The Arcadia Theater is a busy room on Freedom of the Seas.

Our happy group went there after dinner every night.

Royal Caribbean International made sure to put a fitting exclamation point of a showroom on this big ship of theirs.

Front view.

Side view.

Back View.

To me, it looked like the nicely decorated joint holds around 1,000 people in its several levels of seating. It kinda-sorta reminded me of our Crouse-Hinds Concert Theater here in Syracuse.

Most all of our two dozen made the shows. Broadway dancing and singing backed by the ship’s terrific orchestra some nights, a tribute band that sounded a lot like the Eagles, a couple of very funny comedians, a magician/illusionist, the cruise line’s trademark game show that will make everybody think of that old favorite The Newlyweds. Concerts and headliners were slotted for two shows on their nights, one for each dinner seating. Yeah, busy place.

We were usually there for the 9 or 10:45 starts. Because of the shows’ popularity, we’d get there, say a half-hour early to get good seats in the middle, about 10 rows back, all of us together.

Passengers have pre-show fun.

Plenty of people did the same. Many would order beverages from the servers. And sometimes dance parties would break out in the rows, when they house was playing pumped-up music on the PA. Good viewing for us.

Stage show.

One night we free-lanced, and sat by ourselves on the side for one of the Broadway shows because those were the seats we could find about five minutes before showtime. I enjoyed the singers and dancers.

Eagles tribute band The Long Run.

A rock show by Eagles tribute band The Long Run pleased everybody in our traveling group who made the concert. I thought that had one of my favorite groups nailed musically. Vocally, that’s a tougher task, but they got stronger as the hour show went on.

This trip was taken in the middle of September. We did not encounter any hurricanes. Our hearts go out to this battling the fierce effects of Hurricane Matthew.

Tomorrow: Dance parties