She kinda looks like me

Intersociety “Dragonboat” Cruise (on that small boat)
Assessment Time: 07:30PM – 10:30PM
Cruise Hours: 07:30PM – 10:30PM
Route: Leaving Darling Harbour, around to Port Jackson for a few circles, and then heading back to Darling Harbour.
Promoter Website: A once off event held by multiple Asian oriented university societies
Occurrence: Once off event.
Dress Code / Door Policy: No dress code – anything goes. A handful of people dressed up as pirates (:o!!), some girls as asian orient princesses (I can’t really describe the dress)… and whatever else there was. Most people wore their normal casual attire.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $35 Early bird. $45 otherwise ( I think..)
Inside: A small almost tug-like boat. Bottom level to hold around 100-200 people, which is where the dancing happens. Upstairs is where the bar is, and a smaller open area about half the size as the bottom. 
Cloak Room: None
Bar Prices / Line: Standard beer, house wines, Bacardis, premixed spirit drinks were FREE all night long. The bar service is fast, so waiting is no longer than 5 to 10 minutes. Later in the night the line was barely there. Oh, there was also free food throughout the night. These uni cruises are full of win.
DJs:
Music Style: I didn’t spend much time downstairs to be honest – from the time I was downstairs, it was Contemporary RnB and Pop.. pretty typical to an RnB club.
Crowd & Ratio: Mostly Asian Australian (maybe 70%%). The rest were International Students from all over the world. Ratio wasn’t very promising. Actually.. the cruise had about 100 or so people – it unfortunately did not sell out – possible that it was run too early on the semester? Who knows.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment
Atmosphere: Initially everyone was upstairs, not dancing, but drinking. Eventually as people become more friendly with each other, and the music got louder, most people went downstairs to dance their hearts away. At the peak time of dancing (around 09:30PM) it was pretty packed you could say, and we were relegated to the edges of the dancefloor.. so in this aspect it was pretty cool. In all, the boat was about half capacity – I was hoping for a little more of a population.
Walkthrough: 9PM of dancefloor

Click here to view the embedded video.

Which boat?
There were two cruise boats. One awesome looking boat – the Lady Rose (which I went on previously), and a smaller not so good looking boat in comparison. Both boats had youngish looking people going on board. Sadly we were relegated the smaller boat. Boohoo! Such is uni life.

It didn’t sell out
I was kind of disappointed in the turn out. As mentioned, only about half the boat I would say was filled up with people. I mean.. $35 for freaking unlimited alcohol and food. Like people typically spend $100 or whatever on drinks and cover charge, and here its only $35, with entry to the after party after. My GOD.. take the chance while you can to go on these booze cruises you uni students!! The upside was that there was no chance that the booze would run out

Leaving Darling Harbour - with free energy drink for the night ahead

Friends who didn’t turn up
Spotted – A poor lonely girl playing with the mobile. Why, when there was free alcohol to be had? She explained that her friends ditched the cruise. Seriously? You buy tickets to unlimited booze, and you ditch it at the last minute. What a waste of money. Give that money to charity or something if you can blow that much money away! We ended up talking to the lonely girl about what the odds are at winning at the casino in the long term (the answer is ZERO, unless you’re playing Texas Holdem against other people)

Arrivederci

We finished, and some people kicked on to the after party at Home Nightclub.

Recommendation
Excellent value. Sad about the turnout. Alcohol though makes worries go away.

“Dragonboat” Cruise 2011: 5.0/10

Sydney Habour Bridge - 'We on a Boat' Cruise

Friends invited me onto this cruise – A reggae/funk dance cruise – I’ve never been on a day cruise and I’ve never been to a reggae event – so I put on my Mexican outfit and off we went – here we go!

We on a Boat – The Lady Rose Catamaran
Website: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=318543987561
Cruise Times: 1pm to 6pm
Course sailed: Departing King St Wharf, Darling Harbour, the boat sailed north then East under the harbour Bridge, past the Opera house to hang about Jackson’s bay, circling around the entire course twice before coming back to King St Wharf.
Weather Conditions: Sunny throughout the entire cruise. Humidity low and it was warm enough to not be afraid of massive sunburn.
Dress Code / Door Policy: anything goes. Most people wore casual shirts, shorts. I had worn a mexican sombrero complete with my homemade poncho
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Tickets were available from Moshtix for $35 plus booking fee. At the door they were $40 or $50 I believe.
On Board Inside: This was a 2 level boat with a 3rd roof top level. Today, as the event was not sold out, only the bottom and rooftop level were open.
Cloak Room: None available. There were not many people anyway so there wasnt too much risk in leaving stuff lying around.
Bar: Didn’t drink today.
DJs: Nick Toth, JC, Levins, Fasmwa, Naiki, Di Tha DJ, Mickey Morphingaz
Music: Reggae and Dancehall on the top level the whole time. On the bottom level was also the same, with some funk and old school rnb thrown in.
Crowd: About half the crowd were Africans, and the rest of the crowd were split between whites and a contigent of asian dancers who were here, I am guessing, for the modern rnb, but of course, did not get it. Various ages between young and old. Mostly late 20′s or 30s.
Entertainment: There were MCs on both the rooftop deck and the bottom level. Often the MC would call upon the ladies to jump in front of the DJ to participate in games such as booty shaking competitions, grinding competitions, and reggae dancing styles. It’s truly amazing to see girls out there willing to participate in these games sober. All the men love it.
Atmosphere: Top level was relaxed party. People are dancing about on the chairs and on the floor, but in a way that can only be achieved by playing reggae and dancehall. (It’s hard to explain, you probably have had to be there to know what I mean) Most of the people were here for a dancing good time, and only a handful of people were sitting down the whole time. On the bottom level was different, as it was totally dead for most of the cruise. There was on average about five to ten people at the same time on the floor. At peak, the asian dance contigent started to dance when the funk music came out, and they pretty much had half the boat attendees gaping in awe as they go about their dance moves.

Top Level - We on a Boat Reggae Cruise

Breakdancers Bottom Level

Timeline
Sea swaying
Most of the time was spent on the top deck where the weather was sunny perfect, and people are dancing around. The boat often rocks, and being on top of a small vessel meant that the effect is multiplied, so there were many moments where everyone would sway back and forth a step or two to keep balance, as the ship swayed. At one point early in the cruise, it swayed so much that the DJs Macbook fell off the table and onto the floor. bang! Luckily it was still working after that fall – otherwise we would have been in massive trouble if we had no music.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The celebration of booty
The MC, throughout, always is encouraging the women to come up to dance, shake their booty:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is then followed up by asking if any of the men want to “ride” the booty. The women are happy to play along – amazing that the women don’t care! I like this kind of happy environment:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Smelly whiffs of wind
Often as well, for a reason unknown, we would encounter a whiff of dirty air, which basically smelled like someone had taken a massive dump. One could assume that it was coming from the bathroom, but not that many people would have had a massive dump, right? So it could have been the harbour giving off rotten egg gas, or whatever gas is given out that makes sea passengers sick. In any case, it was gross whenever it happened.

So you think you can dance with Don
For season 2 of So You Can Think You Can Dance Australia, there was Don, the B-Boy who was eliminated early from the top set of dancers. Well, we spotted him on the cruise and he was nice enough to take a photo with us!

With Don from So You Can Think You Can Dance Australia Season 2

He said he thought I was awesome, dressing up as a mexican and all, and even questioned if he should be ‘famous’. lol modesty. Here are some breakdancing clips from his crew:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of the guys wants my hat
The sombrero is getting in the way of dancing, so I put it down. One of the Djs asks if he can wear it, sure I give it to him to wear for the rest of the cruise. At the end of it, he offers me $10 for it. HELL NO, I paid $15 for it. I like it. He still wants $10 for it. Two asians negotiating on a price for the transfer of a Mexican hat on a reggae cruise in Sydney. A funny sight. I ended up keeping the hat.

He wants to buy my sombrero. nope, not gonna happen

Arrivederci
As we head back into wharf, the DJ plays “Im on a boat” by the Lonely Island, and we all go mad. Its great.

Recommendation
Only if you like reggae and dancehall music. Don’t come alone unless you like to make new friends. Other than that it was a very good vibe upstairs, especially combined with the great weather, but downstairs was a downer. If more people came it would have made it a raging cruise on both levels.

We on a Boat Party Reggae Cruise – 5.5/10