The new CMO, Jennifer Prenner, has held posts at Meta and Amazon. She joins recent executive hires from Apple and Porsche as Rivian prepares to present its R2 platform for future models in March.
The latest Oasis-class ship from Royal Caribbean will bring with it some unique dining experiences when it debuts from Port Canaveral this summer.
At the top of the list for Utopia of the Seas is an offering that will virtually transport passengers onto a train.
What the cruise line has dubbed Royal Railway – Utopia Station builds on a thematic dining experience in the same way that Empire Supper Club does on its new ship Icon of the Seas. While that dining venue takes passengers to a 1920s New York City-themed restaurant, the railway will go when step further introducing digital screens to mimic train travel in a dining car to a variety of destinations with matching cuisine.
One of the first experiences will mimic America’s Wild West, according to the line. Diners will start with pre-dinner drinks on a themed station platform, and when the train whistle sounds, board the dining car “for a multisensory culinary adventure that will transport them to any place and time.”
“We’re going on this journey of really figuring out where we’re going to go and shoot the video,” said Linken D’Souza, vice president of food and beverage for Royal Caribbean International during a press conference on board Icon of the Seas in January. “How are you going to go research the food? I just talked to the team. We’re going to head out to New Mexico and California and do some research on kind of some of the ingredients.”
It’s sensory overload during Mardi Gras festivities at Universal Studios theme park. A couple of Universal Orlando executives talked to us about things to see, sniff, taste and hear during the event, which runs nightly through April 7.
• “There’s more glitter on this parade than we’ve ever done before,” said Lora Sauls, assistant director of creative development and show direction at Universal. What’s more, it’s applied to the floats by Universal’s decor team manually.
“They do sprinkle, and they do it by hand. Some of them blow a little bit, but it’s just like placed, and they get it all over,” Sauls said.
• The decor team is also responsible for a monkey figure spotted on the float representing Earth. That’s been going on for more than a decade, Sauls said.
“They usually hide him. This year, he’s not hidden. He’s riding the shark. He’s got scuba gear on,” she said.
• The parade process begins about a year in advance with a trip to Kern Studios in New Orleans. Props are picked and then transported via semi to Orlando. Kern paints the newly themed floats in about a week, Sauls said, and then the lighting team gets to stringing. Decor is the icing, and it can get spooky inventive.
Purple is a regal color. And that’s fitting for Divina Orbase because the founder of Beng Bread is Orlando’s ube queen.
It’s not the first crown I’d place on her head, though.
Orbase, 41, served the community in profound ways long before she began feeding it, working for many years as an oncology nurse before trading in her scrubs for an apron. She worked her final year in hospice.
“Oncology and hospice link up so much,” she explains, “but I think I transitioned too quickly.”
Empathetic by nature, Orbase felt the lines between patient and caregiver begin to blur. Burnout ensued.
“I knew I had to switch gears.”
These days, that care is baked into flawless, fluffy loaves of ube milk bread. Crinkle cookies, dense and delicious. Muffins with molten centers of cheese, ube jam, coconutty macapuno.
There’s also my newest addiction: furikake rice krispie treats ($3.50 apiece).
“This is like … the best thing I ever ate…” I Swyped in a nighttime text to Kaya co-owner Jamilyn Salonga Bailey. She introduced me to Orbase at a recent community market on the restaurant’s property. “And no, I’m not high.”
The ex-VW head is testifying as part of a $9.7-billion investor suit over the automaker’s diesel scandal, in which the company utilized deceptive software to undermine diesel emissions testing.