cruise ship magic – MagicShow.Tips

PCAM Magic Convention Day 2

The second day of the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians convention started out with James Cielen’s talk about performing on cruise ships.

James’s talk was a great insight into what it takes to consistantly be working on cruise ships.

Then it was a break for lunch, which was hosted by Henry Tom.

After lunch was the stage contest. I was recruited to be a judge, so I couldn’t watch for fun, I had to watch for “work”. Lots of great acts! One of the acts produced two live fish! These weren’t gold fish, they were about 10ish inches long and were FISH!

You can see pictures of the contestants on the PCAM’s social media at;
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17cjxmZPLH/

That night was the night of my lecture:

You can order notes from me at: https://www.magicshow.tips/lecture-notes-2025/

And thanks to Brian Cook for my post lecture beer!

Tomorrow has Peter Samelson’s show and lecture, which I’m really looking forward to!

-Louie

Cutting Up Jackpots!

Performing as a magician with a full magic show (versus an just an act) can be a very solitary job. Most of the time you’re working alone. You do that corporate gig, school assembly, birthday party as the only performer at the event.

Then there are other gigs that bring entertainers together, things like fairs and cruise ships will have multiple performers with shows at the same time. Recently I performed an a ship that had three guest artist magicians, one staff magician and a production show that featured a lot of magic! It was basically a magic convention. Add in some musicians or comedians and it’s quite a group!

One of the fun things about working with other entertainers is just sitting around a sharing stories. Anyone who has been a performer for any length of time has stories of crazy gigs! Honestly its sitting around and “cutting up jackpots” (carnival slang for telling stories) and having a bunch of laughs is good for the soul.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t understand it when magicians say they don’t hang out with other magicians. It must be a lonely like out there for them!

-Louie

Best Card Gaff!

One of the coolest card gaffs is the Modern Flap Cards by Hondo. He makes the as a premade gaff, or as a video where you can learn to make your own. The video is the way to go, as you’ll be a lot more versatile with what you can do. There’s a little bit of a learning curve to making them, but it’s really not that hard.

I use one in my preshow video in my cruise ship show, and in a lot of social media videos. I haven’t used them in a live show, simply because I don’t really have a place for them. The problem is a playing card is small, and the change is hard to view from the back row.

It hit me a while ago that you can do the change with the card isolated in a cup. I hadn’t had time to really play with it before the self quarantine, however I played around with it and here’s the card color change change in a cup:

There’s a little bit of knack to do the move in a cup. In a nutshell I’m using the weight of the card to keep the change from happening. It’s all about the angle you lean the card at. I think the next time I make some of the flap cards, I’m going to have a bit less tension, so that I have more wiggle room with the angle of the lean.

The discovery of doing the change in a cup is the direct result of playing with the gimmick and a good example of why you should be playing with gimmicks beyond what’s in the instructions.

Great Book…

The other day a buddy of mine gave me the book A Magician Prepares and I started reading it on my flight yesterday. This book has some shortcomings, like the layout which makes it hard to read and the title isn’t that great, however the content is fantastic. The book is a bunch of short … Continue reading “Great Book…”

There’s a lot of great advice in this book, and I think it’d be a great book to read when you start to hit the semi-pro level. When you’ve begun to get an act and are out working it semi-regularly. I do think it’s worth a read no matter where you are in your career.

One thing that struck me was in one interview a guy mentions that people ask, “why do all cruise ship magicians do the same stuff?”. His answer was the limitations of the gig, you need to fit it all in a suitcase that’s less than 50 pounds.

Having worked on some ships, I get the challenge of the limitation, however I also think that it’s a shortsighted reason. The reason is laziness, they don’t want to create a something new. Sure something like color changing hanks plays big, packs small and there are plenty of routines for it. That’s a trick that’s in my show, however it’s not chosen because of the size of it. I do the trick because in my routine there’s a message that I want to convey with it. Also the way I do it, I use an additional prop that takes it out of the “packs small” category.