Margaritas on the Mary. Boots on the Bay. Eccentric bingo and era-specific orchestral dance.
Visitors to the Queen Mary may have to bid farewell or expect fewer bookings for some of the ship’s longstanding programs that may need to be rescheduled — or ended altogether — to accommodate the start of shows at the city’s new waterfront amphitheater this summer.
Steve Caloca, managing director of the Queen Mary, confirmed Wednesday that planners are reviewing about a dozen regular events to see if they need to be shuffled around or cut.
Staff has already begun to contact some performers and vendors that might be affected, which could include Candlelight Concerts, Studio 354 disco nights on first Saturdays, Murder Mystery Dinner and Brushes and Bubbly, among others. They will also look at scaling back availability aboard the ship for private catering and parties, as well as events scheduled during holidays like St. Patrick’s Day and in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
The reason: a lack of parking. There’s a total of 750 car slots between the two venues — 350 for guests on the ship and 400 for VIP and premium attendees at the soon-to-open amphitheater. The ship already hosts about 150 events a year — weddings, galas, luncheons — that draw thousands of people, leaving officials lamenting there simply isn’t enough parking to go around.
That is further complicated by the 12,000-seat amphitheater that opens with its first show on June 6. Event planners expect many attendees to stay at the hotel aboard the Queen Mary, or at least want to hang out aboard before or after it ends. That same day, Caloca said, the Queen Mary expects 1,400 people aboard the ship for a catering event.
“We want as many events here on the Queen Mary as possible,” Caloca said. “And we’ve been doing a record number of events, and we love doing it, … but with the amphitheater opening, it is going to use a significant amount of parking spots. So the last thing we want to do is be a disservice to our customers (and) our guests by saying have your event here at the Queen, and then there’s just not enough parking.”
The $21.3 million amphitheater is the city’s most visible example of a yearslong strategy to wean itself off a reliance on local oil production and rebrand itself as an entertainment capital.
Once fully built next month, the city hopes the venue will generate up to $3 million in revenue each year — enough to pay off its construction debt after five years and put a dent in the city’s budget shortfalls — between $6.2 million and $10 million annually through 2035 — caused by declining petrodollars.
Officials will need to figure out how to have its newest venue coexist with other revenue generators-turned neighbors, like the Queen Mary, which officials say turned an operating profit in 2023 and 2024 after years of struggling to make money.
For now, Caloca says it’s too early to say whether specific programs will be ended. The plan moving forward is to squeeze in events where they can and downsize where they must. Some events, like the country-themed dance party Boots on the Boat, have already been reshuffled from the weekend to midweek. “And we still get a good turnout,” he added.
But others might not be so lucky. Alex Mendham, who leads an 11-person orchestral band, says his monthly program’s performance was canceled following a dispute with the ship managers over late payments.
Mendham’s band first began playing aboard the ship in June 2023, quickly becoming a monthly program with performances for the ship’s Christmas and New Year’s celebrations in their main ballroom. In that time, he says invoices were late nine times — four of those times were more than a month behind. Their Dec. 27 performance, for example, was invoiced on Dec. 20 but went unpaid until March 9.
Late payments — $6,750 for each gig — forced Mendham to pay his bandmates out-of-pocket and wait for reimbursement by the Queen Mary. The inconsistency, he said, led to several musicians quitting or refusing to work with him.
In February, he raised complaints with the ship’s operators that carried over for weeks. Then, he said, dates for performances in April, May, August and September were canceled.
After a performance on March 7, Mendham got a call from Caloca’s assistant. “‘Because of amphitheater construction, they’re having to scale back a lot of their events, and as a result, the orchestra is no longer required,’” he recalled.
He and his wife, Caroline Adamy, brought the issue to the city, which owns the Queen Mary, earlier this month, offering a timeline of late payments and other issues.
“They don’t want us to be on the ship anymore,” Mendham said. “They don’t want us to perform there.”
In a May 15 response, Johnny Vallejo, deputy director of the city’s Economic Development Department, assured the ship’s purchase order system has since been fixed and reiterated that the show’s cancellation was tied directly to parking concerns and that his series “isn’t the only programming reconsidered.”
“There may have been an assumption from the vendors that the series would be continued indefinitely, but… we’re going to be bringing so many visitors onto the campus, guests and visitors on site… we just have to be careful on how we’re managing events throughout the campus,” Vallejo said
Caloca declined to comment on accusations that the cancellation was due to retaliation, saying his discussions with vendors are private.
But he and Vallejo both said an offer has been made for Mendham’s performance to return next year, after the amphitheater’s first season, this time on a quarterly basis. Caloca added he’s even open to Mendham performing for this upcoming New Year’s celebration.
“We’ve always had a good relationship with (Mendham) in the past,” Caloca said. “…We just need to make sure that it’s the best business decision for the ship.”