What it's like aboard Hallmark's first Christmas sailing: A lot of heart, stars
- The Hallmark Channel hosted its first-ever Christmas-themed cruise sailing, offering festive activities and meet-and-greets with network actors.
- The four-night cruise to the Bahamas sold out quickly, with a second sailing added due to high demand.
- Passengers, many of whom are avid Hallmark movie fans, enjoyed the opportunity to celebrate the holidays and meet the actors.
Not a speck of snow fell outside the day Susan Leining and her sister-in-law, Michelle, waited for their flight to embark on the Hallmark Channel’s first-ever Christmas-themed cruise. In fact, the toasty temperature rested at 77 degrees outside of Houston’s Hobby Airport on Nov. 4. Still, a bit of Yuletide magic filled the air at Gate 43.
“We live next to each other,” Susan Leining explained, “but we've been calling each other a couple times a day: ‘Are you ready?’ ‘Are you ready?’”
Hallmark's four-night sail to Nassau, Bahamas, (Nov. 5-9) offered passengers the opportunity to participate in festive activities like Christmas carol-oke, cookie decorating, an ugly sweater contest, and hang with 11 of the network’s actors on board during panels and photo ops, sold out just hours after tickets became available – with prices starting at $1,115 per person on a four-person interior cabin. Hallmark fans gobbled up all of the tickets for a second voyage (Nov. 17-21), added because of high demand, like Thanksgiving turkey.
Susan Leining sets the TV in her Santa Fe, Texas, home to record the new Hallmark movies each week. The network’s incredibly popular Countdown to Christmas kicked off on Oct. 18 and continues until Dec. 21.
“It's all going to be happily ever after, and it's nice to have some positivity to look forward to,” Leining, 67, said.
Four years ago, Leining lost her mother following a 15-year battle with Alzheimer's. Now, she works to raise awareness and funds for the Alzheimer’s Association. She raised more than $15,000 for a walk in October. Year-round, she sells homemade cookies. For the cruise, she carries a Christmas-themed batch of individually packaged cookies. Snow-covered trees lie next to bright red candy canes and gingerbread men.
Leining predicts her mom “would be really proud that I didn't just sit back and go, ‘Oh, too bad,’” she said. “She would say keep doing it.”
Leining has also packed a photo with actress Ashley Williams from when the two crossed paths at the 2019 Alzheimer's Impact Movement Advocacy Forum in Washington, D.C., that she hoped the actress would sign. Williams’ mother died in 2016 from the disease and she hosts an annual Dance Party to End ALZ, benefitting the Alzheimer’s Association research grant program.
Leining got her photo signed and was able to send some of her delicious cookies (this reporter tried gingerbread and chocolate) Williams' way. It's one of the Hallmark-like stories we encountered on the ship.
What to expect of a Hallmark-themed cruise? ‘Adult Disney’ for a superfan
In 2021, Debbie Romanella suggested to her husband, Rocky Romanella, that they try out that network everyone had been raving about, Hallmark. They turned it on to “Winter in Vail,” a movie in which Chelsea (Lacey Chabert) relocates after inheriting a house in the snowy Colorado town where she meets the charming Owen (Tyler Hynes).
“I'm sitting there crying,” Rocky, 67, said. “I look at her. I go, ‘How could you not be crying?’”
Debbie, his wife of 43 years, “was thinking, ‘Where is my husband, and what have you done with him?’” she said, laughing. Turns out he’s a sucker for a happy ending.
Debbie, 64, loves the movies, but “I’m not as fanatical as him,” she said. “He watches the same movie over and over again if he loves it. He follows the different stars.” Rocky also downloaded the Hallmark app and signed up to receive texts and emails from the channel. “This is a man who does not have a romantic bone in his body, falling in love with the Hallmark Channel,” she said. “It's just such a contradiction (laughing).”
Rocky was excited about the cruise after receiving it as a gift from Debbie. He’s happy to have the chance to spend time with his wife and mingle with the Hallmark stars. They met Hynes (Rocky’s favorite), Heather Hemmens, B.J. Britt and Jonathan Bennett, who made a video for Debbie’s brother-in-law, “a huge Jonathan Bennett fan.”
“They're just regular people, which is nice,” Rocky said. “They're always smiling at you or making eye contact. This is sort of like adult Disney.”
What if you're not a Hallmark superfan?
Patches Seely hasn’t seen one Hallmark Christmas movie. But she sits happily at a table with three of her best friends in matching holiday-themed Hawaiian shirts and handmade hats. She met one in fourth grade and the other two in sixth. The girlfriends all attended high school together in Baton Rouge, but began to scatter for college and life afterward. Seely, 48, settled in New Braunfels, Texas.
“When they say we're going to go somewhere, the only answer is yes,” Seely said. “Because we are best friends, and we adventure together and value making memories."
She added, “They are an escape from life’s challenges and a soft place to land.”
The friends planned to go to the Christmas pajama party in matching plaid, feather-trimmed jammies and relive the good times at the Silent Night Disco.
“We grew up clubbing together,” Seely said. “In the '90s and early 2000s, we were killing it.”
A space for celebration
Friends Leigh Anne Holman and Jen Kamzelski have two big reasons to celebrate aboard Hallmark’s Christmas cruise: They’ve both turned 50, and Holman is cancer-free after being diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma earlier this year.
“I never thought in a million years I'd walk into the (doctor’s office) and get a diagnosis like that,” Holman said. “It was very scary.”
But she chose to be optimistic. She started treatment in March and finished in June. She received a report of a clean PET scan in August.
Kamzelski says it feels “wonderful” to be able to share this experience with her friend now that she has received a clean bill of health.
“I was very, very happy for her because it was scary,” Kamzelski said. “But she stayed positive through the whole thing, and I think that makes a huge difference.”
Meeting their favorite, Hynes, on the cruise was icing on the cake.
‘Hallmark movies have comforted people in the worst times of their life’
When Ashley Williams (“How I Met Your Mother,” “The Jim Gaffigan Show”) began doing Hallmark movies, she viewed them as “another job, and I liked the small commitment, and I liked that my aunt would enjoy it,” she said. But in the past 8-10 years, she’s noticed “we've all had so much more of an increase in stress, and the movies are where people can rest, and that's not something I could have ever anticipated.”
After a trivia event on the cruise, Williams greeted her fans. “This woman leaned in, and she said, ‘My mother's dying of congenital heart failure. We're not sure if she's going to even make it through the cruise, but she needed to be here,’” Williams said. “She brought her mom in, and she looked weak, and I hugged her. As she was hugging me, I could feel her stomach contracting because she was crying, you know?”
Story continues below.
As moving as the interaction is, Williams says it’s not a one-off. “I would say I have an interaction like that every day where in some way Hallmark movies have comforted people in the worst times of their life,” Williams, 46, explained. “So it truly makes it one of the greatest joys of my professional and personal life being here and having that kind of interaction.”
Bennett, host of the cruise, met a grateful woman from Texas whose gay son is a fan of his films. In 2020’s “The Christmas House,” Bennett played one-half of a gay, married couple hoping to adopt their first child. Two years later, Bennett starred in the first Countdown to Christmas movie to feature a leading gay couple, “The Holiday Sitter.”
The mom told Bennett following his first movie, “My son was so excited, and he called all his friends and was like, ‘You have to watch this Hallmark movie. It's got an LGBT storyline,’” Bennett said. For the actors, it’s “validation that you're telling the right stories.”
The sea-sonal celebration seemed to bring out the best in its passengers, who rocked ugly sweaters and Christmas PJs as holiday music blared. It became its own little bit of happy buoyant in unpredictable waters, just like Hallmark is for its viewers.
The reporter on this story received access to this sailing from Hallmark. Paste BN maintains editorial control of content.