End of Dance Hosts?

[Bill S]

That is too bad that HAL is limiting dance hosts to cruises more than 20 days. I agree that that number of sea days should be a major factor in having dance hosts on board. We will be going to Hawaii on the Zaandam and out of the 15 days, at least 9 days will be sea days.

We have been on several cruises where there have been dance hosts. On one of the cruises, one of them played team trivia with us-he was a college professor. One another cruise, one of the dance hosts sat at our table for 3 nights--he was a retired school teacher from the Boston area and was very nice and interesting.

As ballroom dancers, we pay attention to the dance hosts. Some are much better than others-there is a noticeable range of dancing skills within the dance host community, IMO. They all seemed to be very busy and they have to dance with ladies of varying dancing abilities as well-not an easy job, by any means.

[silvercruiser]

Dance hosts used to be hired through an agent in California, some woman named Loretta, and they had to pass dancing tests.....I think it was something like 5 dances with 4 variations to each one. Their cruise was free, but they had to pay Loretta a daily fee. 10-12 years ago it was only about $30 a day, probably more now.

The cruise lines don't hire the Gentleman Hosts themselves, they do it through an agency.