A Nod to the Past

[HostDave]

By Tim Rubacky, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Product Development

Yesterday, the world’s largest cruise-related event began in Miami. It’s called Cruise Shipping Miami and is now in its 28th year. It began as a small gathering of cruise line executives and some suppliers in New York nearly here decades ago to discuss issues of the day and has grown to encompass thousands upon thousands of attendees and fill the entire Miami Beach Convention Center. Enormous models of the latest megaships carrying 4,000 passengers are on display. Scores of ports reach out to cruise lines. Sessions range from food service techniques to the strength of the Caribbean cruise market. The focus is always on the future.

Eyes are on the newest trends in carpet patterns, new vacuum-flush toilets, the latest laser technology for production shows and new, more efficient kitchen equipment that allows the cruise lines to produce 20,000 meals a day even faster. There’s talk of how to bring the latest modern trends in contemporary hotels into the design of cruise ships. More glass, more brushed nickel, more streamlined modern decor. More, more, more.

As you can probably imagine, the Great American Steamboat Company doesn’t have a huge interest in a lot of the topics being discussed in Miami this week. Make no mistake, we are very interested in how LED lights can save energy or kitchen equipment that makes certain your meal arrives fresh, hot and quickly from the kitchen. But we don’t have an affinity for modern décor, lasers and the like. American river cruising is not about big, bigger, biggest or new, newer, newest. It is, however, about authenticity, charm, hospitality and a sense of community.

With this blog, you’ll see a few photos taken aboard American Queen as we continue with her refurbishment in New Orleans in preparation for her first voyage next month. It says volumes about the river cruising experience that simply by giving these photos an antique treatment, they might as well be straight from a history book. There are no lasers and no modern décor to disrupt the authentic cruise experience.

Settle back into a rocking chair and watch the river slide by. That row of rocking chairs looks inviting, doesn’t it? And that row of chairs could have been placed on any boat from another era as well. The folks traveling on one of the famed Anchor Line boats back in the 18th century could be rocking the day away just as easily as you can aboard the American Queen in 2012. The sights along the river have changed a bit since then, and we certainly have all the comfortable modern conveniences that were missing 150 years ago, but the essence of steamboating is alive and well just as Mark Twain remembered.

The Grand Saloon, our two-deck showroom, is designed after a river town’s opera house with box seats and a proscenium arch. The J.M. White Dining Room resembles the main cabin of the famed J.M. White, a floating palace that so enchanted Mark Twain he wrote of it extensively in Life on the Mississippi. Dine surrounded by filigrees and fretwork and soaring windows with stained glass crowns.

The grand staircase’s chandelier is a reproduction of one created for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. As you might expect, the Mark Twain Gallery is like stepping back in time with its mahogany ceiling, steamboat models, tiffany lamps and plush Victorian-patterned chairs. Just forward, the Gentleman’s Card Room is reminiscent of a gambler’s gathering spot while across the corridor the Ladies’ Parlor looks every inch of the plantation-style parlor it is intended to celebrate.

Indeed, the American Queen is unique. She has charm. She has personality. And she is proud of the past.

The last time I checked, there wasn’t a tube of neon or laser beam to be found. And that’s just how we like it.