In addition to the boat drills, taking part in parades is another required duty that is not musical. Every week there are two parades – one to welcome guests aboard, and the other to bid them farewell. Both parades take place on the Promenade Deck, a guest shopping avenue on deck 5. The orchestra takes part in the farewell parade.

The parades are quite colorful and feature some very elaborate costumes. The orchestra wears a dragon costume, and it takes 6 of us to operate it – one each on the head and tail, and four in-between (we take turns every week). I'm one of the four in-between, and my job is to make the hump that I control undulate vertically in time to the music (it's a rather snakelike dragon).

The costume consists of the three parts – head, body, and tail – connected together with velcro. Usually everything works as planned, but during last Saturday's parade the tail became detached from the body just seconds before we had to go. Poor Adrienne, the alto player who was handling the tail section, was on her own, although she attempted to catch up and make it appear connected. She was not successful, however.

Now, I don't know if you've ever seen a dragon tail, but when viewed out of context it could easily be confused with another body part – specifically the penis. I can only imagine what the guests must have been thinking as they watched Adrienne dancing down the parade line in her penis suit. But, well, what can you do? The show must go on!



A Dragon's Tail