After months of preparation and even after some hectic day-of troubles, the Junior class of 2025 successfully hosted Enchanted Waves, this year’s Fairytale themed Boat Dance, this Saturday February 24th. The dance offered a DJ, photo booth, free pizzas and drinks, as well as stunning views of San Francisco’s bridges and skyline to be seen on the boat decks as the charter circled around the bay.
Over five months of hard work and planning went into funding and setting up the dance. “We had to really coordinate and fundraise between all the officers,” says Junior Vice President Giovanni S., “There were some lows but we pulled through and we managed, and in the end we actually got to enjoy this dance that we put out, so I hope everyone enjoyed it.” Fundraising included the Hot Chocolate Run, See’s Candy Fundraiser, and Food Fest, and the dance cost the Junior class a hefty $15,000, a large sum compared to the approximate $3,000 for HOCO. The class sold 210 tickets over the course of 5 weeks leading up to the dance, with ticket prices starting at 30$ and increasing slowly to 45$. To promote the dance there was a treasure hunt around the school for discounted tickets and a purchasing extension to increase ticket sales. Besides funding, the fleet, catering, and the other features had to be booked and all details such as decorations, chaperones, and the coat check had to get worked out. In the weeks approaching the dance, students got to input by voting for themes in December and Song requests in January.
The boarding was at Pier 41, for the 3 story Blue and Gold Fleet which had an increase of 150 people in capacity from last year’s boat. The boat left at 7:30, half an hour later than the scheduled departure of 7:00. Junior President Justin S. says, “There was a lot of lateness. A lot of the organizers, the officers especially, arrived late. The decorations started going up half an hour late, food came half an hour late, Admin came an hour late, there were a lot of delays leading up to the dance which ultimately led to the delay in check in and boarding, it was pretty much a half hour delay for everything.” Even with the late departure, there were as many as ten people who didn’t make it on time before the boat left, mostly due to traffic related to the Chinese New Year Parade downtown. The bag and coat check system also changed at the last minute. Originally it was planned to be on the 1st floor where people entered, but the lack of space meant it had to be moved to the 2nd floor, requiring some quick rearranging. Last year there were problems with people accessing people’s personal belongings, so this year a system of tickets was used to match people to their stuff.
During Enchanted Waves, people danced to songs by artists such as Nicki Minaj, Rhianna, Justin Beiber, and Britney Spears, and posed for pictures in the Photo Booth run by Galileo’s Start-up Academy. One of the Photo Booth Operators, Senior Keyster T., says “We have the ASB president and the ASB vice president in our class so they coordinated it. I am getting a wage, it’s like 20$ per hour.”
Besides the fairy tale decorations of candles and wisterias, the majority of students dressed very on-theme, some getting especially creative. “The theme is fairytale right,” Junior Tony D. explains, “and we were gonna do the story of the princess and the frog, so I’m being the frog.”
“Overall I’m pretty pleased with how things went, the weather was nice, I think given the circumstances, and the sudden change of everything, I think it went pretty well.” says Justin. After about 3 hours out at sea, the boat docked while people took their last photos and reclaimed their jackets and bags at coat check, and by 10:00 people began to leave. Despite some hiccups behind the scenes, the Junior class was able to make Enchanted Waves an enjoyable experience. About his Boat Dance experience Senior Aiden P. recounts, “It was fun, the DJ was like a million times better this time, those transitions went hard. I don’t know, it was just good vibes.”
