Rough Seas

On By D. EndoIn Ship LifeLeave a comment

I’ve got about a week left of my contract. My replacement should be arriving in a couple of days. While this does limit the amount of time spent training my replacement, I’ve been told he is a very diligent and competent worker. I just need to put the finishing touches on the handover notes, and I’ll be ready for vacation.

Man, I’ve talked about how we try to go around bad weather systems, but sometimes they are unavoidable. It started with a cold snap in Tampa. I stayed inside the ship as much as possible which wasn’t too hard given my position and available paths to get to various parts of the ship I needed to go. Then as we left, it got windy. The ship was rolling in 20 mph winds with gusts reaching 40 mph. Man, we were moving. Actually we’re still moving quite a bit today, but at least it isn’t as bad as last night. We were moving so much, we didn’t let the dancers do their opening number due to safety concerns. Then we ended up cancelling the late night comedy show. It was probably a good call. I’m not sure how many people would want to attend a show at the front of the ship as that is one of the places you feel the most movement. Even I was feeling the movement. Fortunately, my job keeps me out of sight and isolated from guests during shows so I was able to be miserable without anyone noticing. The next day calmed down a bit, but we still had to take precautions for dancer safety.

We do have procedures in place in case of rough seas and production shows. It starts with dancer going from high heels to ballet flats. Next, we eliminate lifts, flips, and tumbles in the choreography. If the ship is rolling too much, we cancel the show. If it’s early enough, we may try to switch to a different show that is less physically intense such as a guest singer. We just have a juggler as our guest entertainer on board, so I don’t know what would have happened if they tried to replace the show. The a couple of the cast singers will usually have their own show available as well, but we haven’t even started work on that. I’m not sure why.

Anyway, I just have to hold out for a little while longer and then I can sleep until I’m not tired. I look forward to it.

Specialty Restaurants

On By D. EndoIn Ship LifeLeave a comment

Happy New Year! I’m starting the year strong with a cold. At least we are going back to a calmer schedule that I haven’t since August.

I just realized that my contract is almost complete, but I haven’t been to any of the specialty restaurants on the ship. Normally by now, I’d have been to at least one to celebrate the end of a contract for a production manager or something. It’s not even that their bad choices. Sure, you have to pay to experience them, but they are quite good and break up the monotony of crew mess food which seems to be on a weekly cycle on this ship. Having only been on the smaller ships, I have only experienced 4 out of 5 specialty restaurants I’ve run into. I know there’s many more options on bigger ships. I’ll get there eventually, I hope.

So the two restaurants that were on all my ships were Giovanni’s Table and Chops Grille. Giovanni’s is an Italian restaurant as the name might suggest. Chops is a steak house. I’ve enjoyed both of these in the past but can’t seem to find a good time to get over there now. Our schedules have been pretty hectic, and there isn’t a good time for us to reserve ourselves a spot. The newest restaurant I’ve seen is Samba Grill. This one is a Brazilian steakhouse and is the one I haven’t been to. I was actually a little excited to see it onboard since I haven’t been to any Brazilian steakhouse. I kept trying to think of a time to go and it never worked out. Then there’s Izumi Sushi, which is Japanese inspired food. The one thing I would add to the menu is tonkatsu which is surprisingly not on the menu. It’s not like they can’t. I’ve seen schnitzel on the menu in other venues, so I don’t get why they don’t add a similar item to Izumi’s menu. The final specialty restaurant I’ve been to on ships is Johnny Rockets. I have to admit, this was not good for my wallet or waistline when it was available. They were all-you-can-eat when I saw them, but I know that the larger ships use the standard a la carte menu. The best part was they were open late. Sometimes, there wasn’t time to get to the mess before or in between shows. On smaller ships, the mess isn’t open at all hours, so your options are limited. I haven’t been to a Johnny Rockets since my days as a stage staff. I know they used to be on all the smaller ships, but they got replaced with more upscale places, which I think is a real shame. They were often placed near to Adventure Ocean, the kids program we have onboard. It wouldn’t bring in as much money, but I would guess quite a few parents would take their kids for late night milkshakes after picking them up. Though, to be fair, the kid count on the smaller ships during the off-season is under 100. I would find it hard to justify keeping it if it was only full less than half the year. Oh well, maybe I’ll try to request a ship with a Johnny Rockets again.

Becoming a Light Tech

On By D. EndoIn Goals, Ship LifeLeave a comment

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.

New Centrum Shows

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The past couple months have been interesting in Centrum. It started in September. We added the Birthday Bash Party. I’m not actually sure why this was started, but it seemed official since they had a giant inflatable cake and special rubber ducks made for the occasion. For those unfamiliar with the rubber ducks on cruise ships, I don’t know who started it, but you may occasionally find rubber ducks hidden around. Normally, these are placed by other passengers as a fun scavenger hunt for the kids and the young at heart. I’ve seen some very clever placements of ducks. You may find groups of kids looking for these ducks, though they aren’t necessarily common to find. I’m going to guess that this activity will end up being an annual one if it comes back as the items made did not specify a year on them. They could be rolled out next year. Or I guess there’s also the possibility that this was a test run and they’ll just add it to the list of shows in Centrum. It wasn’t especially complicated. It’s mostly just a DJ party with a balloon drop. I thought we were only doing it for the month of September, but we kept it going into October.

Once October started, rather than replacing the Birthday Bash, we just added the Halloween party on a different night. This was complete with a costume parade and special show from our dancers. All of this culminated in a dance party with a live band performance. I have to admit, I was somewhat surprised at the number of people with costumes. Of course, I don’t see the marketing material so I don’t know if it was billed as a Halloween cruise or with such events or if people were hopeful when they came onboard. Regardless, it was a lot of fun. In case you’re wondering, no, I did not bring a costume. I don’t get much into the Halloween spirit these days. I think my last costume was putting on a suit and tie and going as a “productive member of society,” but that was years ago when I still worked on land. I also don’t feel like packing something I’m only using for a month in the middle of my contract. I try to limit my bags as much as possible to keep my expenses low and my cabin with more space.

Now that it’s November, we’re going back to the usual schedule for now. I will say, the one thing I’m looking forward to now is not staying up as late for Centrum events. Losing sleep to run the events was quite taxing.

Inclement Weather

On By D. EndoIn PortsLeave a comment

We got redirected from our original route due to a tropical storm going past the Bahamas. I’m not sure how our passengers feel, but Mexico is much nicer than not being able to make port due to high seas. Not to mention having smoother sailing with better weather. This would have been the last time going to the Bahamas this season before doing the same ports until I leave. On the bright side, we did get to go to Progreso again. I am curious what we would have done if Mexico was not able to take us as other ships were probably redirected to avoid the storm as well. There are no convenient ports to travel to that are legal for us as the itinerary needs to have an international port if we are docking on the cruise. A lot of Caribbean ports are quite far from us or have limited capacity for cruise ships. It does make me wonder how busy the port of Progreso is an a normal basis as we were the only ship to dock there that day.

It’s not common to change itineraries as drastically as we did, but it isn’t unheard of. We’ve had to extend cruises due to a hurricane passing by the home port. Fortunately, the waters receded quickly, and we didn’t have to spend too much time waiting. Unfortunately, the next cruise was supposed to be short so we didn’t actually get to go anywhere. It became what is known as a cruise to nowhere. Due to US laws about ports and ship builds, our ships cannot only go to US ports. That’s why we couldn’t just go to Key West and back to Tampa. There needed to be at least one port not in the US. Otherwise, the ship will need to be made in America, with American steel, and crewed with American workers. This is why only specific companies will do exclusively American ports. Not all countries have a similar law.

I guess now I just have to get ready to have the same ports until the end of my contract.