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Visalia native works 'Wonder' on Disney ship

Nick Nunez leaves the dry Valley for high seas to perform on cruise ship.

Published online on Monday, Jul. 27, 2009

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CARIBBEAN SEA — Nick Nunez never went to sea while growing up in Visalia. These days he rarely gets to dry land.

Nunez is in the middle of his second eight-month tour as part of the Disney Cruise Line’s singing and dancing repertory company aboard the Disney Wonder. Except for a few hours at the end of each three- or four-day cruise, Nunez is surrounded by miles and miles of open water.

Stage shows are as much a part of cruise activities as lifeboat drills and eating too much. For example, on the current jaunt, which left from Florida two days ago, ambled to Nassau and is headed to Disney’s own tropical island of Castaway Cay, there are three very different stage productions. A new show airs each night with one matinee show.

Nunez performs in all three musicals, including an elaborate staging of “Toy Story — The Musical.” The other productions feature songs and dances from Disney movies ranging from “Lion King” to “Little Mermaid.” He also makes appearances in a variety of other shows and events, such as the “stunt pirate” during the “Pirate of the Caribbean” party.

His training for the sea-going shows started in the very landlocked central San Joaquin Valley in Visalia. His father, Chris Nunez, still lives there and his mother, Dina Requna, has a home there but lives on the coast.

“I started taking singing lessons my senior year of high school. I actually took voice lessons in Fresno. I would make the 40-minute drive to Fresno to study with Judith Dickison,” says the Golden West High School graduate during an interview in the ship’s main coffee shop in mid-July. It’s a bit of an off day for Nunez because there will be no stage shows tonight.

“Everything I learned, I learned from the shows I did in junior high and high school. The first thing I did was ‘Music Man’ in junior high,” Nunez says. While in high school he appeared in productions of “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Les Miserables.” Nunez won the Visalia Teen Idol contest in 2004.

The trek from Visalia to the open waters took him through New York, Boston and Toronto. The first job Nunez landed after he graduated from Boston Conservatory in 2007 was with the Disney Cruise Line. He only went to the audition because of a friend. He was more intent on working on Broadway. “She wanted to be Bo Peep in the ‘Toy Story’ musical. I agreed to go with her just so she didn’t have to go to the audition alone,” Nunez says. “I got called back and she didn’t.”

As soon as he was hired, Nunez went to Toronto, where all of the cruise line shows are staged and rehearsed before they go to sea.

Different musicals are staged three of the four nights. In the awards show-themed “The Golden Mickeys,” Nunez sings “Out There,” the show-stopping tune from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” He also sings and dances in other musical numbers in the show including numbers from “Aladdin” and “Mulan.”

You don’t get to see much of Nunez in “Toy Story: The Musical.” He’s the front half of the giant Slinky dog.

On the final night, Nunez sings and dances his way through “Disney Dreams … An Enchanted Classic,” a musical that includes songs and numbers from “Peter Pan,” “Lion King,” “Little Mermaid” and other Disney movies.

Nunez has learned a lot working two tours at sea. “You learn what it is like to do a long run of a show,” Nunez says. “That’s something — unless you are doing a tour or a long Broadway show — most people don’t get.”

With regular road tours or Broadway, actors can at least get away. These cast members spend most of their lives confined to the ship where they spend a lot of time playing cards. Nunez says unlike a touring or Broadway cast, this group spends most of their time together so they have become a “very tight group.”

When the ship docks, Nunez takes advantage of the few hours the ship is in port by checking out Orlando with friends. He only has about eight hours before the ship embarks on the next three-day cruise. There’s no reason for Nunez to have an apartment or car in Florida because the ship has been his home for most of the last two years.

“I never sleep on land,” Nunez says with a smile.

TV and movie critic Rick Bentley can be reached at rbentley@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6355. Read his blog at fresnobeehive.com.