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Tuesday, February 8, 2011

CMDTA on Vacation – Carnival’s Entertainment

If you’ve read my past overviews about cruising you know how I normally detest a majority of the “entertainment” that can be found on a cruise ship.

Upfront I will say that Carnival has done a great job with their entertainment.  In the past a majority of the shows were those awful Vegas Review style shows that I hate so much. Sometimes they would throw in a comedian to spice things up but other than that the entertainment was bad.

This time there were only a few Vegas style shows.  The first night you had the usual kickoff  show.  It’s not bad but it’s not great either.  It’s full of the cruise director and others talking about what’s coming up.  They also had a couple of comedians do some short sets.  They actually found decent comedians which was a nice surprise.

Carnivals main show was a Beatles tribute.  The only thing that saved the show was the Beatles music.  Without that it would not have been good.  One really odd thing about this show came at the end.  A band came on stage and did a few Beatles songs.  The odd thing was they looked nothing like the Beatles.  I realize that a lot of tribute bands don’t really look like the band they are imitating but these guys looked like the opposite of the Beatles.  In fact you would have been hard pressed to find four people who looked less like the Beatles.

Another night there was a show themed around Frank Sinatra.  We didn’t make it to that show but I got a detailed report from the couple we had dinner with.  Before I tell you what they said let me say that they like the Vegas style entertainment.  They like most cruise ship entertainment. They hated this show. They said it was a strange show with a guy who didn’t sound like Sinatra who liked to talk about himself.  I’m really glad we missed that one.

The rest of the week was filled up with a ventriloquist and some other forgettable shows.  They weren’t bad they just average.

The final show was a talent show.  Guests could get on stage perform.  I had to go to this one.  I love a good train wreck.  I was not disappointed.  One person out of all of them could sing. The rest were awful and I mean awful.  One girl tried to do a Brittany Spears song.  She did it so poorly she made Brittany Spears seem like she has some talent.  For that to happen you have to be beyond bad.

The only one who did well was an old guy who sang a Garth Brooks song.  I’ve never listened to Garth Brooks.  I don’t know if he did good or not but his singing didn’t hurt my ears so I assume it was good.  Most of the crowd sang along too and really got into it.  It was funny at the end because my wife asked me if I’d ever heard the song before.  Neither of us had.  When you live in New England you don’t listen to country music.

Overall Carnival was much improved in the entertainment department but is that enough to save them overall?  You’ll know soon.

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