Royal Princess Ballroom Dancing

[Times Prince]

Hi all, we spent last week on the Royal (Athens to Rome) and here's the dance situation:

 

a. The Wheelhouse has been redone and the back half of it, where the dancefloor was, is now part of the 'Crown Grill' - bummer. There is still live music, sometimes bands, or more often piano or single acoustic guitar. The photo above captures this, however not captured is a small marble dance circle in the hall right next to the band. We danced here dodging passengers working their way past us in the hall. We still had a good time there.

 

b. We often danced in the Piazza if the band was the one we followed around. Plenty of room - totally on display from three decks of balconies.

 

c. We also danced in the Vista when the band was in the Vista. Sometimes we where the only ones there though.

 

So those are the 2.5 places to dance on the Royal. To us the bigger consideration was finding the one band we liked and just following them around (Prestige Band). The other band (Pentatonics) was more 'rock', loud, and less dance oriented. If it wasn't for the Prestige band dancing would have been really limited.

 

So you have to find your band and make your own party. You can't be shy about dancing in hallways etc (we also squeezed a few dances in the piano bar). You can also introduce yourself to the other small acts e.g. we danced to the accordion player and even did some basic tangos when the string quartet preformed a tango concert in the Piazza - they where fabulous! These musicians generally loved it when we danced and were very accommodating.

 

Note the Royal is in dry dock right now - so the above might change this month. I believe the Prestige band will be back after dry dock.

 

Note 2: I've been researching the Holland America Eurodam this week and it looks like they have removed 2 of the 4 dancefloors they used to have. We dancers need to stick together and keep pressure on the cruise companies to keep dancing alive! Give high marks to the dance bands.

Thanks for the recent update. I hope we also find a good band to dance to, as it will be a 10 day cruise.

 

I comment on dancing and bands EVERY end of cruise survey. However, I think what is happening is some accountant's concept of what will generate the most profit, and while we are dancing we are not drinking those beverages sitting at our table.

 

And yeah, we've been known to dance in hallways near piano bars and other music. It always draws smiles from entertainers and many fellow passengers, and occasionally someone else joins in. :)

[Esprit]

My wife always takes her suede bottomed dance shoes on cruises as she finds them so comfortable. I leave mine at home and happily dance in leather soled shoes.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Esprit

[KandMB]

Agree with taking the dance shoes, I always take mine as they are so comfy and tend to be non slip. We danced a little on the Emerald last year but found none of the venues were big enough to dance a full routine, in the late afternoon there was pre recorded music to practise to, but this was non-hosted and rather boring. Our favourite cruise for dancing was on the P and O Arcadia which has a large dance floor and ballroom hosts who both teach and really try hard to cover most dance styles, plus popular sequence dances.

[CruiseLady88]

We also brought our dance shoes and wore them in lieu of normal dress shoes. But we have to watch out for wet floor and I hate sticky floor. Some passengers walked with their wine glasses, or sometimes danced with the wine glasses, making the floor sticky when the wine got spilled over the dance floor. I just can't understand why people dance with the wine glasses.

 

 

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Edited September 29, 2016 by CruiseLady88

[RC Dancers]

Thank you to the original poster for this thread.

 

This is good information for us as we love to dance.