Christmas has just passed. Last week I put away all my Christmas decorations. And a reader is asking me about Easter eggs on the Margaritaville at Sea Islander.
Easter is more than three months away. Why the sudden question about Easter eggs? And what do Easter eggs have to do with a cruise ship?
Well, actually the Easter eggs this reader is looking for are not the kind you dye and hunt on Easter Sunday. No, what she wants is slang for references tucked away in movies, video games and more technology. Little tidbits that not everyone might see or understand.
She wanted to know what Jimmy Buffett references are on his new ship Margaritaville at Sea Islander. Cruise ships often have a beautiful décor but not a significant theme like Margaritaville at Sea does as a loving reminder of the man who portrayed a lifestyle described as “island escapism.”
The beloved singer, songwriter, musician, author and businessman died Sept. 1, 2023, at age 76 after a long fight with a rare skin cancer. But his Islander is filled with touches of Buffett’s songs, writings and businesses.
My second cruise on the Islander
My first cruise on the Islander in June 2024 was a quick two nights out and back, barely enough to really see the new 2,650-passenger ship. So I wanted to go back and I did on a five-night cruise from Tampa, Florida, with stops in Key West and Cozumel.
What did I discover? Here are a half dozen or so Easter eggs or Buffett references and that is only scratching the surface of the Buffett treasures on this ship.
I think it would be fun if the powers-that-be would create a little pamphlet where passengers could go on sort of a treasure hunt to check off all the Buffett touches. That would be a delight for Parrotthead fans and for folks like me who have never been to a Buffett concert and don’t own one of his albums but think the Islander is a welcome addition for cruisers.
Jimmy Buffett Easter eggs
Here goes with some of the Buffett references I found:
Margaritaville
For starters, the name of his new ship – Margaritaville at Sea Islander. One of Buffett’s most popular songs was “Margaritaville” and the ship’s exterior is brightly painted with island touches. Anyone who sees Islander docked someplace is not going to doubt whose ship it is.
The tale goes that Buffett was in Austin when the inspiration struck for “Margaritaville.” He and a friend had stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant before she dropped him at the airport for a flight home to Key West. They got to drinking margaritas.
Buffett also got to thinking how it would be nice to have a real place named Margaritaville where, as the song says, “there’s booze in the blender and soon it will render that frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”
On the plane, Buffett wrote part of his 1977 hit song. He mostly finished it while driving down to the Keys where a wreck on Seven Mile Bridge stopped traffic for about an hour. Buffett finalized “Margaritaville” and performed it the next night in a Key West bar.
Huge 14-foot flip-flop sculpture with a pop-top under it
Located in the heart of the Islander atrium, the sculpture is a favorite photo stop for passengers.
Christened in June 2024, Margaritaville at Sea Islander spans 12 decks with 1,100 staterooms plus 12 eateries and 13 bars and lounges, each with its own cocktail menu.
The sculpture is a nod to Buffett’s lyrics, “Blew out my flip-flop. Stepped on a pop-top.”
Replica of Buffett’s seaplane Hemisphere Dancer suspended over ship atrium
A licensed commercial pilot, Buffett’s most famous airplane was his 1954 Grumman HU-16, a two-engine amphibious flying boat primarily used as search-and-rescue aircraft by the military.
On Jan. 16, 1996, Buffett had taxied Hemisphere Dancer in the water near Negril, Jamaica, when local authorities thought it was a drug-running plane and fired on it. Fortunately, no one was hurt but the plane did sustain several bullet holes. Flying with Buffett was U2’s Bono.
Like the great writer he was, Buffett wrote about the incident in his autobiographical book “A Pirate Looks at 50.” Buffett also penned a tune about the incident as recorded in the song “Jamaica Mistaica” on the album “Banana Wind.”
The plane reminds me of the now-poignant words in his song “Wings” that Buffett sang: “Way up high, I feel free on those wings you can’t see.”
Parrots galore to honor Parrotheads
Parrots over top of me. Parrots below me. Parrots seem everywhere on the Islander, even on the bed coverlet in my stateroom.
The omnipresent parrots are a nod to Buffett fans called Parrotheads. How did his followers get that name?
The story goes that Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band were performing at King’s Island in Cincinnati when bass player Timothy Schmidt looked out over the audience clad in gaudy Hawaiian shirts and carrying inflatable parrots and quipped that they looked like Deadheads (fans of the Grateful Dead) in tropical suits.
“They’re like Parrotheads,” Schmidt reportedly said. Buffett immediately took up the term, the tale goes, and threw it out over his microphone. Buffett lovers adopted the name from the get-go.
Now there are more than 200 registered Parrothead clubs worldwide honoring Buffett and his legacy.
One of the many Parrotheads on the cruise
Booze in the blender hot tub
Hot tubs on a cruise ship are always popular. But I’ve never seen one like the hot tub on Islander. The water is hot and bubbling, of course, but sitting above the tub is a big blender inscribed with the words “Booze in the Blender” and “5 o’Clock Somewhere” – famous lines from Buffett songs, of course.
Havana Daydreamin’ cute lime green car and sports bar
A popular photo stop, the green car with the white top is a smaller version of colorful autos often seen in Cuba. The backdrop with its flowering flowers and arched windows look like a Havana scene.
Buffett’s fourth regular major label album, “Havana Daydreamin’” was released on LP in 1976 and in 1987 on CD. Walk around the car and you’re in the Havana Daydreamin’ Sports Bar.
The bar offers great live Latin beats from a band and draws sports fans with its game-winning TVs. Cocktail menu offers Havana drinks like the Florida Straits with rum, tequila, blue curacao, white cranberry and lime and the Papa Doble with rum, maraschino liqueur, grapefruit and lime.
Front porch swing
A comfy place to stop and watch the lobby action is a wooden swing big enough for two or three. Lettered over top of the swing is “On my front porch swing,” lyrics from Buffett’s “Margaritaville” song on the album “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”
Those words are elsewhere on the ship as a reminder to escape from the stresses and pressures of everyday life by heading to a tropical paradise. Or at least boarding the Islander for a five-night cruise.
Bubbles Up
Jimmy Buffett knew he was dying but he wanted to record one more album with an important message for his Parrotheads.
A smoke- filled bubble tops a special margarita in the ship’s Bubbles Up bar.
Buffett’s 32nd album, “Equal Strain on All Parts,” was completed before his death and released posthumously on Nov. 3, 2023.
The album title comes from a saying Buffett’s grandfather would use to describe a good nap which puts equal strain on all parts of the body. A Bubbles Up bar on the Islander offers smoke-topped margaritas while framed lyrics of the song hanging on a wall are a reminder to enjoy life.
The reflective ballad “Bubbles Up” offers advice given to sailors, pilots and other people who might unexpectedly land in deep water.
The phrase used to help people get oriented and survive is to just follow the bubbles and they’ll take you to the surface.
The same thing, Buffett sang, can be said about tough times in life:
“Bubbles up
They will point you towards home
No matter how deep or how far you roam
They will show you the surface, the plot and the purpose
So, when the journey gets long
Just know that you are loved
There is light up above
And the joy is always enough
Bubbles up”
Photos by Jackie Sheckler Finch
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