Ever wondered who Bill is

I had been on a number of cruises and have seen in the cruise news an entrance for ‘Friends of Bill or Friends of Dorothy ‘ and always wondered what it was or stood for ?  Are they popular people on board ?  Maybe it was some sort of club or  groups of people that met through a website like Cruise Critic or some other place who had been chatting online for months in anticipation of their upcoming cruise. Fortunatly I have never just dropped in to curve my  curiousity.  I just asked so let me share with you to …..

Friends of Bill 

Bill W is Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 Step program for recovering alcoholics.  No one in the cruise industry seems to know who first came up with the idea of scheduling AA meetings on cruises but for two decades or more,  they’ve been routinely held aboard the ships of every cruise line. AA members started to ask cruise ship entertainment directors about the possibility of holding AA meetings whilst onboard. The cruise lines were initially reluctant to advertise these meetings openly so, following the AA tradition of only using your first name, these meetings onboard were billed as Friends of Bill W meetings. Ever since then any AA support group held on a cruise ship has been called a Friends of Bill W gathering.

But why on a cruise ship ??

The answer is fairly obvious I suppose , Alchohol is the major source of on board revenue  for the cruise lines . You picture a cruise and you see someone stood watching the world go by with  a cocktail in hand .

So there you go.

Friends of Dorothy 

The term “Friends of Dorothy” reaches back more than half a century. We believe it originated form  the 1950’s as gays and lesbians developed a special connection with the musical icon Judy Garland, whose most famous role was in the classic wizard of oz as Dorothy  . “The Wizard of Oz” gave gays and lesbians a “secret” code word which they could use to refer to themselves. At cocktail parties or company gatherings where people aren’t  comfortably “out and proud,” gays would inquire discreetly of each other, “Are you a ‘Friend of Dorothy?'” The wink-wink admission of “I am, too!” would likely lead to fabulous and fast bonding in an age when gay bars were clandestine and, in some cases, dangerous. Although the younger generation will probably never heard of this phrase so a lot of cruiselines use the abbreviation GLBT (gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender)in the daily programmes. Its not like a support group likr ‘Friends of Bill ‘ but more a group of like minded people to get together and socialise .