The Love Boat in Curacao

The year was 1980. I was 12 years old, and one of the world’s top TV shows was The Love Boat. This was the 4^th season, and the show’s popularity was at its peak. You can imagine how excited I and so many others were when we heard the boat would be coming to Curaçao to film an episode. I can’t remember if they arrived in March or in the summer, but the episode ran in November of 1980, and it was a fun one.

When the Pacific Princess cruised into St. Anna Bay, the energy level on the island was through the roof. The crew was ashore the whole day filming, and the sites of Curaçao were prominent throughout the first 15 minutes of the episode. It’s really fun to see how little the streets have changed. You’ll even see some business you recognize from current day.

My mom took me to Punda to see the action and it was a blast. The ship seemed huge to me. I was so thrilled, I didn’t even get disappointed when I didn’t see any of the stars…just seeing the boat and all the hustle and bustle was more than enough; over 40 years later, and I still remember so much!!

We had heard that the episode was to feature Gopher getting arrested, and that some locals would get small roles as extras, so everyone wanted to see the spectacle.

This was the most exciting thing that I’d seen in Curaçao since the movie “Roller Boogie” came out, and a new craze hit the island…but that’s for another post.

I’ve included some pictures, blurry as they are (not exactly hi-def stuff available from so long ago), and also, here is the link to the episode. It’s pretty fun!!

The Love Boat, Season 4, Episode 3 (note: the link seems to work some days and not others…sorry)

Note: the Love Boat came back in Season 8 (1985) but no one seemed as interested…lol…oh well.

Credits: (music, photos, video)

[Merlin] IDOL Distribution (on behalf of Playtime); UMPG Publishing, LatinAutor – SonyATV, Sony Music Publishing, CMRRA, LatinAutorPerf, UNIAO BRASILEIRA DE EDITORAS DE MUSICA – UBEM, and 15 Music Rights Societies, IMDB, YouTube