Honolulu Blue

Well, well. Another day, another music themed cruise for me to look at. The Monsters of Rock Cruise will be sailing March 10-15, 2025 on the Norwegian Joy. This is a bigger ships than most charters on Norwegian, which favor the Pearl or Gem these days. It will head to Great Stirrup Cay, NCL's private island; and Nassau for an overnight visit. The initial lineup features 27 acts, including LA Guns (who were on the TEC '23 and I didn't see) and Stephen Pearcy, from the TEC that sailed earlier this year, whom I did not miss: You guys know I love me some RATT action, but the others I either don't know or don't impress me. And it's expensive - they're charging as much for me for 5 days as The 80s Cruise is charging for 7. So it looks like this one is a pass. ☹️

I'm in receipt of Jazz Cruises' latest biweekly newsletter Jazz Notes. They had a lot of little details about their upcoming cruises and jazz show in St. Louis. Here are the ones that were of most interest to this amateur jazzer: The Jazz Cruise is over 86% reserved Botti At Sea is 65% reserved Journey of Jazz is nearly 65% reserved As for the Smooth Jazz cruise story, I'll quote Mr. Lazaroff directly (emphasis mine): Both sailings of The Smooth Jazz Cruise ’25 are fully reserved and have been since February. The current Waitlist has nearly 2,500 names. Realistically, joining the Waitlist at this time will not result in a stateroom for ’25. It will, however, move you up the ladder for ’26. There will be a webinar for Botti At Sea that will cover what's going on with this cruise in detail that will be scheduled for some time around June 1 (250 days before the cruise). On the Journey of Jazz Cruise, there will be a live performance at the SFJAZZ Center on Tuesday, September 15 with Ron Carter and his quartet (Renee Rosnes, Jimmy Greene, and Payton Crossley). The next day there will be another performance at the SFJAZZ Center by the SFJAZZ Collective. I'll quote Mr. Lazaroff to give the highlights of that lineup (emphasis mine again): The 2024/2025 edition that will perform for our guests features Michael Rodriguez (trumpet), David Sanchez (saxophone), Chris Potter (saxophone), Warren Wolf (vibraphone), Ed Simon (piano), Matt Brewer (bass) and Kendrick Scott (drums), all of whom have sailed on a past edition of The Jazz Cruise. There was no mention of an additional charge for either of these concerts for passengers on this cruise There will be an "exciting jazz excursion in Victoria on Saturday, September 13" with details TBA. This implies to me that it will be "optional" and "extra cost", but as an outsider, I can't confirm this. Well, I suppose I could, but my interest level isn't that high.

About being 70+ and asked to serve on a jury, I'm not that age, but IIRC, in my county in Michigan I think they have all the options: They can opt out of the jury pool entirely They can get out of the current summons but stay in the pool for future summons They can serve if they previously haven't opted out

Yeah, I know about the OSC and its two sailings. I liked those lineups enough to consider them, at least briefly. I wonder if they'll split this cruise. Thanks for the schedule flyer! I note that they don't use Studio B as a performance venue at all. That's interesting. Also interesting is the fact that it's all dance-dance-dance-party-party-party and no scheduled Q&As or formal meet and greets/autograph sessions. I can live with that.

When I did variations of this route on Carnival, we always left from OSJ. I'd prefer that, since the views from there at night are nicer.

Thanks for sharing this. It's nice to know that Carnival Corporation is finally returning to San Juan. My opinion is that any route from there is one of the best Caribbean cruises anyone can take. I'll certainly consider these, perhaps as a B2B. The devil is in the details. P.S. One nice thing about leaving from SJ is that they often have late departures. I'll have to look to see if Princess follows this.

I started a roll call for the 2025 edition of the Super Legends Cruise that I just booked.

I have a similar story on one of my cruises from some years ago that wasn't on either Celebrity or Royal. We made haste to our disembarkation port, which happened to be the nearest large port.

@JamieLogical: Thank you for your detailed summary of yesterday. I found it especially interesting. I'm sorry Princess screwed up your allocation of drinks. We're discussing the drink limit on Princess in another thread and failed to note this disadvantage of it.

For me, I'd prioritize it this way: "Mandatory" gratuities, if not already prepaid The casino Any interesting excursions that I haven't prepurchased Souvenirs from the gift shop Specialty dining that interests me

Thank you for your comments and thanks for your support. I'll have to check out the artists you mentioned. There's lots of time until the cruise and I suppose I can spare an hour or two in the name of entertainment. I wish this cruise was twice as long with twice as much talent while not costing twice as much. But it is what it is. Let me know if you make it onboard. It's always fun to be with people you kind of know. 😀

I should have taken the advice of another Jody Watley song - "Learn to Say No". But I tinkered with the Super Legends Cruise site, signed up for an account, looked for cabins near the library (where I ended up on TEC 2023), booked one, paid the $50 deposit, and set myself up for $160 payments for the next 12 months. So, I guess I signed up for another music themed cruise, my fourth in 2025. I hope Jody Watley is in really good form. 🙏 P.S. I forgot to mention that she was supposed to be part of TEC '23 but canceled out on us for unknown reasons.

I got e-mail notification of the Super Legends Cruise in September 12-15, 2025. It's on Navigator OTS. I'm familiar with that ship thanks to last year's 80s Cruise. I liked it better than the Mariner. The timing is all right - it's well away from my other cruises, though I don't like that it's during prime hurricane season. Yes it's short, and it's VERY expensive, but the lineup is interesting: I like what I've heard of the Isley Brothers and would look forward to hearing from them again. Sheila E. will be on next year's TEC, so this would be a double down. Not too risky, since I expect her to be quite good. Tavares will be on next year's UDC. They should be all right, worth my time to while away an hour by the pool with. Heatwave was on the last UDC, but I missed them. They have two killer songs that I'd look forward to hearing. But the key performer here is Jody Watley. I really liked her back in the day. If she's still got "it", then she could top Sheena from the top of my charts. Anyway, El Lay is a long way to travel for just three days, and I don't much care for the terminal in San Pedro. And the itinerary is just 8 hours in Ensenada. The per day cost in even the most basic cabin would be the most of any cruise I've had or booked. But I keep hearing Jody singing to me, "You turned your back on me when I needed you most of all" (my favorite song from her, BTW). It remains to be seen whether I resist her siren's call. Stay tuned.

We covered some of this territory in the post below. Promotions are a big reward - perhaps the biggest, IMHO. I remain in shock at how forcefully and swiftly Celebrity takes action over a few kind words.

Thanks for noting this. I've seen the same.

Thanks for the reply. Celebrity moves fast! I'll make a note of this. You never know when it might come in handy.

This is also very interesting. How long did it take from mention to promotion? If it was during the same cruise, this would be the height of mixed emotions for me, assuming I wasn't in AQ. It's also telling that Celebrity thinks that moving to the AQ is a promotion, and at least some moves there are based on merit.

Thank you for the rest of the story! 🙂

Thank you for your insight as usual. I highlighted this portion because I think it's especially relevant to the OP's question and some of my thoughts on this matter.

Thanks for sharing this. Was this onboard a cruise? I've never proactively spoken to management onboard any ship about an outstanding employee. I've relied on surveys for this. Perhaps I should start? Two lessons that I get from your story: 1) One person can make a BIG difference in someone's life 2) Sometimes greatness isn't obvious; sometimes it needs to be pointed out by someone who notices and cares.

Actually I think their limit is meant mostly to send signals to two groups of people. To law enforcement, judicial, and governmental authorities, it says, "see, we TRY to limit our passengers' drinking to reasonable levels." To those who regularly imbibe more than the limit per day, it says, "You're potentially more trouble than you're worth. You should probably pick another cruise line." Whether Carnival Corp accomplishes their missions is a discussion for another place and time. JMHO. I'm out. Please continue your discussion. 👍

I got a couple of notes with my e-mails from ECP this afternoon. This coming TEC is 85% full. Pretty good, but Star Trek is at 97%. 😮 Also, next year's Rock Legends Cruise just changed their port stop to CocoCay. They were scheduled in Labadee. 😵, so they made the obvious call there. TEC is still scheduled to head for Haiti as one of their three stops. When will they make the change? Who knows??

The 80s Cruise released the highlight video of their cruise a few weeks ago. The jump cuts from video to video were mostly very fast, so I can't be absolutely sure that they didn't sneak me in there. But I didn't get a confirmed sighting of me. There were a couple of close calls. There was a closeup of Stephen Pearcy signing a copy of his autobiography. But it wasn't my book - the ink color was different. And during Sheena's concert, the camera was behind me, and I can almost tell where I was standing with camera in hand... but it was dark, and I didn't see enough details to confirm my presence. Oh, and former VJs Mark, Julie, and Alan did a little speech about next year's cruise. I think it was during the late concert, because I don't remember it and I didn't see myself. It's about 4 minutes long. Have fun!

A few notes from around the Net: Both Rock and Romance and Flower Power have sold out. R&R did it early this month, while FP took a little longer and sold out about a week ago. I hope George got his back to back suites if he wanted them. I got an announcement that Summer of 99 is on for next year. Creed will host again. No other performers were announced at this time. It will go April 9-13 and head from Miami to Nassau and back on the Norwegian Gem. It's about $2500 for a solo interior cabin, and I can take another $100 off if I'm willing to pay in full. Despite all this, I was intrigued enough to sign up for the pre sale. I'll get a time to book on or about May 27. We'll see what happens. Soul Train 2.0 keeps adding performers. It sounds like it's going to go.

I'm the complete opposite - I like the Millennium and Summit, which are both in the same class. I haven't sailed on any other Celebrity ships, but I like them well enough. On the other hand, I've done two Royal class ships and the Ruby. I liked the bigger, newer Princess ships better. I got half off on Internet on Princess on my third cruise. I value that much more highly than a bag of laundry, which I ordinarily don't do on cruises of 7 days or less. It's all about priorities.