Day 20 - Thursday - 4/3/25 - At Sea to Nassau, Bahamas

Once again, our morning started out early with a 7:30 AM devotional with Michael Randall. He was a powerful speaker and the husband of another singer in the main program. Afterwards, we grabbed a quick breakfast in the Lido Marketplace and it was good. On sea days, Stephanie conducts a coffee chat and today she interviewed the assistant hotel general manager, JOHN. Nobody seemed aware that this event was happening, but we're quite familiar with the schedule so we were the only two people there. It then became a pretty intimate chance to chat with them about what's going on. 

And I learned a few pretty interesting things about the future of Holland America and the ship. I asked John if there was any difference between this crowd as a charter and a regular cruise like we had last week. He paused before saying "Yes there is a pretty big difference. And that difference is that this crowd does not engage with the staff or crew". He finds it frustrating because he's used to having dialogue with passengers and learning from them who they are and share where he is coming from. He went on to say that Holland America is likely to be in a very unique and strategic position for the future. With the shipyards totally full and building mega ships at capacity for the next 6-8 years Holland America has taken tack to rejuvenate their fleet of 11 ships with upgrades and normal enhancements. Parenthetically, I know that we were just on the Volendam last fall and it had gone through about a $20 million remodel and upgrade with lots of steel replaced to replace rust and I documented all of that on my blog about that cruise. If you're interested in those details, just write me and ask for the blog link. I'll send it to you. He went on to say that for this ship that it will be going to dry dock next year and will likely receive a version of the Dutch Café that's found on the larger pinnacle class ships. It'll be located likely on deck three aft and will take out part of the photo gallery and ocean bar.  It was a good chance to chat with them and we appreciated it.

From there, we went into a morning concert session, which was really really good as all of them have been, and when the concert was over, it was roughly lunchtime, and it was very difficult to get a seat up in the Lido Marketplace. But I found a seats and we enjoyed a quick lunch before coming back down to the billboard on board area an hour early for the hymns which started at 2 o'clock and lasted for about an hour. That event was once again very very well attended and I can now say that I've sang with Sandy Patty in a bar and that wasn't on my bingo card. Afterwards we had a little bit of a break before dinner which we once again enjoyed down in the dining room. Kathy joined us and had a good conversation around the table.

Our red badge concert started tonight at 7:15 and went for a couple hours plus. It was once again really really good many of the artist performing individual songs plus a lot of group singing as well. Unfortunately, we had to clear the auditorium for the 10 o'clock Woody and friends event. When we exited the theater, there was already a line of the blue badge people and so we joined the line at the billboard on board and we had no priority so once we got to the theater, the best seat we could get was in the last row of the auditorium. The performance was essentially country western songs plus some individually written and performed songs by children or grandchildren of artists that are on the main stage. And Bill's youngest son Benji played a very wicked guitar and playing the Neil Diamond song, Sweet Caroline.  That 10 o'clock show didn't get over until 1130 and we had a 7 AM morning devotional scheduled for the following morning, so it was going to be a short night.

Benji (with guitar)

One observation that was poignant to me was that some people didn't like the session because there was no "Christian" music in it. I find it sad when people can't appreciate music outside of their comfort zone.