Dottie Drake, Cruise Director

[Santa Fe L&L]

We totally agree with you regarding Tom Drake. We don't find hacks insulting Walmart and Post Office employees funny....we find them nasty and mean spirited...we also walked out of his show.

 

Isn't it interesting how opinions differ? My wife and I LOVE both Dottie and Tom. We think she is hands down the best cruise director we've ever sailed with. And Tom....he finds humor in places where most of us wouldn't look for it. We really enjoy his shows! Again, everyone has their opinion but ours is that they are tops!!

 

Larry & Linda

[hondorner]

Tom's "shtick" is looking over the passenger list for unusual home locations, then doing ad lib comedy about those places -- usually starting something like, "Anybody from such-and-such?" I find him really funny, and never miss his show. But then, I'm a hick from Okeechobee who has no pretenses.

 

In fact, Betsy and I were the target one evening, as soon as he saw "Okeechobee, Florida" on the guest list. It's a real small, real rural town with more than it's share of rednecks, and he nailed it with his comments. I was flabbergasted that he knew so much about the small cow-town (more cows than people, by almost 10 to 1) characters. After the show, I asked him about it -- turns out that when he was young, he was the opening act in what was one of the roughest country bars in town (and still would be, if it hadn't been so damaged in a 2004 hurricane).

 

We thought it was one of the funniest things we've heard -- guess you had to be there.

 

We love Dottie and Tom. Dottie is from McKeesport, PA, just outside Pittsburgh, and likes to give a bottle of sparkling wine to anyone who lived close to her. Betsy is from Greensburg, PA, with just one town between that and McKeesport, so she "won" the bottle. Dottie is folksy and warm and loves her job. She and Tom now make their home about 2 hours north of us in Central Florida. I'd love to sail with them again.

 

I never found her announcements annoying, but then, I have to look really hard to find things that annoy me.

[tanny18]

Tom's "shtick" is looking over the passenger list for unusual home locations, then doing ad lib comedy about those places -- usually starting something like, "Anybody from such-and-such?" I find him really funny, and never miss his show. But then, I'm a hick from Okeechobee who has no pretenses.

 

In fact, Betsy and I were the target one evening, as soon as he saw "Okeechobee, Florida" on the guest list. It's a real small, real rural town with more than it's share of rednecks, and he nailed it with his comments. I was flabbergasted that he knew so much about the small cow-town (more cows than people, by almost 10 to 1) characters. After the show, I asked him about it -- turns out that when he was young, he was the opening act in what was one of the roughest country bars in town (and still would be, if it hadn't been so damaged in a 2004 hurricane).

 

We thought it was one of the funniest things we've heard -- guess you had to be there.

 

We love Dottie and Tom. Dottie is from McKeesport, PA, just outside Pittsburgh, and likes to give a bottle of sparkling wine to anyone who lived close to her. Betsy is from Greensburg, PA, with just one town between that and McKeesport, so she "won" the bottle. Dottie is folksy and warm and loves her job. She and Tom now make their home about 2 hours north of us in Central Florida. I'd love to sail with them again.

 

I never found her announcements annoying, but then, I have to look really hard to find things that annoy me.

 

Don, everything you say is so true. We love both of them. We sailed with them before she told anyone she was married to Tom. One night he let it slip that he was sleeping with the CD! We knew it, but others didn't and they were a little surprised.:rolleyes: And as I have said before, that's why there is Rocky Road and Cherry Garcia. I hope we sail with them again soon - it's been about 3+ years now

[edgee]

Don, everything you say is so true. We love both of them. We sailed with them before she told anyone she was married to Tom. One night he let it slip that he was sleeping with the CD! We knew it, but others didn't and they were a little surprised.:rolleyes: And as I have said before, that's why there is Rocky Road and Cherry Garcia. I hope we sail with them again soon - it's been about 3+ years now

 

It is apparently now part of Tom's routine to "let it slip" about the fact that he is sleeping with/married to the cruise director during his second performance and then go into jokes about what its like to live with Dottie when she calls him to dinner in their house with a microphone and a joke etc. etc.

 

I enjoyed both Dottie and Tom but found her announcements too frequent and verbose.

[beardedshark]

We are sailing on Regatta now..Dottie and Tom on board disembarking Sunday, Nolan Dean and friend on board entertaining and a new CD Ray just boarded today..so we have 3 CD's at one time..

Jancruz1

 

Is Nolan back as cd? I thought he had left O to spend more time with his family. I really enjoyed him as cd although I know many of you don't like his humour. I guess it's a Brit thing:p

[Jancruz]

Is Nolan back as cd? I thought he had left O to spend more time with his family. I really enjoyed him as cd although I know many of you don't like his humour. I guess it's a Brit thing:p

 

He is not back as a CD but he and his beautiful girlfriend are back as entertainers..

Jancruz1

[sammiedawg]

Don, everything you say is so true. We love both of them. We sailed with them before she told anyone she was married to Tom. One night he let it slip that he was sleeping with the CD! We knew it, but others didn't and they were a little surprised.:rolleyes: And as I have said before, that's why there is Rocky Road and Cherry Garcia. I hope we sail with them again soon - it's been about 3+ years now

 

I love Dottie and Tom and their inside jokes and stories warm my heart. I think he is the second funniest cruise ship comedian, second only to a guy named Sarge who works Princess and other lines. Someone mentioned Ray Michaels, he is terrific as well.

I always cringe reading threads about CD's. They are the hardest working people and thanks to the Internet their every utterance is under review. Oceania CD's seem to have very high turnover rates.

[Retired Lawyer]

We are on Nautica from Singapore to Hong Kong (and BTB to Beijing) beginning 5 February, and received our docs today. We were extremely happy to learn that Dottie would be our CD on that cruise, too. We've been with her on each of our previous 3 Oceania cruises, and found her to be one of the best CD's we've had on any cruise line. More than that, we found her "mother henning" pax's leaving on excursions ("Be sure you take a bottle of water, umbrella, jacket, etc."), being everywhere on the ship through the day, and just having exceptional TLC for each pax to be tremendous. We can't pick our cruises based on who the CD is, but having her is really a bonus.

 

"But first, a joke..." is now a standard line in our family.

[no fuss travel]

"But first, a joke..." is now a standard line in our family.

 

Our standard line in our family now is "You learn something new everyday." So Dottie is the CD for the Nautica cruise starting February 5th? We still don't have our booklet yet for that cruise and the one after.

Edited December 31, 2014 by no fuss travel

[Jancruz]

We are on Nautica from Singapore to Hong Kong (and BTB to Beijing) beginning 5 February, and received our docs today. We were extremely happy to learn that Dottie would be our CD on that cruise, too. We've been with her on each of our previous 3 Oceania cruises, and found her to be one of the best CD's we've had on any cruise line. More than that, we found her "mother henning" pax's leaving on excursions ("Be sure you take a bottle of water, umbrella, jacket, etc."), being everywhere on the ship through the day, and just having exceptional TLC for each pax to be tremendous. We can't pick our cruises based on who the CD is, but having her is really a bonus.

 

"But first, a joke..." is now a standard line in our family.

 

+1

She is GREAT!!!

Jancruz1

[ricki]

We really enjoyed Dottie and JR. on Marina. I was sorry to hear JR is no longer Asst. CD. Both were EVERYWHERE, and very friendly and approachable. They genuinely seemed to do their best to assure everyone was having a good time.

 

On one of our Marina sailings in the Baltic, the CD's announcements and delivery were much more befitting Carnival than Oceania.

 

Ricki