Prez Says

Last month I wrote about a book, Unreasonable Hospitality, and provided some examples in the restaurant industry.(and happy to continue culinary discussions). This month I’ll share a recent “bad example.” Over the holidays, we went on a Princess Cruise. While we had taken Princess before, we usually are on Royal Caribbean. This ship offered a package where we could eat at any “specialty restaurant.” This ship had 3 options: a steakhouse, a fish restaurant and Italian. 

When we first dined at the steak and fish place, the service was horrible, taking well over 2 hours for a meal. I explained to each manager that while some may enjoy a slow-paced meal, we preferred a faster-paced experience. (Note: Princess even asked about dining “pace” when you set up your onboard profile – but I assume never really used – also good example of poor experience). Each apologized profusely and offered to take care of it when we came back. When we returned to each of those restaurants, we received excellent service and a much faster pace. On the other hand, when we had a long experience at the Italian place (where we also asked for faster service) we had one bad night where the manager offered a half-hearted apology as they were overbooked that night, but no offer to fix it the future and no acknowledgment when we returned. Cruise lines typically provide excellent service, so I was very surprised at this last trip.

As for entertainment, the Princess line is very magic-friendly - with the magic castle at sea on the Sun Princess ship - but we were on a different boat. A side note – when Princess had their recent “Conjuror’s Cruise”, one of the featured acts was The Cosmic Romantics (and one half of the act is Eric Siegel, Mel’s son). On our cruise, Nathan Coe Marsh performed 2 different “headlining” shows in the main theater. While the material was fairly common, bill in lemon, cards across, baby gag, and a few mind-reading effects, he did put his own spin on things, and I was particularly fond of his presentation for a Chan Canasta effect. I reached out to Nathan and we chatted about magic, Chicago magic, Chan, etc for almost an hour. He told me that while hard to see, he was wearing a Magic Inc Lefty pin while performing, and I shared several stories about Jay.

They also had another performer, Nelson Lugo who did one show in the lounge (also very standard material – I didn’t think the three-shell game played well to a large crowd even with projectors) as well as something in the last night’s variety show (which I skipped).

I hope everyone had a great holiday season and I hope to see you at an upcoming meeting.

 - Mike Kamlet