Tom Stieghorst
Celebrity Cruises' new Celebrity Edge won't be arriving at a cruise port for another 20 months, but agents can and should take advantage of a mobile theater Celebrity will be sending out on the road starting this week.
The Leading Edge Mobile Cinema, as it is called, will show a 15-minute preview of the ship in a high-definition digital video that includes "a 3-D animatic reveal" of Celebrity's first new class of ships in a decade.
Animatics, a term borrowed from the movie business, are like rough mock-up sketches of something that can show a sequence of perspectives. Celebrity touts the Edge as the first ship to be designed in 3-D, so the sketches in this case should be quite refined.
Celebrity is bundling some Oscar's-style hoopla with the movie, too. Attendees will be welcomed on a red carpet and be served beverages and gourmet truffle popcorn. There will also be a chance for visitors to win one of more than 50 "modern luxury giveaways."
The plan is to station the theater at special events and festivals such as the California Jazz & Wine Festival, the Houston International Film Festival, Chicago's Arlington Heights Promenade of Art, and the Toronto Wine & Spirits Festival.
The trailer debuts March 29 at the Sonoma International Film Festival, in Sonoma, Cali. for a five-day run, and will then make 48 more stops over the next 12 weeks.
Some of those stops are custom-tailored for big travel retailers, such as one in Vista, Cal, at Avoya Travel's corporate headquarters, or another at the Jamaica Bay Inn in Marina del Rey, Ca., for Signature Travel Network.
But if the 91-seat trailer is coming to your town, what better way to get clients excited about a new ship than to take them or direct them to, say, the Houston Yacht Club (April 30), or even Celebrity's own Bayfront headquarters in Miami (May 8). The full schedule of stops can be found here.
This isn't the first time Celebrity and its parent company Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. have gone mobile. Remember the giant inflatable cruise-ship shaped theater from a decade or so ago? If not, here's a YouTube video of the "blow up ship."
But a lot has happened to video presentation in a decade and I'll bet the show is a lot more sophisticated today than it was then. Plus, Celebrity promises that as guests exit the theater they will be handed a swag bag with Celebrity gifts and exclusive booking incentives.
So as TV's Siskel and Ebert used to say, see you at the movies.