Carnival Cruise Lines Floats Out New Entertainment Directors

There was a time when cruise directors were more visible to passengers on most cruise ships. In addition to acting as the Master of Ceremonies before shows and hosting some of the fun activities on board, many cruise directors were talented entertainers themselves who often appeared on stage to the delight of audiences—they were singers, magicians, ventriloquists—a few even had notable animal acts. Cruise directors also often mingled among the passengers in the lounges throughout the day and evening, graciously chatting and answering questions.

As cruise ships grew increasingly larger, entertainment staffs grew proportionally and today’s cruise director is less and less likely to be a performer. On some ships the only time passengers “encounter” the cruise director is when he/she makes an announcement over the public address system. That’s about to change aboard Carnival Cruise Lines’ ships.

Carnival has recognized that cruise directors’ increasingly varied administrative responsibilities tend to take time away from their role as the “face and voice” of the ship and to change that the line has created the important new on board position of entertainment director. The new entertainment director will be part of the senior shipboard management team and responsible for coordinating on board programming and scheduling and various administrative/back-of-house duties.

The ships’ cruise directors will report to the entertainment directors and this restructuring of the shipboard organization will allow cruise directors to heavily focus on guest interaction and their on-stage role.

Butch Begovich, Kevin Noonan, and James Charlton of the guest operations team will be responsible for rolling out this program which is expected to be fleetwide in approximately two years. Carnival will be hiring entertainment directors from both its existing workforce as well as through various recruitment efforts.

Image Courtesy Carnival Cruise Lines