Atlantis Events 20th Anniversary CruiseThis cruise is to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Atlantis events, the self proclaimed leader in all gay cruise vacations. I must confess that I have received there mailed advertisements for nearly 15 years, Never in my life did I envision myself on a cruise ship, much less an all gay cruise sailing. That all changed in 2006 when I was asked to go on a Disney cruise, needless to say I was hooked. Since then I have been on seven cruises. I really enjoy the big new ships and there are a lot of them out currently. I have taken four cruises with family and three solo.
Some might ask why in the world would you go on a cruise alone, quite simple actually, i am not getting any younger and want to experience as much as I can while still young, yes at 42 I still feel young. Both traveling with family and traveling solo have there good and bad points.
I have come to the realization late in life that I cannot change who I am, its a damn shame it has taken so long – 40 years of lost time.  Okay back to the Gay cruise thing, My first gay cruise was in January of 2010 on the Liberty of the seas,  I told no one where I was going, snapped a picture of the ship during sailaway and posted it so family would know I was out to sea, Kate was furious that i took another cruise and she could not go AGAIN, she missed the chance to sail on the Celebrity Solstice which really made her mad. The Liberty cruise was appropiately named for me and was quite a learning experience. Did not have any idea what to expect, all the advertising for Atlantis has all these perfect people in them , would it be a big orgy at sea? Not hardly, it was actually quite liberating for me, I’m now surrounded my 2500 people I had something in common with, I was not longer the odd person, it was exhilarating! As you enter the ship the Atlantis Cruise director hugs everyone boarding the ship, are you serious? and yes when boarding the Allure of the seas which had a passenger count of 5499 he hugged everyone as they boarded.
When Atlantis charters a ship they really go overboard with the entertainment, not only do you have the standard cruise line entertainment but also comedians, drag queens, several caberet acts and usually a headliner. With the size of the Allure of the Seas we were all told there would be no headliner, just not logistically possible with a ship of this size. (It is notable that this cruise sold out in about 30 days, the waitlist was so long they had to close that as well, it was actually oversold after the final payment date so Atlantis made an offer to get some to cancel) On this sailing we had:
Singing Duo Rick & Emilie
Deborah Cox
Then you have the Allure of the Seas entertainment:
Ice Games – Ice show at Studio B
Oceanaria – a water show with aerialists and divers in teh Aquatheater
Chicago the Broadway musical – full broadway production pretty awesome show in the Amber theater
The allure of the seas is so big with so many entertainment options that they have a ticketing process to see the shows, you can reserve these before your cruise, unfortuanately this requires planning and most people like to wing it while on vacation. there is so much going on you really have to decide what you really want to do as you will not be able to do it all. If you do not reserve tickets they do have a standby line and ten minutes before showtime they let this line in and your tickets are no longer good, so if you reserve get there at least 15 minutes early. Now this ticketing process did not work so well for Atlantis, there is so much to do that the shows were not usually full in fact some shows were cancelled due to lack of attendance. No one can complain that there were not enough entertainment options and thsi is all on top of the famous Atlantis parties, usually 2 or 3 each day, I think we had four afternoon t-dances and at least five big nightly parties that usually started at 11pm often with a theme involved some of these were followed up by after parties. The biggest party of the week is the White party usually on Friday night. Below are the party themes, Atlantis goes over the top with these parties, they bring on board the best DJ’s, lighting and video crews. The DJ’s we had on this sailing were:
Abel
Brett Henrichsen
Pagano
Phil B
Wayne G
Some of thes parties were theme events and the costumes these guys come up with are over the top, I”m pretty sure there was much more luggage on this sailing than most, along with the costumes most passengers decorated there cabin doors and those who had balconies also had the opportunity to decorate them as well, lots of rainbow flags and flags from the countries represented, quite a few foriegn countries represented on this cruise.