne fountain and party which was too late for us the night before our early departure in the morning.
 
 

Hawaii Bob

A real highlight of the trip was a daily talk by "Hawaii Bob".  Dr. Bob Basso is an extremely interesting speaker with a marvelous background.  As a youngster he landed the roll of the young boy in the broadway play "South Pacific" as Ezio Pinza's son.  He played this part until one day his "Brooklyn Mama" came backstage and found him sitting next to some dancers who were nude in the process of changing costumes.  He said "It's OK Mama, we are all actors!"  She marched him out of the theater in mid play.

He was "Brooklyn Bob" on the local radio station doing sports and news shows. 

He was an award winning news director for NBC.

He was in TV and movies playing with actors such as John Wayne and Jack Lord of Hawaii 5-0. 

He was special envoy to John F. Kennedy. 

He has written 7 books and is a 5 time winner of the "The Most Colorful Speaker in America" award.

He currently is a motivational speaker, giving about 200 presentations a year.  He does 2 to 3 cruises a year.  He lives in Hawaii in a treehouse he built and is an expert on Hawaii and its history.

Before we reached Hawaii, he talked about the various areas we would be seeing.  He gave advice on where to go to shop, how to get tours, and other travel hints in general.  He was always very funny, entertaining, and informative.

After Hawaii, he gave a presentation on new facts discovered about Pearl Harbor from some 300,000 just released documents, which he says conclusively prove that FDR had no prior knowledge or complicity in the attack.  He finished his series talking about his background and all his brushes with famous people and world leaders.  After every talk, he would go outside the theater to in front of one of the lounges and talk one-on-one with the crowd that would form there.  He would often be there for about an hour.

One morning I attended a backstage tour.  We got to see the dressing rooms, the costume storage, and some of the backstage technical features.  I believe they followed this up with a discussion of the lighting and sound systems, but I had a conflict and had to leave after the physical tour.
 

This part of the backstage tour showed us the wings.

We also attended a couple of talks by a historian who knew his facts very well, but just was not the speaker Hawaii Bob was.  We heard his presentations on the big island of Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, and the Jimmy Doolittle attack on Japan.
 

Days at sea to Ensenada and Home

After the very exciting and tiring events on the islands of Hawaii, the trip homeward was quite relaxing.  We continued with the excellent daytime presentations, the food, and the evening entertainment, but did have time to relax also.

The weather was not as good.  Much of the trip back was overcast with gale force winds (37 knots) and rough seas (7 1/2 to 12 feet swells). The ship rolled and pitched more than before, but what surprised me was the abrubtness of some of the jolts and the "bangs" the water made against the hull.  I thought a ship as heavey as this would filter out the sharp jolts better.  While conditions were worse, I did not think it was that bad.  I still banged into the walls trying to walk down narrow passages.

After our 4 days crossing the 2500 miles of sea we docked at Ensenada.  Here we disembarked and rode a bus into the center of town for a couple of hours.  We walked up and down the main street looking into the various shops, then rode the bus back to the ship.  In a building on the dock were a number of shops with a variety of items for sale.  These ranged from knockoff Rolex watches for $20 to all types of souveniers, food items, and jewelry.  There was even a small pharmacy there.
 

As we docked at Ensenada, we could see this huge Mexican flag located between the harbor and the city.
	We spent about an hour and a half walking around town.  Here are a couple of strolling musicians.

On Monday, March 17 we docked in Los Angeles for our final disembarkation.  We had signed up for the "Walk Off" program where we handle our own baggage off the ship.  As we had no airline connections, this worked well for us.  We were assigned a 7:15 time to the customs area, and 7:30 to leave the ship.  We got up at 5:30, packed the final items we could not pack the night before and went to breakfast, leaving our luggage in the room.  After breakfast we spent about 2 minutes with customs getting the cards we filled out stamped.  We then went back up to our room, took out our luggage, did a final scan of the cabin and headed to the elevators.  After watching about 7 full elevators stop, we finally found one had  room in it and we went down to deck 6.  We waited there for about 15 minutes until they called our group "Walk 2", the second walk-off group.  We rolled our baggage down the gangplank, waited for the parking lot shuttle bus,  finally caught it, and were driven to the parking lot where our car was.  We were driving out of the port parking lot by 8:15.

This cruise was a wonderful experience!  I could get used to cruising very easily!

Thanks for taking this cruise with us.  I hope some of our enjoyment showed through and allowed you to share it.

Dick and Rosemarie