Spellbound by a magical experience on the Sun Princess

2024-05-06

The keys of the piano were moving, producing music as if by magic.

As I watched the keys, a waitress holding a tray of sparkly drinks suggested I ask “Isabella” to play me a song. I raised an eyebrow, then asked Isabella to play “Greensleeves.” There was a brief pause, and then “she” began to play my request.

This encounter gave me a pretty good idea of what I could expect from Spellbound, the newest specialty venue from Princess Cruises, an extraordinary space hidden behind a pretty ordinary-looking black door on the Sun Princess.

Beyond the piano room there was a bar that served dramatically presented libations, a cozy library filled with curious interactive attractions and a small theater for magic shows.

This venue was created in conjunction with the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians and magic enthusiasts in Hollywood, Calif. The club, which is open only to members of the Academy of Magical Arts and their guests, specializes in teaching and performing magic. Its magicians will appear on the Sun Princess.

I sailed on the ship’s second revenue cruise last month and got a sneak peek of Spellbound, which is set to open April 8.

Spellbound is the latest concept from Princess’ Extraordinary Experiences product. In 2022, the line introduced 360: An Extraordinary Experience, which offered a small group of guests a seven-course dinner paired with the tastes, sights, sounds, touch and fragrances of the region where the dishes originated.

Spellbound envelops guests in an early- to mid-20th-century place, time and mindset with the help of a specialty dinner, creative drinks and magic. The space itself was designed to resemble the interior of the Victorian house the Magic Castle calls home in California.

Guests who reserve a spot for the evening are given exclusive access to a multiroom bar that mixes playful homages to magic with what I found to be a slightly eerie sense of the unknown.

Dinner, drinks …

The partnership between the Magic Castle and Princess first materialized last fall when the club put on a Conjurer’s Cruise aboard the Discovery Princess. (Another of these magic-themed voyages is planned for the Sun Princess on Nov. 9.)

Guests, who are required to dress in cocktail attire, begin the evening with dinner in a secluded area in the Horizons Dining room; the meal is inspired by dinners at the Magic Castle and features a menu not available anywhere else on the ship. Following dinner, guests are escorted to a charcoal-black door, where they wait to be summoned into Spellbound.

My sister and I, in a group of maybe a dozen people, were led into a small holding room with a faux fireplace where we stood surrounded by pictures of the Magic Castle and its founders as a voice narrated the castle’s history. (The Magic Castle opened in 1963, but its origin dates to magician William Larsen’s starting the Academy of Magical Arts in 1951.)

Eventually, the fireplace rolled to one side, revealing the rest of the venue, which consisted of several rooms to explore.

Servers immediately greeted us with flutes of St-Germain elderflower liqueur mixed with lavender syrup and adorned with a puff of blue cotton candy to be pushed into the drink, giving it a slightly blue, glittery look.

The bar featured 14 specialty cocktails, three of which were presented with dramatic effect. One of them, Escape From Houdini’s Chest, was a cinnamon- and strawberry-infused vodka drink with St-Germain and lime that had to be retrieved from a smoking box. My sister, a lover of all things Halloween, enjoyed the presentation as much as the drink.

I favored the Smoke and Mirrors, which was delivered in a smoking case and included coconut and spiced rums along with Aperol, orange liqueur and almond and pear syrups.

… and a show

While no unsuspecting volunteers were sawed in half during our visit to Spellbound, magic was on the agenda. Magician Mark Gibson performed card tricks at the bar, which made for fun entertainment that seemed to defy logic. Our crowd emitted audible, sometimes loud oohs and ahhs as well as a few laughs as he performed.

The library offered a treasure trove of items to examine: fascinating, small animal specimens, potion bottles, creepy figurines, even a rotary telephone that at times might have someone on the other end of the line.

Mohammed, who served us drinks in the library, did not want to tell me all of the room’s secrets; better that they should be discovered naturally, he said. But I did get him to reveal a couple of them to me.

For instance, if people are talking too loudly in one area of the library, the books will shush them.

“You can interact with things. You just have to be curious,” he said.

About two dozen of us were led to the theater for a magic show of card tricks put on by Woody Aragon, another Magic Castle magician. Almost half of the people in the room were called on to participate in the show in some way; I was called to shuffle a deck of cards, then I participated in one of the card tricks.

The performance was impressive. At one point, a guest was brought to the stage and asked to call a friend who was elsewhere on the ship. Aragon instructed the guest to tell the woman on the phone to think of a specific card in the deck and keep it to herself. Within minutes, Aragon told the audience she was thinking of the queen of hearts, which she confirmed over the phone.

The magician for these performances will change every few cruises, cycling in other Magic Castle performers, although it is not clear whether all will perform only card tricks.

Spellbound will be available for reservations every evening except on embarkation days. While a bar venue, the experience is open to children 13 years old and up. The line plans to eventually offer a Sunday brunch family experience to involve younger visitors.

Reservations are required and are priced at $149 per guest. There is a nightly limit of 90 guests, three seatings of 30 people each, although all guests are welcome to remain at Spellbound for the entire evening (the bar does not have a set closing time; it remains open until the last guest has left).

Courtesy of Travel Weekly