This Time, Graduation Cruise a Hit

For many of the seniors who graduated from Fillmore High School this year, Sunday was Graduation Night, Part II.

And the celebration, which wound up early Monday, was a lot better the second time around.

In a replay of a graduation night boat cruise around Los Angeles Harbor more than a month ago, about 90 Fillmore graduates got together for a second excursion, this time around Long Beach Harbor.

Sunday’s cruise, which left at sunset aboard the gleaming new double-decker Spirit, was a different story than the first trip, students said.

“There’s no comparison,” Brandon Mumme, 18, said. “There was plenty of food and plenty of room for everybody to walk around. The dance floor was small, but there was enough room. We had a good time. It was worth doing again.”

The first cruise, on June 13, was on the paddle-wheeler M.V. Princess, a boat built in 1924 and touted by its owners as a historic vessel in demand for weddings and private parties.

But many Fillmore students said the boat was dusty and too small. They also complained about a shortage of food, a lack of room to dance and the forced removal of three blackjack dealers who were supposed to operate a “fantasy casino.”

The route of the first cruise--with a view mainly of the oil rigs and shipyards of Los Angeles Harbor--was also a source of complaints.

But the second trip made up for all that, students and escorts said.

“It was 180 degrees different,” graduate Brett Adams, 18, said. “Everybody danced and had a really good time and the food just kept coming.”

Fillmore residents raised money to pay for the cruise after the death of a student in a drug- and alcohol-related car accident on graduation night last year. The goal was to keep this year’s seniors from drinking and driving.

A community group formed to organize the trip still owed the company, West Coast Cruises, about $1,400 after the first trip. But when company officials learned of the students’ disappointment, they apologized and offered a makeup cruise at no additional cost.

The $1,400 was used to pay for bus transportation to Long Beach Harbor for the second trip.

Cruise organizers in Fillmore were satisfied.

“It was exactly what we thought we paid for the first time around,” said Fire Chief Pat Askren, who went along on Sunday’s cruise and whose daughter was a graduating senior.

Laura Wright, who coordinates Los Angeles-area cruises for the Northern California-based company, flew down to oversee Sunday’s excursion. The success of the second cruise, she said, was more typical of what the company offers.

The first cruise, on the Princess, was the only cruise that the company did on that vessel this year, Wright said. “Obviously, it was a big mistake,” she said. “We won’t use them again.”

Some graduates were unable to go because they had already left town for school or to join the military. Other students were not willing to go a second time, organizers said.

“You never get graduation night back--it’s gone,” Askren said. “But at least, midway through the summer, the kids got back together.”

During Sunday’s cruise, some students joked that Fillmore’s Class of 1991 had the earliest reunion in the school’s history--one month.

And when many of them remember graduation night, two very different experiences will come to mind, Adams said.

“I think both of them will stick in our memories very well,” Adams said.