Dancing vs Food. You drive a hard bargain.

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Magica has only sailed out of the US for 2 months, hopefully they will catch up on the food part. Their other ship which has a little more experience sailing out of the US, apparently is doing better in the food part. Some of the Italian dishes were excellent, so once we decided to pick from anything Italian, the food was pretty good .
They did make some other adjustments effectively. Things like minimizing areas were smoking was allowed, adapting games and dance lessons to American markets and increased use of English in shows and activities.

Lounge groups primarily sang in italian, but the classic ballroom songs are great in any language . They did some Italian tangos that were really fun to dance to.

A couple from Vancover had been on the Costa Medeterania 2 months earlier and said the food was better. They were also ballroom dancers and said dancing on that ship was also very good. Medeterania also has a good sized main dance floor, they said.

Thanks Dennis I am glad we arn't restricted to one ship. The smoking is bad news.

My wife and I are having our 10th anniversary this year. We have been thinking about a cruse. I just stumbled onto this web page and found your comments. I had never heard about the problems with dancing on cruse ships. Your information was very timely. We met dancing and had planned to go dancing for our anniversary. There are few opportunities for ballroom dancing here in Cincinnati. The local USA Dance groups has two big dances per year, but that is about all there is, unless you are under 25.

Where do we find this cruse line? Any other advice any of the members of this thread can offer?

Thanks for any advice.

Don

donhotrains@cinci.rr.com

We researched cruises on the internet and talked to other dancers. There are numerous cruise forums and some of the cruise agencies on the internet have independent reviews. Reading through the reviews you can piece together information about what is important to you. They also have deck plans, but those don't always show the dance floors.

Most cruiselines have lounges were you can dance. But the size of the dance floors varies quite a bit. Also the amount of dance music varies. We have had fun dancing on Celebrity Century and Norwegian Sea, both have decent sized dance floors, for a cruise ships. A lot of the people in the dance club we belong to go on cruises and do a good amount of dancing on their cruises. Many of the others are okay, it's just that Costa is exceptional for dancing. Lot's a great music, lot of real dancers and people who like music.

On other ships, we normally were the only ones dancing most of the time and you have to really understand dance beats, to determine what dances to do, since many do not play standard ballroom music and there normally is nobody else to see what dance they do.

We live in southeast Wisconsin and found the following good dance options.

1. Teachers and studios that have dances open to the people, either at the studio or a public location.

2. Dance Club dances.

3. There are a 3 real ballrooms in the area that have ballroom dances.

4. Special dance weekends held by upscale Hotels.

5. Public dances sponsored by various swings clubs. Swing clubs here tend to by predomontly young people, but there is always a good share of us older people. They frequently include a few rumbas, foxtrots and chachas.

6. A small newspaper in our area publishes a monthly schedule of all ballroom and swing dances in Wsisconsin and Northern Illinois. They also have some of the big band and social dances listed.

7. Other dancers at your dance club also are a good source for finding places to dance.

8. Some colleges like Wisconsin and UW Milwaukee sponsor ballroom dances open to the public.

I am sure there also are people on the forum that may know of options in your area and can help you out.

Good thing is the options are increasing. Dancers dateline now has about double the dances listed, as when we first started getting it 4 years ago.

Just got off the Carnival Conquest and will have to say it is the most dance unfriendly ship I've been on.

People and musicians were fine but:

This ship is one of the largest afloat and had one large dance bar that could have seated a couple of hundred people. However, it was designated the "Cigar Bar" and was tied up by 3-5 people the entire cruise. The explanation I was given for not using it for dance was that it was the only place on the ship with ventilation designed to get rid of the smoke. (Too bad none of the crew noticed the ventilation wasn't doing the job!).

The next best place was a lounge at the stern that could also seat a large group. Unfortuntely the dance floor was barely the size of 2 plywood panels. Even when Karaoke was in there it was 90% empty. They could have easily expanded the dance floor considerably.

For our workshops they booked us into a tiny lounge that was mostly carpet and a meandering wood floor with a pole in the middle that was barely 70 sq. ft.

People were following us everywhere to watch or ask for lesson (BTW: If anyone's looking for employment opportunity this cruise was out of Galveston and we had 4 couples ask if we taught in Houston so they could take lessons.

Another recent poor development is that the lines seem to be trying to save money now by having a member of the show teach ballroom lessons. Last cruise we had the stereotypic cartoon tango pose. This time we had the Step-Step-Hop-Hop Cha Cha. There was another instructor from Alabama on the ship at the same time. We laughed about that Cha-Cha lesson the whole cruise.

Skip the Carnival Conquest. And we had more fun on Princess and Royal Caribbean. You could do a quick step on the Sun Princess when they lowered the the stage sleeve in the stern lounge.

OB

It varies with the cruiseline and ship. We have been on 5 cruises. Dancing options were terrible on 1, okay on 3 and awesome on one. I posted a prior message about dancing on Costa. Lot's of excellent music, one large ( for a cruise ship ) and 5 small dance floors. With danceable music in 4 locations 6 plus hours an evening.

Dennis, Great thread. It just so happens that I have been looking at Costa for our next cruise. We too have had limited success on finding cruises that are dancer-friendly. Our last cruise to Hawaii in November was on Norwegian. We had 30-45 minutes of orchestra dance music before and after the show each night and 2 hours in one of the bars to a duo that has a sound machine. They were great and they played a lot of dance music for us but they had "theme" nights that they needed to follow according to the itinerary and it is hard to ballroom to some of the "country" tunes. As some of the others mentioned, we found that we were one of the only couples on the ship that were ballroom dancers. We did get a lot of compliments from the ladies and a lot of comments from the men like "You have to dance about 30 years to get that good, right?". All in all we have had a good time on all of our cruises but we have seen a steady decline in attention to dancers and good music. That is why I have been looking at other lines. Your information will help immensely. -Jim

We heard this lady on Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas on an Alaskan cruise about 2 years ago.


http://sherricafaro.com/

She played every night in the atrium. We had a group of dancers with us and we stopped going to the other dance venues because she was just too darned good. She was so much better than what we're used to hearing.

She's from South (???) Carolina and a real Connie Francis fan.

During the cruise we struck up a friendship with an East Indian couple from Vancouver. At one point they went over and asked if by chance she knew a particular East Indian song.

"Oh, yes, ah know that one."

Then she played it and sang it in Hindi complete with a Su-thun accent!

Absolutely amazing. A beautiful waltz.

I'd go on another cruise with her.

We struck up a good friendship during the week and she gave me one of her discs as a gift. I often use it to teach Night Club Slow.

We're looking at Costa in 2007.

OB

D*mn!

If I wasn't already booked on a cruise in November I'd be on this one in a flash!

(I've already asked my wife if we can cancel the other one. She said no! DRAT!)

http://dancevision.com/news_press/articles/147/

OB