Are Main Shows Repeated on Longer Sailings?

[rwmartin]

Hello! My wife and I will be traveling on the Jade in November/December 2020 on a 14 day cruise. On longer sailings, do they repeat the main shows or do they just bring in more singers, comedians, magicians, etc. to fill the extra evenings? Thanks!

[1025cruise]

Is it a true 14 day, or a B2B?

[rwmartin]

It's a true 14 day cruise.

[lepidoptera]

In my experience they do. On the 11 day breakaway cruiseI went on they repeated Rock of Ages and Burn the Floor. However on the nights that had those shows repeating they also had shows in the big top that weren’t repeats-singers doing shows. 

[emcelh]

Shows are repeated on the largest ships like the Breakaway, probably because the theaters are not large enough to accommodate  the number of passengers.  Our last cruise was  11 days on the Epic and shows in the main theater were repeated but  we've done several longer cruises on smaller ships,  including the Jade,  and shows were not repeated.  The entertainers will probably appear more than once during the cruise but the show will be different.  

[trivimp]

The big Broadway-style shows on the big ships, like Jersey Boys or Priscilla, will be repeated a few times per sailing.  On the smaller ships, it's more like song-and-dance-revue type of shows, with some illusionist & comedy stuff mixed in.  We were on a 14-day on the Star earlier this year & the shows didn't repeat at all.  

[casofilia]

On a 14 day cruise it is unlikely that they will repeat the actual NCL cast show especially on the small/medium size ships as the theater will accommodate all the passengers who want to see it during the two performances.

However the "brought on" acts, if they are on for more than a couple of days, will be expected to put on a different show the second night.

It is also quite common on longer cruises for acts to be brought on for a couple of nights and then replaced.

[zqvol]

3 hours ago, rwmartin said:

Hello! My wife and I will be traveling on the Jade in November/December 2020 on a 14 day cruise. On longer sailings, do they repeat the main shows or do they just bring in more singers, comedians, magicians, etc. to fill the extra evenings? Thanks!

 

They are not going to bring more entertainment on board, but that doesn't mean that they won't plan so that contracts for minor entertainers won't end mid cruise so that you see some new ones as you go. The main shows will not change.

[mking8288]

Depends on the ship and port/itinerary - some shows are only on full sea days with early & late ones, whereas on port days (especially if all abroad time is late. like 6 or 7 p.m. for Canada/NE or even Alaska - there is only time for one show that evening).

 

On our winter Escape to the East Caribbean 14 nights this January, the 2 main production shows were scheduled for at least 2 different nights each, giving everyone a chance to at least see it once ... reservations still required.  

 

It's not as simple as bringing up "extra" performers for the week - usually, they need to do rehearsals ... unless it is a simple magic and/or talk/comedy show.  Even for the Dawn/Jewel class ships, NCL will "program" enough evening activities for passengers. 

[MeHeartCruising]

They may very well bring on new entertainment in the middle of a longer cruise (other than TransAtlantics, I suppose).  I once chatted with a singer who was part of a quartet act on one of my longer European cruises.  They boarded the ship at one of the ports in the middle of my cruise.  They then did one or 2 shows for my cruise in the second half of my cruise.  They were then going to stay on board for the NEXT cruise after mine and perform in the first half of that cruise.  The were then going to leave the ship in the middle of the second cruise and board another Royal Caribbean ship that happened to be scheduled in the same port at the same time.  The singer told me sometimes, they leave one ship and fly or train to a second ship.  Their contracts usually were for multiple ships over a few months period.   So the cruise lines may be juggling acts across multiple cruise and ships in this manner.  I'm not saying they always do it.... but they do it sometimes.

[erdoran]

I did a 14 day Jade TA and there was a different show every night - they had two showings, I think 7 and 9 (or something like that).  I thought it was outstanding and actually prefer that format to the bigger ships that have the same big theatre shows a couple of times during the cruise.  If you are worried about running out of shows to see on the Jade, no worries!

 

OTOH after the shows there wasn’t a lot - there was a band in Spinnaker that was mediocre, or a DJ; they had a good singer in Martini’s sometimes, other times not so good, and Bliss was usually karaoke which was better than the Spinnaker band and the not so good singers - but even the good one got boring after a while.

[caneable]

We cruised b2b on the Sun in Spring this year. While they did repeat shows on each leg of the b2b, they didn’t repeat within each leg.  Some visiting artists did two separate shows and one of the bat entertainers did an afternoon At Sea day did a mid afternoon set, but the ship’s company presented different shows each time.

[rwmartin]

Thanks everyone for the info!

[Sand and Seas]

For our upcoming 9 day cruise I was surprised that the main show (Million Dollar Quartet) was only on days 8 & 9.   I was hoping for showings earlier in the cruise as it's my favorite NCL show.