Ahoy!

The Love Boat was the theme for this year's Four Seasons holiday party.  They decorated the stage as if it was the deck of a ship.  Looked really cool.  To either side of the stage were screens where water related videos were shown.  Fig was brought in to dj and host a karaoke contest.  Honestly, I was disappointed with the videos that were shown on the screens.  It didn't look like the guests were into the videos at all and I think they had a difficult time relating to the water/Love Boat theme of the evening.  The mood was kind of mellow for the first half of the evening.  There was a skit that the crowd didn't really get into, and I think part of it was because it looked kind of thrown together.  After the skit, they gave out the Employee of the Year and Manager of the Year awards.  Then there was a lull where we played more upbeat music as we made our way closer to the karaoke contest.  We did a raffle and then it was off to the races.

When doing karaoke, always take dance breaks throughout.  We were originally going to do an hour straight of karaoke, but there were people that wanted to dance and weren't into the karaoke.  I would say that those who were into karaoke, were really into it.  Those that weren't were upset that we weren't dancing.  There were also people who were upset that they could only have 2 drinks.  I've done quite a bit of holiday parties, and the better ones are where there is a unifying theme, or something that brings everyone together.  Companies will often do skits or awards or prizes.  With companies such as hotels, it's harder to bring everyone together because it's so diverse.  Last year there was a video that was shot throughout the hotel and I think everyone felt valued because all the departments were represented in the video.  This year, I don't think the skit did that because not everyone could relate to it.  It was harder for us to pull everyone together because the group wasn't unified, and therefor the party was bifurcated once we got to karaoke.  You either like it or you don't.

The bifurcation didn't become apparent until closer to the end of the party.  We were nearing the end of karaoke, when we realized that the crowd was getting too hostile and it was starting to come through in their singing.  It got pretty bad.  We cut off karaoke, although there were people upset about it.  We cranked into dancing and got a packed dancefloor with everyone that was still there.  I saved Calabria for the encore song, and unfortunately, it got everyone riled up for one more.  The encore song is the one you play after the last song.  We let the last song die out, pause, get on the mic and ask if they want one last song, let them scream and yell "Yes!," tease them with a brief intro, cut it and get back on the mic with "Are you sure?," let them say "Yes!" even louder, then go into the encore song.  Only do it if the last song is REALLY good.  Calabria is.  They went nuts!  We played a merengue afterwards, and that wrapped up the night.

--Jonathan Hood, lead

Alvin Black, assisting