So I started my time on cruise ships working for American Cruise Lines. At the time, the theater company I was working with closed, and as I was mulling over what to do next, I remembered one of my professors in college who mentioned two kinds of theater that people don’t often think about for techs. The first kind he mentioned was dinner theaters. Being in southern California, there are a lot of them due to agents trying to round out their screen actor’s resume. They may not be of the highest quality theater, but they do need someone to run their shows. At the very least, it’s a steady pay check. The other forgotten tech theater he mentioned was cruise ships. At the time, I was aware they existed but didn’t really know how much there was to do for a theater tech on a cruise ship. As I applied, I decided that I would also try smaller companies that didn’t have theater positions. I figured getting some experience on ships in general would look nice on my resume. That’s how I ended up being a deck hand on my first cruise ship. My contract ended up only being a couple months, but it was quite interesting. My ship ended up going from Massachusetts to Florida, so I got to see a good portion of the east coast ports. Often times, the ship was able to dock in the heart of cities we visited. The hours were terrible. We worked twelve on and twelve off. Somewhat fortunately for me, when I joined, they gave me the day shift and because of the need specific workers, I kept the day shift where normally, I would have rotated out. Now that I think about it, this was probably unfair to the other deck hands. I don’t know why they did this. Still, it was a nice experience. I don’t know how much it helped me get hired for the job I wanted.

After finishing my contract with them, I joined Royal Caribbean as a stage staff. I was talked down from being a technician as this was my first time working on a large cruise ship. I will say, this was probably a good choice by our recruiter. I am not sure if I would have been ready for the responsibility and the learning curve required by first time contractors. I spent two and a half contracts as a stage staff. During my third, the light tech was leaving with no replacement, so I stepped in. It was a lot of fun until the pandemic hit. I spent about a month as a light tech before everything shut down. When I came back, they hired my back as a light tech. Knowing how our promotion policy has changed and the fact that a lot of techs did not go back to working on ships, I was quite lucky to keep my promotion. Now you are required a certain amount of documented cross training before you can keep a promotion like this. You are now considered a temporary promotion until your contract ends or they find a permanent tech. You get the pay, but unless you put in the hours, you will go back at the start of your next contract. I get the reasoning behind this. You don’t want to promote someone who isn’t ready if it wasn’t for the emergency situation.

I’ve got about two months left on my contract as we head into the holiday season. Oh, and we get a brand new cast next cruise with nine out of twelve of them being new hires. This should be interesting and busy.