Ephrata comedian, ventriloquist plans cruises that attract Plain vacationers

Ephrata’s Ryan Bomgardner is a whole-time comic and ventriloquist and has been on phase skillfully for two many years.

At age 10, Bomgardner started off carrying out at regional church buildings with his puppets right before little audiences. Currently, at 37, Bomgardner averages about 130 shows a yr and has done at Christian festivals in advance of audiences of a lot more than a thousand.

Bomgardner, an entrepreneur, also has designed a area of interest vacation business organizing and hosting cruise vacations for the Anabaptist and Basic sect communities. The program, like most other travel applications in 2020, stopped thanks to COVID-19, but it is back on track with two cruises on the textbooks for this 12 months and programs for 2023.

Bomgardner arranged his initially cruise for conservative Christians in 2012 at the urging of fellow performers he achieved although undertaking as a ventriloquist on the entertainment circuit and aboard cruise ships. It captivated some 400 vacationers to the Caribbean with its Christian programming.

“Many of the 1st-time cruisers were being all set to sign up for a 2nd trip right before they still left the very first,” he says.

Bomgardner partners with Royal Caribbean Worldwide on the trips, whose clientele may well surprise people from English — or non-Amish — communities.

“I’m usually shocked,” Bomgardner says, “when people today clearly show surprise in studying that the Mennonite and Amish people acquire vacations. Our cruises have been new to a lot of persons but anything they had been inclined to check out somewhat than just heading back again to the seashore for a week in the summertime. They relished the transform.”

Bomgardner phone calls his cruise program Sail and Sing. He organizes an itinerary with both on-board amusement and spot excursions. He invitations very well-recognised Christian entertainers and speakers — his own mates — to execute, and lots of have completed several visits with Sail and Sing.

The cruises now catch the attention of groups of much more than 1,000 vacationers and more to the Caribbean, Alaska and the Mediterranean.

A Sail and Sing cruise routine involves Christian new music concert events and hymn sings, religious chalk talks, devotional packages and spiritual speakers.

Although it is a holiday vacation for absolutely everyone, Bomgardner feels Sail and Sing passengers all occur back spiritually refreshed.

As a specialist entertainer, Bomgardner is effective with a puppet-dummy associate, sometimes quite a few, and the popular ventriloquist has traveled the globe with them. His reveals are acceptable for grownups and kids. This past summer season, apart from performing out-of-town displays, he executed consistently at the Fowl-In-Hand Phase regionally and will return for the 2022 summertime season. Ahead of he married wife Gail and they started off a family members, Bomgardner was a common cruise line performer and noticed no explanation why cruises would not be desirable for the conservative Christian group.

The Steve Stutzman Family Singers have done on all the Sail and Sing cruises. Stutzman is a Lancaster County indigenous and performs almost 100 times every single yr across the state with his household.

“If we have 700 Sail and Sing cruisers on a excursion, just about all people will go to the night exhibit with Christian entertainers, which Ryan hosts,” Stutzman states.

Stutzman says he and the other performers know numerous of the cruise tourists from earlier excursions or have fulfilled them at church performances.

“Some of them know the lyrics of the hymns as perfectly as we do and join us in two or 3-aspect harmony,” he stated.

Although the early cruises targeted on pure getaway destinations, Bomgardner took a all-natural move ahead — at the recommendation of his repeat tourists — in 2019 and scheduled a cruise with a religious focus. The excursion was a 12-day Mediterranean cruise that adopted the Journeys of the Apostle Paul with stops in Athens, Corinth, Malta and Sicily, exactly where Paul preached the new Christian faith. Bomgardner is organizing a Holy Land trip in 2023 such as stops in Israel, Egypt and Jordan. He also has a Mediterranean Bible Review Cruise prepared for five international locations in 2023.

Bomgardner suggests he carries on to lover with Royal Caribbean Global, and they have welcomed his friends and deliver him with the support to make the getaway distinctive for Christian travelers.

“We’re such a huge group now,” Bomgardner says, “other travellers ask the crew about us and question if we’re on an Amish Spring Split. We actually hold 1 open efficiency every cruise the place other travellers are welcome to join us to see what we’re about. We really do not cover the actuality that we all have a potent Christian faith, regardless of what church or what custom we arrive from.”