Demographics
There are about 2600 passengers on board the Star Princess. There are 1100 crew members.
There are 600+ Gold level passengers. This means they are on their 2nd or 3rd Princess cruise. The 300+ Ruby level passengers are on cruises 4 or 5. Platinum level, 6th through 15th Princess cruise, also comes in at 600+. Finally, there are 200+ Elite passengers with 16+ cruises. That would be us. The name "Elite" is a little embarrassing. It sounds arrogant to say "I'm Elite," but I didn't make up the names for the categories.
About 100 passengers will be staying on board for the next cruise.
About 100 passengers will be staying on board for the next cruise.
The vast majority of passengers are from the Bay Area or the Sacramento area. At least 80% is my guess. That's not surprising since it is so easy for them to get to the ship. I have met two other "passenger units" from Alaska. After California, the next largest groups seem to be Washington state and Vancouver, BC.
I have heard a number of languages being spoken by passengers - French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, and Chinese - a lot of Chinese. We ate dinner with a Polish woman one night and she told us there were one or two other Polish-speakers on board.
There are quite a lot of Chinese-speaking passengers. The ones that I have met all seem to live in the Bay Area. However, I think there are quite a few who actually live in China. I suspect they don't speak a lot of English and I am not likely to meet them. The Chinese speakers seem to be much more social than the English speakers. They love doing things in large groups. You will see them sitting at tables for 10 or 12 in the dining room. They eagerly join in the shipboard activities - especially Zumba and line-dancing. They take a lot of pictures, especially pictures of themselves line-dancing.
At the Drop of an Egg
Speaking of Chinese, today they had egg drop soup for lunch. I don't know if it was a coincidence or if they were being cute, because they also had the Egg Drop Challenge today. You form a team and think of a clever name for your team. Then you build a container for a raw egg and think of a name for your contraption (many names were in Chinese). At the time appointed for the challenge, the teams drop the eggs (in their highly-engineered contraptions) off the top balcony of the atrium, a drop from Level 7 to Level 5. Your egg package must hit a target. Then you open the package to see if the egg is intact. If it is broken you are disqualified. If it is not within the target, you are out. Then the audience votes on the successful eggs. This event always draws a big crowd. I would like to try it some time. I think the trick is to build an egg container that is well-cushioned, but also aerodynamic, so that it will hit the target. Then you need to have a very clever team name plus a cool-looking egg holder - something more original than a rocket ship. Hmmmm.
British Invasion
Tonight is formal night. Here is what arrived in our room while we were getting ready:
After dinner we went to a production show called British Invasion. Other than a really long segment on Queen, it was a good show with music I knew by heart.
On the topic of Queen I have this to say: Bohemian Rhapsody is so dark, and, really, Queen is not part of the "British Invasion" of the 60's. They came along about 10 years later. I would have preferred more Beatles and Rolling Stones in place of Queen. But this is a British cruise line, and the Brits do love their Freddie Mercury, as we saw on our cruises out of Southampton last year.
On the topic of Queen I have this to say: Bohemian Rhapsody is so dark, and, really, Queen is not part of the "British Invasion" of the 60's. They came along about 10 years later. I would have preferred more Beatles and Rolling Stones in place of Queen. But this is a British cruise line, and the Brits do love their Freddie Mercury, as we saw on our cruises out of Southampton last year.
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