Teri West
The cruise industry knows something about what it takes to write a good sequel.
When building sister ships, cruise lines must strike a balance between bringing back familiar features and re-imagining them into new spaces. And the Spellbound venue on Princess Cruises' new Sphere-class ship, the Star Princess, is a great example.
Spellbound debuted on the Sun Princess last year and is a speakeasy-style lounge with magic shows. The team behind Los Angeles' famous Magic Castle designed it, and now they've redesigned it for the Star.
The Sun's Spellbound lounge is done up in a Victorian style, while the sequel is based on vaudeville and the Great Cardini, a masterful card magician (real name: Richard Pitchford) who presided over the Magician's Guild in 1945.
There's also a personal connection between the Magic Castle and Cardini: he was the great-uncle of the Magic Castle's current owner, Randy Pitchford.
The Magic Castle also has a connection to vaudeville. Erika Larsen, whose family founded the venue, had an uncle who also ran a vaudeville-style venue. It was a project that Larsen said informed her appreciation of what she calls the variety arts.
Vaudeville-themed decor in Spellbound on the Star Princess. Photo Credit: Teri West
"I got to see all the old vaudevillians in their final days," she told me on the Star Princess' first sailing out of Port Everglades last weekend. "Acrobats in their 80s, jugglers, you name it."
The Magic Castle is members-only, and I haven't visited, but I found Spellbound to be an enchanting experience on the Star Princess. The decor -- velvet seating, framed portraits and posters, and even a replication of the backstage of a vaudeville theater -- feels beautiful and mystifying, not kitschy.
The venue is also far from cramped. Three connected rooms make for a spacious opportunity to sit and enjoy a drink, walk around and enjoy the intricate wall art or take in a card trick, as I did. A neighboring theater allows for intimate shows performed by a mentalist.
The bar is also generously sized and a space where I saw guests gathering to watch a bartender prepare a smoking cocktail.
It was Princess Cruises executives who suggested giving Spellbound a new theme for the Star, Larsen said.
And it's something you'll find on other specialty venues on cruise ships within a class. Royal Caribbean International, for example, is now preparing its third iteration of the Icon-class specialty restaurant with live music called Supper Club, and each version has a different theme: New York, Chicago and, on the Legend of the Seas next summer, Hollywood.
For Larsen, getting to design a new Spellbound was a treat.
"We really dug doing this one," she said.