Cruise passengers don’t think a lot about corporate executives. When you take a sip of a drink you have never seen before on a Royal Caribbean ship, you don’t think about the work Ed Eiswirth, the cruise line’s senior director of beverage operations and his team put into creating it.
You’re actually not supposed to think about how the sausage gets made, so to speak, but the work is significant. Eiswirth talked about the effort that went into the new beverages on Icon of The Seas during a media preview of the menu.
Related: 3 things Royal Caribbean passengers should do before their cruise
During that event, he shared that he worked with a team of three mixologists to create over 100 new alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks for the first-of-its-class cruise ship. There was over a year of work put into the bar menus, including multiple new bars, including The Lemon Post, a family-friendly venue, and Rye & Bean, a new take on a coffeehouse.
Ship entertainment, like its beverage menus, takes an enormous amount of work. Shows have to be written, cast, and rehearsed before passengers ever get to see them. That process can take years and the entertainment team works well ahead to plan the offerings on new ships.
The man in charge of that for the past decade, Nick Weir, has been an avid poster on X, the former Twitter, where he shared behind-the-scenes views of just how much goes into those shows. Those posts included a look at the Vistarama system, which makes a video performance look like it happening live posted on May 11.
That appeared to be Weir’s last act as the senior vice president and “creator-in-chief” for the cruise line. He has been replaced effective immediately.
Icon of the Seas has “The Wizard of Oz” as its signature show.
Image source: Royal Caribbean
Royal Caribbean has a new entertainment head
“Effective immediately, Christine Coachman is the Vice President, Entertainment for Royal Caribbean International. She replaces Nick Weir, who has left the company after 10 years with the company,” Matt Hochberg of the Royal Caribbean Blog first reported.
It’s not clear whether Weir left on his own or was shown the door, but Hochberg used the word “leaves” to describe the move. He remains on the cruise company’s website where his job is described as follows:
“Nick oversees the cruise line’s onboard entertainment and guest activities programming, as well as Royal Caribbean Productions, the industry’s only in-house department that creates, produces, and manages the largest entertainment operation at sea,” the website shared.
Hochberg did call the change a “shakeup.”
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Royal Caribbean promotes an experienced leader.
While the circumstances of the change remain cloudy, Royal Caribbean did confirm Coachman’s promotion in an internal document, which Hochberg obtained. The message came from Royal Caribbean Senior Vice President of Hotel Operations, Sean Treacy.
“Drawing from nearly 35 years of experience at Royal Caribbean, Christi will now lead the team responsible for bringing to life the best entertainment at sea. She will oversee the cruise line’s onboard entertainment and guest activities programming, as well as Royal Caribbean Productions, the industry’s only in-house department that creates, produces, and manages the largest entertainment operation at sea,” he wrote.
Weir held the top position in the entertainment department since 2013.
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‘We wish Nick well and we’re grateful for his contributions,’ a company spokesperson told Seatrade Cruise News.
Weir has not commented publicly and his X page still reflects his now former position.
