Highlander Clan Cruise III
November 1999 Report

Cruise Report

First, I am writing this on the way back from the Highlander Clan Cruise III which I enjoyed tremendously. I am sitting on a plane and writing this before I lose too much of the details since there is not much else to do when they canceled my direct flight and ran me through Dallas instead (I live in NJ). I am very glad that I went and think we had a really good turnout.

All the pictures from the Highlander Clan Cruise II and III, SSW and Legacy are up at my website at www.camper65.com. Let me know what you think.

Let me start with Anthony's play the night before the cruise was to begin. Anthony makes an excellent vampire and we were all cracking up laughing at the play. We arrived just in time for the play to start and we partied afterwards with Anthony and the other actors and actresses. The gentleman playing the mad? scientist was excellent and really brought umph to his part, but so did all the people. I personally loved the young lady who played the teenager that was taking care of the apartment for Anthony's character. She knew what he was and was in love with him. I won't go into any more detail only because if this play does make it into a bigger arena, I want you (who may go see it) to be surprised.

The Cruise

For starters, let me say that the cruise line was much better than last year, while slightly smaller cabins, the food was much better and they gave you decent size portions. One of the best things about this cruise ship was the much smaller size so that you did not feel like you were doing the four minute mile to get from one place to another. Nearly everything was on one of three floors of the cruise ship, the dining room and then the two lounges which were big enough that almost everything was also to get in and have fun watching whatever was going on. Also having one event happen at a particular time (other than fan club meetings) permitted people to see the main event. But yes, there were videos being shown, just not all the time on the television (what happened to round the clock Highlander), but also in one conference room. The only group that I did miss seeing this year was the Clanranald but there was no way they could have had room to show off their sword battle and the rooms were way too small for some of the guys, they had enough problems last year with no room in their cabins.

Friday Night

Opening ceremonies were excellent and it was so much fun watching Jim Byrnes play again. He always does such a good concert that you cannot help being in love with his music. There was not a lot happening Friday night as it was a good night for the opening and good for seeing your old friends and meeting new ones. The only other thing besides dinner was the first receiving line. But the next two days had plenty to do.

Saturday

The biggest thing here was that we actually had Bill Panzer and David Abromowitz at the cruise for the day, and they were in the first Q&A panel, with Peter Wingfield, Stan Kirsch, and Jim Byrnes and they answered many of our questions about the six seasons of Highlander, cannot remember all the details but they did bring out a lot of good points from their respective views. I missed the discussion of Highlander IV which they did. Maureen did an introduction with Bill and David and they discussed the episodes that were picked "Best of Highlander" and discussed the episodes from their points of view, producer and writer. They did a good panel, just too much to remember it all. At one point they opened it up to questions, and they answered a few and then David finish the Q&A with a very nice prayer (in Hebrew) that someone asked him to do.

Biggest thing is that they announced that they are looking into releasing the seasons on DVD. Yeah, no more broken tapes. I know I will be looking forward to that.............

Anthony DeLongis and Robert Chapin ("The Bob") did an excellent sword demo, including showing how you can choreograph a stunt, and again pulled a person out of the audience, but this time Bob got revenge from Sword Spectacular Weekend when he pulled the young lady who at SSW said "One More Time" and when she thought they were done, what does Bob say but "One More Time". We were all laughing at that. He is such a ham. Everyone was really having fun.

I went to Peter's fan club's party on this day, and who should happen to show up just as Cold Feet's shower scene was being shown but the man himself, Peter Wingfield. He walked into a group of woman whooping about that scene, which quickly cut into parts of Strange World. Man was he shocked that we got that.

Saturday night we had the whip demo and Anthony and Robert of course put on an excellent presentation for everyone. And again Robert was playing the bad guy but he looks so good doing it. They really showed a lot of the technique that Anthony learned on his own and how he accomplished it. We really had a good time watching that again. And it is never the same thing twice because like the sword demo, they improvise all the time. Especially with the slight wind that was in the air.

Sunday

We did Best of Highlander episodes with the various stars who were in them. Maureen brought a lot of dailies so you got to see the takes from all the different angles and from the different viewpoints of the actors. This was one of the best parts because you also got to see how it looked before the final cut was done. First Stan discussed End of Innocence with Maureen and was so patient with the problems with the sound on the VCR player that they were using. Like five takes with just Adrian in the camera. But we kept getting to see a butt shot that was not in the one shown on television, and boy did it look good. Next came Stan and Joe discussing more of End of Innocence and then Jim and Maureen discussing Glory Days. Then suddenly Peter joins him for discussing Indiscretions, then Jim left and Peter discussed Methuselah's Gift with Maureen. Unfortunately I was not there for Peter's talk as we had the Anthony DeLongis Fan Club Meeting with Anthony and of course he brought the Chalice with him for another toast. But then we had fan club pictures being taken and did those photographs have a job and a half with Anthony's and Peter's Fan Clubs with Anthony's having something like 90 members there and Peter's with over a hundred members having shown up on the cruise. But they got us all in and you can actually see who is who. Thank you Royal Caribbean Cruise Photographers, I have two very special pictures with all my fellow club members.

When all the fan clubs photos were done, we had Anthony's discussion with Maureen about Duende and we got to see Anthony's kiss in the limo with the actress over and over which Maureen said she liked the last take, (out of about eight of them) but of course that is when they break out singing instead of doing the lines so we all cracked up on that one. But seriously it was really good seeing what happens behind the scenes with each of these particular episodes that everyone picked as the best.

Another good thing about this year's cruise over last year's was that you actually had time to eat lunch without missing anything as there were breaks in between things.

I will say that at one point over the course of the weekend I did tell Peter that not only was Carolyn glowing but he was also and to enjoy fatherhood. Over the course of the whole weekend, he constantly was smiling and looking very happy. Congratulations to you two on the pending newest Wingfield.

Closing ceremonies were enjoyable, with all the volunteers, staff and guests getting thank you's and rounds of applause from the whole contingency of fans who attended. Jim, of course, closed out the con with another concert and he did one of my personal favorites "Junior Burn the House Down". I still cannot get enough of his music. After dinner, many people just decided to hang out until the wee hours of the morning (with many of us having only about two or three hours sleep before the early wake-up for debarkation setups) so we partied it up. The next day of course many of us were feeling it but we had too much fun to miss anything. Each night if you got about four hours sleep you got a lot, when you consider most of us hung out with our friends at night.

Well that's it for now.

Camper

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