With cruise ship's main stage entertainers, they are usually had been, could have been, or want to be. I have seldom come across anyone who is really exceptional. Maybe I have to lower my standard a bit.

Putting it all into proper context: It's free. It's part of the package. You don't pay for it, no cover charge, no minimum spend, no compulsory drinks ... Heck, I have been to bars with lesser (meaning worst) performers and paid cover charge, over priced water down beer, among other things. You pay your cruise fare, say $1000, and you got food, lodging and entertainment for a week to 10 days or more. I mean seriously, where do they make the money on bringing in an A listed entertainer? It is a business, and when there is no return for your investment, why spend the money? The performance are adequate. They do "popular" things, people seems to enjoy it, they clapped, cheered, even an occasional standing O, hey, it's all good. Can't be too critical if it's free. If I have to pay for a ticket, depending on what they charge, I probably would not go to too many of them.

NCL seems to be a little bit ahead of the curve on the entertainment, their Grammy thing is a gimmick. The entertainers all fall under the category of "had been, could have been, or want to be". If only Grammy winners can perform, then it would be really something.

We are not regulars to Vegas but we like to be there every once in a while and catch some shows. Sometimes paying big bucks for "had been, could have been, or want to be" as well.

Sass, I didn't write them down, if I did, I would have all the names. I've seen Donny Evins before (on NCL) and he was better back then (much younger and more energy) so I remembered him; Tyler gave out free CDs and he autographed my copy so I got his name right; I've met Steve Moris some years ago when the Beach Boys were in town for a concert. Back then, my job involved dealing with the production companies and provide "personal" services for the star entertainers, so I have met quite a few A lister through my days back in the 80's and 90's; as well as the "had been, could have been, or want to be", which typically would be the opening act or back up singers.

We saw this gal on our very 1st cruise in 2002 on the Splendor of the Seas. She was awesome. Then we saw her again in 2012 on the Celebrity Equinox. Awesome again! I waited in line to meet her after her performance and told her this was the best performance I've seen on a cruise ship since our first one when we saw her then. She was so happy to hear that and it made me feel good she got a kick out of it. It was all true of course!!
http://www.jacquiscott.com/

I can barely remember what I ate last night, so hats off to you for a great report.

On one of our cruises the comedian was so bad that he left the stage saying it's obvious that I'm boring you, so I'll go". That was the best line the whole night.
We've cruised to Hawaii from the mainland - the only difference is that our mainland is Australia. Lots of sea days but a very pleasant way to arrive in Hawaii.

How interesting! We thought of doing this cruise out of San Francisco (we live here) - for some reason, I went from hating to loving the days at sea.

Marg, that is one of the funniest things I have heard about on a cruise.

I will post an overall review of MSC.

Let me start off by saying that Princess production shows are generally very well done. Good and appropriate choice of music, gorgeous costumes, good choreography, decent singers and dancers, nice back drops and set designs, and overall, very entertaining. They are all about 35 to 45 minutes in length.

With this cruise, there were a total of 4 production shows, which was lots. 2 performances each and generally packed for both shows. For the early show, you have to be at least half an hour early or else you won't find a seat. The second performance did not fill up as early but is packed just the same.

So, what is there not to like about the Princess cruises' production show? Repetition.

As I have said earlier, before this cruise, we have not been on a Princess ship for almost 2 years. Of the 4 production shows, we have seen 3 of them before, and multiple times. Not that we won't go see the show again if it is on.

"Stardust" is relatively slow pace, full of songs form the late 50's and early 60's. But that show has been around for 5 or 6 years. Mind you, it is probably very age appropriate for this crowd.

"Colors of the world" created scenes from around the world along with costumes from the regions (notice I did not say songs from the regions). The dancers tried hard to perform regional (cultural) specific dance moves to modern music. Again, this show has been around for a few years.

"Once upon a dream" is the best of the 3 and probably the newest of the 3. I remember it was "premiered" at one of our previous Princess cruises. I liked this show a lot. But them again, this must be the 3rd of 4th time we have seen this show. Love the combination of music, the story line, this is probably one of the few that I may actually pay real money to see if it is on stage. But then it has to be longer than 45 minutes. If you come across this show, go see it. Well worth it regardless of your age.

Notice that I said there were 4 production shows and I only talked about 3 all this time. The 4th one is different and Princess invested $$ in this one. The show is call "Magic to do".

So, what is so different about this one from the others? First off, the composer for the music/songs in this production all came from one single composer: Stephen Schwartz.

So who is he? Well, I really didn't know who he was until I read up on his bios, but I do know about his Broadway musicals. His single most famous Broadway hit is "Wicked". His other works included Houdini, Reluctant Pilgrim, Godspell & Pippin and many more. According to his bios, he is a multiple Oscar (3) and Grammy (4) awards winner, and was recently honored with a special Tony award among other things such as a star on the walk of fame, songwriter hall of fame etc.

This show featured a magician (the central figure) with his assistant, weave a story line on a magical journey with songs from the various musicals that Stephen Schwartz wrote.

Typically, each musical has it own story line so putting music/songs/lyrics from different story lines into one story is quite interesting; this is in addition to the magician performing magic tricks throughout the show.

Apparently, this is a premier of the show and is a "first showing" within the entire Princess fleet. The have printed souvenir programs, handing them out was staff dressed in red carpet gowns and tux greeting everyone at the door. They really made a big deal out of this. This is the first of several new works commissioned by Princess, written exclusively for their production show.

The rest of the entertainment is so so. Your typical piano bar, a dance band, DJ at the club, Karaoke, game shows, trivia and the like. Toss in some arts and craft, guest lecturers for good measure. They have a variety of things at he Piazza but no string quartet. Really missed that. Didn't recall having a sting quartet at the last Princess cruise either. Maybe they don't do that any more, which is a shame.

As the weather wasn't too good, the Movie under the Stars was not busy at all, except for the Monday night football (Green Bay was playing) and the Farve retirement at half time(??)

We have always enjoyed Princess cruises guest lecturers and this cruise actually had 2 of them. Doug Eaton was absolutely fabulous. He was funny, and musically talented and his "lectures" were highly entertaining and topics varies. The lecture titles were intriguing enough that draws you in. I find myself talking to him almost after every lecture. All his lectures were on sea days.

Here is a sample of his topics:
- The Queen's knickers
- Biggest musical hits
- Quirky inventions
- Murders in literature
- the Vikings
- Quirky Olympic events

The other guest lecturer is a naturalist and talks about Hawaii and the volcanic formations, wild life etc. The information presented was good but she was boring and forgettable; she can't even operate her own laptop and power point and time were spent fiddling around with it and then she apologize. For one day, I can understand, but it was almost every single time she presented anything.

Oh, almost forgot. They offered Ukulele lessons. They have loaner available so you can practice at your leisure between lessons. I believe there were 2 levels of skills and 8 sessions each. People obviously knew about this as we saw quite a few people brought their own instruments. And they have Hawaii dance lessons as well as lei making classes.

Not much to say about the food as it was standard cruise ship affair. People keep trying to compare cruise ship food, who is better than who, and myself included in those conversations.

The truth is, unless you went to the for fee specialty restaurants, the food from all mass market ships are very similar. The selection, menu choices, variety may be different, but not really all that much difference. It comes down to one thing: the one who did the cooking. So the menu may be the same on all Princess ships, but they tasted different because of the one who prepared the meal: just like going to a chain restaurant. I have adopted a new attitude for cruise ship dining. I call it a C-Food approach. C food? Eat food!:D

The MDR was really busy very early on, every single night. Must be the age thing: early dinner, early to bed. Seems like everyone wanted to have early dinners. Staff were friendly and mostly helpful.

Didn't wanted to talk about the ports unless there are interests. After all, it's Hawaii we are talking about. The weather was not so great, rainy, foggy, cool. We didn't hit any of the beaches, we went to National Parks and volcanic hikes instead on 2 stops. Didn't even do the usual tourist thing (like the memorial) in Honolulu. We opted for the Polynesian Cultural Center instead.

That's about it for this TR unless there are specific things that you wanted to know.

Thank you for the TR E. I enjoyed it. I do agree about cruise ship food as to the over all similarity. I have always been fine with cruise ship food in the MDR. You have to consider that they are preparing for thousands of people. Given that then I think they do a fine job.

Did you leave feedback about that naturalist who could not use her laptop? I'll bet Princess would like to know about such things.

Larry, the only feedback that I gave to Princess was the missing string quartet. I spoke to Frank, the cruise director, and he indicated that the string quartet did not fit the passenger profile on this itinerary which I think is bunk.

I am being charitable to the naturalist. She had good material, either she was just not computer literate, or did not know how to work the remote control on the laptop for power point presentation. Slides got missed and not synchronized to her "talk". She is also very monotonous, but that's a totally different story all together.

We had a great cabin steward. Mind you, it's nothing a few quick bucks early on the cruise that wouldn't fix if there is a problem. It is no longer tipping, think of it as "buying" over and above service or priority service.

The service in MDR is A1. Since we like to have any time dining, we did not have the same waiter every single night. We did get the waiter we asked for when we had a reservation. The service level were similar regardless of who was our server.

Oh yea, one small complaint. It was tough to get a table for 2 unless you call early. They need to have more 2-seaters tables.

Eschew,

Thank you for the report. I'm interested to know if you will do another cruise like this that involves so many sea days in a row? We like port intensive cruses too. We have an up coming 39 day cruise to New Zealand on Holland America that includes Hawaii & the South Pacific so we will be having a LOT of sea days in a row and we've never done more than two in a row before.

Utahtea

Utahtea, I started the TR by saying that we like cruises with a lot of port of call stops, and this Hawaiian cruise is actually the first time ever that we took a cruise with more sea days than port days. There was 11 seas days in all.

What we have learned is that we can't really compare this Hawaiian cruise to the normal port intensive cruises we have taken in the past. We have to mentally prepared ourselves for it, and it is two complete different style of cruising.

For port intensive cruises, we consider the ship to be a floating hotel and we are busy go-go-go all the time on port days, and the sea day is just to catch a breather. We are active people, and this worked great. We "sampled" a lot of destinations, if we like a particular one, we will return some other time and stay for a few days if possible, or take the same cruise again, and visit different place on the same port. We hardly do anything on the ship except eat, sleep and maybe catch a show or two, and that's about the size of it.

With this many sea days on this Hawaiian cruise. Our goal was to relax / recharge, take it easy and go on a very slow pace. The ship sort of becomes the destination.

All these years of cruising and we have never used the ship's swimming pools or hot tubs. We did not make any exception this time. We are not gamblers so we don't spent much time in the casino either. However, we did not find that we do not have enough things to do on sea days. On the contrary, we have so much to do that we were too busy and did not relax as much as we have hoped.

We took in more on board activities, from trivia games and pop quiz to enrichment seminars (from guest lecturers to Ukulele, photography and iPad lessons), karaoke to dance band and night club, movies and production shows, read, people watching, we didn't have too much down time and we dictated our pace, and refused to be rushed.

We got up when we feel like, go the MDR for breakfast and coffee (MDR eggs are made to order and the coffee are much better than the buffet). After that, we catch a morning trivia or a lecture, have a light lunch (or skip it all together), walk around a bit, people watching or take a nap, catch a movie, play bridge, enjoy the afternoon entertainment in the piazza, and then back to the cabin to change, and get ready for dinner. The day flew by so fast. Dinner usually took a couple of hours, catch the production show or something on the theater main stage. After that, it would be the piano bar or the night club, or the jazz band or the dance band, or watch people sing karaoke, catch a movie or the football game on the big screen (Movie under the stars) warm milk and cookies,popcorn, next thing you know, it's past midnight. I brought a book that I wanted to finish, but I never even get to open it.

As you can see, time flew by quickly but it is with a different mentality, and our enjoyment (or value) came from different sources.

You asked if we will do it again. The answer is a definitely yes, but only when we are ready for (or needed) it. Before this cruise, we had a lot of things happening in both work and personal life. We were tired. We needed to get away and just relax and don't do anything. I think it was mission accomplished. Many times we have gone on a cruise and we got home exhausted and needed a rest after the holiday.

On the up coming trip, it will be full day of travel to Spain, 4 days in Barcelona, 7 days on a cruise with only 1 sea day, 3 days in Rome and a full day of travel back home. We have booked tours on every day except the day of arrival and the day of departure so it will be go go go all the time, quite the opposite to the Hawaiian cruise.

If you prepare yourself to "laze" around the ship, relax and take in the activities, regardless how stupid the activities might sound, either as an active participant or spectator. You will have loads of fun and run out of time before you run out of things to do.