Phantom Reborn

Musical performances have never quit throughout the ages of my life, and The Lido is my favourite place of all in the ship. Dazzling performances by handsome, pretty and sexy Ukraine as well as Belarus performers, and heart-thumping performances by acrobats all the way from Guang Xi, China, certainly caught the eyes of the audiences with mouth wide opened.

First Day

On the first day, Star Cruise presents ‘The Musicians of Bremen’. It was a modern day musical comedy by the Grimm Brothers about animals: the donkey, the hound, the cat and the cock, who travel to the two town of Bremen to become the town musicians. The story weaves around Troubadour, who meets the four musicians who joins him on his adventure. Love is in the air when Troubadour falls for a beautiful Princess who runs away from The Palace seeking for new adventures with the group. When I saw the description of the story, immediately I recalled the fairy tale which I came to know of when I was still a toddler. It was a fairy tale, but the performance was like those which were held in the Broadway. Snapping pictures from this performance was prohibited as professionals were involved.

Second Day

The stage performance of the day was ‘Movie Fantasia’. Crew members, other than serving their customers on-board, they were also performing for the customers! ‘Movie Fantasia’, according to the Assistant Cruise Director, was the first ever performance by the crew members, and they have been trained for months for this performance. Oh, how fortunate we were to have watched this!

‘Movie Fantasia’ is a performance where bits and pieces of movies combined together in one fabulous show. Pictures snapping and video recording are highly recommended for this one, to promote the cruise, perhaps?

A sudden familiar music revolved around The Lido, it was the remix version of “Lady Marmalade”, and crew onboard wore dazzling suits and costumes, dancing their hearts out like in a fiesta. “Moulin Rouge!” it is! "Sparkling Diamonds" then filled the hall with great fun sensations. Next up, “Rhythm of the Night (Moulin Rouge version)” by Valerie sounded even catchier when the performers correlated their movements with the music. Followed by the silly yet entertaining “Can Can Song”, the audiences were simply wow-ed away by the crew members. Suddenly, the fast tracks faded away slowly, exchanged with existence of the bittersweet melody, “Come What May”.

Curtain closed for the next “movie”, several hunks stood in the middle of the stage, “Step Up” is on the stage! Guys with caps on their heads, girls with light outfits were street-dancing fabulously. When you thought that this version of “Step Up” was made up only by the trained crew members, two professional acrobatic individuals from China appeared and displayed heart thumping acrobats, adding some icing on the cake.

Next up, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” showed up with.... Umm, an ugly big puppet in my opinion. That puppet was displaying some kung-fu styles in the middle of the stage with lame tricks. Perhaps that was part of the strategies to impress the children. Along came with voices of another beautiful Chinese crew member singing the soundtrack of that movie, originally by Coco Lee. When you thought that the next “movie” was on its way, amazingly, our cruise director, Zelda slowly walked into the heart of the stage and sang us “Ju Hua Tai”, originally by Jay Chow.

Out of the blue, the stage was like devoured by an evil spirit, eerie voices and melodies were chanted. Though the voice seemed a little bit creepy, but it sounded familiar enough for me to identify the upcoming “movie”. Ahoy, mates! “Pirates of the Caribbean” is in the house! Captain Jack Sparrow emerged from the crowd, trying hard to impress us. Another puppet came from the backstage; it was a pirate puppet this time, as though it had formed a tacit agreement with other performers, this one performed fine. The pirates cruised themselves down into the crowd of audiences and grabbed one of them onto the stage. I did not know what happened to that spectator after that.

Catchy tunes were heard, sounded like Abba came to pay a visit to the cruise. “Mamma Mia!” was the next show held on stage! Three hunks in sparkling costumes along with three pretty ladies were dancing and singing Abba themes such as the famous “Mamma Mia”, “Dancing Queen” together.

“The Gypsy” came straight after that. An obvious man-disguised fat lady with “sexy costumes” walked out under the spot light, making some noises with “her” trumpet. “She” shook “her” booty so hilariously, as if laughing gases came out from “her” booty. Along the way, there came another two men-disguised ladies shook their booties. I really liked this one, it was so horribly funny.

Then, the last “movie” came on stage. I did not know what movie theme that was; it seemed to be a famous Hindi Movie. Dancers were all in their saris and sleeveless shirts. A Chinese crew member danced so funnily as my sister kept asking me to look at him. Well, come to think of it, occasionally I danced the same way as he did too. Ugh... forget about it.

Third Day

The last performance we saw in The Lido was “Sports Unlimited”. Interesting theme with great performances by the Olympic medallists and acrobatic personnel exhilarated the auditorium. The performers did many incredible stunts which if their lives could not be spared should they failed to correlate for a millisecond.