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2007 ‘CRUISE WITH
THE KING’ - BAHAMAS PHOTOS
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 June Moore (Kathy’s assistant), Hil, Don, Kathy (Kat) Westmoreland and Dana |
Part of the Pittsburgh group arrives |
August, 2007 will mark 30 years since the passing of Elvis. We wanted to do something special and exciting for the fans, so we came up with the idea of a group cruise to the Bahamas. We were very honored and proud to have Kathy Westmoreland and her assistant, June Moore as our special guests. We had a great time – Don did 2 shows that were open not only to our group, but to all of the other cruise guests as well and we had a very large crowd. Kathy and June were very kind and gracious to the fans. Kathy had been doing a lot of traveling and we knew she was tired. We wanted her to enjoy herself and sort of be on vacation, so rather than a formal appearance and a question and answer session, we had her do some informal one-on-one time with the fans – she talked to many people individually and posed for pictures. It was the chance of a lifetime to be up close and personal with these lovely ladies.
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Dana, Marianne Hurrell (a new Canadian |
Don and our event co-ordinator,
Ronnell, |
The cruise itself was fun, unfortunately, one month before
we were to set sail, Carnival
supposedly came up with a ‘no solicitation policy’. We were originally
told that we could
sell merchandise (Kathy had photos and CD’s to sell, as well as other merchandise),
and one month out, Carnival notified me and said that groups were not allowed
to sell
anything. It caused us a lot of problems and grief – very frustrating,
considering I know
of many groups who sold merchandise or were planning to sell merchandise on upcoming
cruises. To make a long story short, they insisted I sign a ‘No Solicitation
Agreement’.
If I didn’t, they wouldn’t let Don do his performance. I had a lot
of problems with
Carnival, pre-cruise, lots of time involved in phone calls and getting the run-around
when
I should have been doing my other work. My legal firm contacted Carnival and
they never
replied. I could not believe that a company as well known as Carnival wouldn’t
respond
to a legitimate customer complaint.
After the cruise, I then wrote two letters to the President of Carnival, and he never responded. Finally, one of his assistants wrote and said they were sending my complaint to some other department and I have yet to get a response. Many groups go on cruises and sell a lot of their merchandise. There was a lot of time-consuming preparation involved with this cruise. June made CD’s especially for this cruise and then she wasn’t allowed to sell them. We spent a lot of time preparing for this cruise, making special merchandise to sell and buying things that would enhance our show. Had I known that we would have had all these problems, I would have chosen another cruise line. To those of you planning a group event with Carnival, be careful.
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Don’s 50th birthday will be October 29. Although it was only April, I decided to surprise Don and we had a birthday cake brought in. Kathy got the audience to sing Happy Birthday, and she thanked Don and the fans for remembering Elvis all these years. How many tribute artists can say that Kathy Westmoreland and June Moore were at their birthday celebration? It was a great memory and a very fun evening. The crowd ate cake, got up and did a group dance to ‘Burnin’ Love’ and we all just ‘rocked the boat’!! |
Anyways…..as I said, the cruise itself was fun. One woman in our group won a free cruise for 2 and another woman won some money at the slots, so after the pre-cruise hassle, everything else went well. We were a little nervous doing our tribute with Kathy Westmoreland in the audience, I mean this woman sang with Elvis for 7 years! There is no one that could ever compare to Elvis - Don doesn’t try to ‘be Elvis’ and he doesn’t think he is Elvis like some tribute artists do. Kathy had some very nice comments – she said she liked the name of our show, which is ‘A Tribute to the MAGIC of Elvis’. She said that one of the things Elvis wondered about was would he ever be remembered. She said that Elvis would be proud of Don for doing a good tribute and ‘keeping his magic alive’! It was a great compliment for Don, especially since it came from Kathy Westmoreland.
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We brought Kat up to the stage and Don sang to her and presented her with a rose. |
A ‘Kodak Moment’ occurred after Don sang to Kat. It was kind of an emotional night as we all re-lived ‘the magic of Elvis’ and we all got misty several times throughout the evening! |
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