Special NOVEMBER | Page 10

LIFE S A CRUISE
With all his bravado he decided he wanted to see the world so went to an Air Force recruitment office and told them he wanted to join , but only if he didn t go to boot camp , and started out as a Captain . Needless to say that didn t go over well . Jonathan laughs as he says , I would have made a great captain .”
Not one to be put off he decided to keep trying different ways to see the world and saw an advertisement for small cruise ships seeking naturalists based in Seattle , called Exploration Cruise Lines . He phoned the office and they told him to get lost , so he phoned upper management and they told him to get lost , he then phoned the CEO of the company who told him the same thing . Still firmly believing he was the right person for the job he realized they weren t doing any entertainment on these ships . They were nature cruises and Jonathan assumed the poor cooped-up passengers must be in great need of some magic and laughter ! He set off early one morning to a christening of one of the companies new ships . Because he had previously phoned the Vice-President and President of the company he knew their names , so he told the guard he was hired to do magic and had a meeting with the executives later in the day . He needed to get on early to set up . Of course you couldn t do that today , but like all things Jonathan does he is determined to bring his best to anything , and ultimately they met him and got to see him perform , even well before the provisions were loaded on the ship . Not only did he get the job but he became the head of the entertainment and the naturalist department , and turned that title into Cruise Director and Director of Entertainment within 6 months .
From there he was offered a job with Regency Cruises with the elegant , huge , old , queens of the sea renamed Regent Sun , Regent Sea and Regent Star . These were large old-world ships with swept back two and three smokestacks that plied the Atlantic at the end of WW2 . There he very quickly worked his way up to become the Owners Representative in charge of the entertainment , Casino , Shore Excursions and on-board games like BINGO and Horse Racing . Jonathan now found himself flying all over the world with a bag of magic with at least two hours of stage and 5 hours of Parlour material in case he needed it should he have to fire somebody who wasn t doing their job up to the Owners Rep s standards . He was just 26 years old at the time .
The cruise industry is very tight and word got out about the Jonathan s skills and ability and he was contacted by Stanley B . McDonald , an entrepreneur who founded Princess Cruises . Stan had just sold Princess and was looking at starting a new cruise line that would allow car access like a ferry one way , and a luxury cruise with full cabins and entertainment on the way back . Alaska , the Mediterranean , South America and Europe were targeted . It was Jonathan s job as VP of Marketing and Sales to fill those cruises through convincing travel agents to sell the line to their clients . The only issue was the sales had to happen before the ships were in service . He used his background in magic to produce extravagant shows on land to create the feel of being on the ships even though they didn t exist . The first of the ships scheduled to sail was christened The SunDancer . The cruise line was named Sundance Cruises . True to his internal makeup , Jonathan convinced the travel agents in America that the line was viable . Some