Rabbits Black sits down with Groove Cruise founder Jason Beukema to get the inside story on how the party started, why now is the best time for a fully chartered EDM cruise out of LA, and how after three days aboard the GC ship they were finally able to win over Deadmau5! We also ask the ages old question: pool party … or beach party? Thankfully on the Groove Cruise you can just do both!
RB: Hi Jason, this is Ryan from Rabbits Black, thanks for taking the time talk with us today. We are only a few weeks away from the inaugural fully chartered Groove Cruise out of LA, but before we look too far into the future and get distracted by visions of massive pool and beach parties … and I’m already getting distracted … why don’t we take a few minutes to discuss how this all started. Can you give us a little history about how and why you started the first Groove Cruise?
Jason: Yes I had been at about like ten cruises before I started the Groove Cruise. I was always really bored, it was always families and all the people and the music at night was just horrible. It was like wedding music and I remember like looking over the pool deck with my brother and I was like, wow, what would it be like if we just had all of all our friends on here? You know, really get party music, and so yeah I asked some friends if they’d be interested in going if I put something like that together and they said yeah for sure. So I put it together and I ended up having a hundred and twenty five people go on a seven day cruise from a three hundred and seventy five person email list that I had and called it the Group Cruise. And we brought, I think we had like four djs on the first one and we brought speakers down from Chicago – because I’m originally from Michigan – so we brought speakers down from Chicago, we flew them on a plane, and it was a riot. People had the time of their lives and that is the gist of how it started.
RB: Where’d the first cruise go to?
Jason: It went to the Western Caribbean. It went to like Belize and Cozumel and Grand Cayman I think.
“The music is everywhere you go on the ship, there’s always music going on somewhere. The parties are going off!”
RB: So Jason, why are you moving the Groove Cruise to LA now? You said earlier that you lived in Hermosa for a while so it’s safe to assume you’re familiar with the area. Was the timing just right for an LA Groove Cruise?
Jason: Yeah definitely, so we actually have done five Groove Cruises out on the west coast, like out of LA and San Diego. But they were just groups, so they were like three hundred to five hundred people, and they were partial so it was only a small part of the cruise.
RB: That must have been fun for all the people taking the cruise for their relaxing anniversary trips.
Jason: (laughing) Yeah, we got a few complaints here and there.
RB: So I can tell you that I’ve done the Long Beach-Catalina-Ensenada cruise once before and it was for my grandparents 50th anniversary. Can I expect a different atmosphere this time?
Jason: Yeah, right, you can’t even compare it. You can’t even compare it to a regular cruise. It’s completely different. So yeah we were a partial charter and that’s, you know, how it grew and then eventually we grew into a full ship charter, which was the goal since day one, and we did that three years ago — 2010 was the first one. 2009 was the last west coast one though and that was out of San Diego to Cabo, and that one was, you know, didn’t go as well. We lost a lot of money. And so we perfected the cruise out of Miami and now that we have everything down pat we’ve brought it back to the west coast as a full ship. This is the first time there’s ever been anything of this magnitude out on the west coast. So all the music cruises go out of Florida, I mean honestly there’s probably like twenty music cruises, maybe even thirty plus, that go out of Miami or Fort Lauderdale. And the rest, I mean out of LA there’s maybe like a blues one or a jazz one and, I think, the gay ones would go out of there sometimes but that’s about it.
RB: I was going to say the Coachella one even goes out of Florida
Jason: Yup. Exactly, which is kind of odd. But yeah.
RB: It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I know Hard Ship goes out of there too, and you know Hard does a ton here now. They’re really just up against Insomniac on everything they do, but the Coachella one blew my mind. Why would they do it out of Florida?
Jason: Oh no, they’re not doing it again. They lost millions of dollars.
RB: Well, that makes sense. Alight there you go.
Jason: It’s not an easy business. I mean if there was any company in the country that could fill a cruise ship it would be Coachella or Live Nation. There’s been huge acts who’s cruises have failed. You know like Dave Matthews Band who you would think would be a home run and it failed. Pit Bull’s got cancelled. You know there’s huge artists that just couldn’t sell a cruise ship or they couldn’t sell tickets. There’s not an easy formula, that’s why there’s not a lot of competitors. It costs millions of dollars to pull off one of these events.
RB: Well it sounds like you’ve perfected it as much as anybody else has.
RB: So Jason do you think the explosion of the EDM scene here in the States makes a cruise like this more viable? Is it a little bit easier to roll out a lineup of DJs for a weekend than live bands? Maybe you’ve seen a change since the EDM scene has grown?
Jason: Yeah definitely. I think we’ve definitely grown right along with it. We’ve definitely been a beneficiary of the movement but you know we haven’t really done any advertising. We’re doing some for the west coast to sell some last cabins, but up until now it’s all been word of mouth and just blowing people’s mind’s with the experience and how much fun it is to the point where they just tell their friends. You know, because it’s different and it’s unlike anything in the world. It’s not like a festival, it’s not like a club, it’s not like anything else, it’s difficult to explain.
RB: Well thanks for laying out that challenge for us (laughing). We’ll try to do our best to explain it in words after the cruise. Maybe that’ll just be our entire review at the end — RB fans: “You just have to experience it for yourself, there’s no words to describe it.” We’ll give it our journalistic best.
Jason: Yeah it’s like trying to explain what Vegas or Ibiza is to somebody who’s never been there. I mean you can write about it all day long but they’re never gonna get it.
RB: That analogy gets me even more excited about this cruise.
Jason: Right!
RB: That’s pretty special. So I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss the charity aspect of the Groove Cruise. At Rabbits Black we always try to incorporate a charity element into any events we put on and it’s a major part of what we want to do — so obviously we love this element of your Cruise. I know you work with the Whet Foundation and I was hoping you could just tell our readers a little about that.
Jason: Definitely. There are two sides to the Whet Foundation. So, the first is to benefit the destination that we go to and we partner with a foundation or orphanage in that particular destination. So in Ensenada we’re working with the Esperanza Foundation and we promote that every person going on the cruise will bring something that the orphanage needs. It might be clothes, or tools, or things like that. Sometimes they bring entire suit cases just full of stuff that they want to get rid of and then we’ll deliver those items to the charity we partnered with. And we also give them money, we give five dollars — is it five? — I don’t remember. It’s a portion of every cruise that’s sold goes towards the foundation and that’s to run some of our programs that also benefit the destinations that we go to.
And we also have programs that we started in Miami Beach where we’re partnering with Fienberg/Fisher schools. We created these programs where we’re having the principal and teachers or parents apply certain underprivileged kids to join the program. There’s eight criteria and if they accomplish these criteria by the end of the year or by a given date then they can win the Whet Award and there’s a Whet day. And if they win the Whet Award then we take them on a cruise and they go to the Bahamas — and these are ideally sometimes kids that have never even seen a cruise ship before. Unfortunately they’re in Miami so some of them probably have but they are underprivileged kids, you know, from underprivileged areas.
RB: What are the criteria? Is it just meeting economic requirements or are there educational criteria that you have to meet as well?
Jason: Yeah, exactly. There are eight educational criteria. So they have to do some philanthropic things as well. I think we’re working with Wells Fargo so there are mathematical things they have to do. There is also a [public] health aspect.
RB: Like volunteer at the Red Cross kind of idea?
Jason: Yeah volunteer is one of them, there are eight criteria they have to do. The teachers have to approve them and have to sign off that they’re doing certain things. The whole program is called Community Captains so they’re captains of the community basically. And then if they win we take them on a cruise. We teach them leadership classes on the cruise and they hear stories from people, you know, from underprivileged families that have made it, and then we have them deliver donations to the orphanage or the charity that we’re working with in the Bahamas as well. We have them round up stuff from the philanthropic side to bring over there. And we work with cruise lines as well to have the cruise line staff put stuff together to donate. So yeah it’s a full initiative with the cruise lines, with the foundation, and with all the people that actually go on the cruises as well.
Here are Ten Things to Expect on the Groove Cruise! …in no particular order.
Numbers 1-5
Numbers 6-10
RB: So speaking of kids, is this a 21 and over cruise?
Jason: It is 21 and over. Yeah we’re good.
RB: Thank goodness, alright there goes that question really quickly.
Jason: No the average age is actually 31. The average age has gone up every year, it went from thirty in 2012 to thirty-one on this last one that we had in January [2013]. So thirty-one is the average age.
RB: Do you feel like you price out some of the younger people?
Jason: Yes and no. I mean when you figure you get on a ship for three days for six or seven hundred bucks, eight hundred bucks, I mean that’s three days of your room, your food, your parties on and off the ship. I mean everything is included. When you compare that to three days in Miami or three days in Vegas or three days in the Hamptons…
RB: Or two hours in Vegas sometime.
Jason: Yeah I mean that’s like half price (laughing). Well not half price but I mean it’s … if you’re gonna do Vegas really really cheap you might be able to get away with six to eight hundred bucks but I doubt it. It’s not a lot for the experience we create, that’s for sure.
RB: It seems to be pretty cost effective when you break everything down.
Jason: I mean you’ve been on a cruise before right?
RB: Yeah I have the same, roughly the same cruise from Long Beach to Catalina and Ensenada; of course this time it should be a different experience.
Jason: Gotcha. So yeah it’s different when you’re partying with all of the same people for three days straight. It’s a captive audience of like two thousand people and everybody’s on the same level. The music is everywhere you go on the ship, there’s always music going on somewhere. The parties are going off and there are no cliques. Like when you’re in Miami or even at a festival you’re kind of in a clique of friends — your twenty friends or whatever or ten friends. When you get on a cruise you’re on a vacation and you’re out of your element and you really build a relationship with people from all over the country or the world really, people come from all over for this thing, and you keep in touch with them. There are people from the first cruise in 2004 that are still keeping in touch and have become best friends. I still keep in touch with people that I met in 2004 on the first one.
After three days on the Groove Cruise even the socially reticent Deadmau5 “had the time of his life.”
RB: That sounds really different.
Jason: Definitely a bit different
RB: So kind of in that same vein of new friends – the Groove Cruise is a party on water all day and all night, and everybody’s on the same boat, so you a have very captive audience, but the artists are there the whole time too, right? So when you approach the artists how do they feel about the idea of all that artist/passenger interaction? What is their initial reaction? Do they love it?
Jason: Right. That’s very true. This is the only event in the world where there is that artist/fan interaction so at first you can imagine they’re pretty apprehensive about it.
RB: Anybody in particular?
Jason: Some of them embrace it but most of them I think they’re a little bit scared. But once they get on the boat they realize that everyone’s really cool — they’re not gonna bother you while you’re eating or anything. You know then, I mean, funny thing, we had Deadmau5 on the cruise for three days straight. I mean that was, if there’s anybody more difficult than him with his fans, you know, it would probably be him. He’s not a social person. I mean it’s kind of like we had … I mean that guy he was a real pain in the ass the first day or two, and then once he was cool and kind of let his guard down a little bit he had the time of his life. I mean he had so much fun. Yeah and we had security around him the whole time too.
We had Roger Sanchez who wasn’t even going to come on the ship and then he came on and he ended up playing a surprise set on the ship. He was only playing on one of the islands and then he came on and then after that he was like “Oh I gotta come again”, or trying to have us do cruises in Australia and do their stuff. And then he ended up playing another one in Brazil that was sort of similar.
RB: Oh that’s great, if you can win the DJs over your passengers should be no problem.
Jason: Yeah I mean once they do it once I don’t think there’s one artist that we booked that doesn’t want to come back. Just because it’s all so different and so fun.
RB: Ok, I have one last question. We talked to Markus Schulz in an interview recently and we asked him a very serious and important question – “What’s better: Pool Parties or Beach Parties?” Markus told us pool parties! What’s your take? What’s special about the beach parties on the Groove Cruise? What can people look forward to?
Jason: Ah well on the cruise we have three pool parties and one beach party and then one that’s in Mexico that’s just Papas and Beer debauchery and craziness. So, they’re all different. The beach in Catalina is far different than a beach in the Bahamas or Miami, it’s a much different feel. And especially in the venue that we’re at [in Catalina], the Descanso Beach Club is like in the canyon so I’m really interested to see how the music bounces off the canyon and how the pictures turn out. It’s going to be really cool but I just like day parties in general. But I think beach parties, I like beach parties.
Descanso Beach Club on Catalina Island … Just replace all the sand with DJ stages and a huge dance party.
RB: Well hopefully those people Groove Cruising in a few weeks can hang with Markus at the pool and you at the beach. We appreciate your time today; you’ve come a long way from 125 friends on a boat with your personal speakers. We’ll see you out on the ocean.
Special thanks to Groove Cruise founder Jason Beukema. The interview was conducted August 30, 2013.
Tickets and rooms are still available for the 2013 LA Groove Cruise! You can reserve your spot on the boat now.
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