A Casual Conversation with the Crown Princess Cruise Director
Today I have managed to have a casual conversation with the Crown Princess Cruise director. For many of us, our first exposure to a Cruise Director was Julie on The Love Boat.
This morning I was doing my photo tour and I ran into Lisa Ball, cruise director onboard Crown Princess. She is a female CD in a male dominated industry and she is very proud of that fact. She has worked hard rising through the ranks of Deputy CD, to Acting CD to now a full fledged CD. She is on contract until March before she goes on holiday and will return to Ruby Princess.
Lisa is a very hands on cruise director. Though she has a Deputy CD onboard, she said she has been in the position where she had done the entire grunt work while the CD was the public face and had the “glamour” position. She prefers to stay directly involved in all areas of her responsibility.
On this cruise there are 1632 first time cruisers on board. Lisa has scheduled the entertainment on board in a way where some production shows are held multiple times. This allows these first time cruisers who are just getting their “sea legs” an opportunity to experience a featured production show at their convenience.
This class of ship has multiple entertainment venues which can appeal to a variety of particular tastes. If the show in the main theatre is not your cup of tea, you could listen to a piano player in the Crooners Bar, a comedy show in Explorer’s Lounge, or a variety of activities in Club Fusion. Movies Under the Stars is also popular where a movie is shows on the big screen out by one of the pools. Special lounge covers are provided and you can even get a bag of freshly popped popcorn.
Lisa said she always has a “Plan B” just in case. This is a separate issue of the Princess Patter (the newspaper delivered nightly to your stateroom) in case weather will cause a missed port or the inability of a fly on entertainer to make the ship. There have even been incidents where a juggler arrived but his props did not. She did share that contracted entertainment like a comedian must have enough material to perform in case rough weather could cause a production show to be missed in the interest of performer safety.
On this cruise, Princess has scheduled a series of lectures from the “Department of Romance”. Some of these events have been well attended. Gavin MacLeod was scheduled to be onboard, but a back injury prevented him from traveling for this cruise. Lisa told me that when he is onboard, the panels and Q&A’s he hosts are some of the most well attended on board which frequently run much longer than their allotted time. He has been a PR ambassador for Princess Cruises for a long time and is very respected by the staff onboard.
Something else that Lisa shared was the fact that there are Cruise Director’s who are better suited for certain destinations. There was a long time CD who only did cruises in the Baltic because he truly was a destination expert on the Baltic. When he retired, he was brought back as a guest lecturer because of his expertise. Lisa did say she would not be comfortable being a CD on a World Cruise, but then again would enjoy it and I am positive Lisa would rise to the challenge if presented to her.
One thing that becomes apparent with any member of the crew or staff is that days of the week and dates all run together when onboard. While us layman might refer to today as Wednesday February 17th, the staff and crew think of today as Day Five, Cozumel Day. Lisa did say she has to be careful of that fact when a guest does inquire about the date or day of the week.
Before I wrote this I went to go get The Chad so we could go swimming, but she refused to leave the Kid’s Club because her friend had just gotten there and she was having too good a time to do something like swim with dear old dad. There is always tomorrow…Day 6, a day at sea…or Thursday February 18th.
I thoroughly enjoyed my casual conversation with the Crown Princess Cruise director, Lisa Ball. In a future blog entry, I will share some more of my conversations with the staff onboard Crown Princess.
Chuck and Laura Flagg own The Flagg Agency in Canton, GA
We are fee-based cruise consultants and our specialty is the selecting,
planning, marketing and administering cruises for groups of all sizes.
We help people find a cruise experience that matches both their wants AND their needs.
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