Author: D. Endo

I work the backstage part of theater.

The Return

On By D. EndoIn Comparing, Ship LifeLeave a comment

It’s been about a year, but I’m back on the Radiance. It’s taken a bit of time to remember my way around the ship and what I have to work with. What’s been really interesting is seeing what’s changed and what hasn’t. For example, due to our short cruise lengths of four and five days, the unique show Rockin’ With the Radiance Crew in Centrum has been suspended. This allowed people from other divisions to showcase their performance skills. It was mostly a live band karaoke show. You might get crew from housekeeping or culinary to serenade the guests. The hardest part for me was that the performers and the order they performed were not always reliable cruise to cruise. It was really dependent on the home department allowing them to perform. One of the most impressive and most popular was a beat boxer who worked in laundry. I think he kept coming back to the ship because the Cruise Directors kept requesting him. Surprisingly, they are just getting around to fixing some of the issues I noticed from when I left. I do get that sometimes schedules don’t line up and there’s a lot more attention being put on our next ship, but that still seems like a long time to fix an issue.

I do remember the last time I was here, they decided to take Tango Buenos Aires out of rotation since the ship was heading to Alaska, and it didn’t fit the vibe they were going for. I’m sure this was a relief to my replacement as it is one of the more complicated shows I’ve had to run on ships so far. I found out that I was actually the last light tech to deal with it. It’s actually fortunate that I came back. I still have an old copy of the show which I used to practice for light, spot, and video cues. The current Production Manager did not have a copy of the show which he also has never done. In total, it’s just me and one of the stage staff that have seen or experienced working the show. I’m not especially concerned about learning the show for the stage crew. There isn’t much movement throughout the show. I’m going to guess for our dry tech, there will be a lot of starting and stopping as the show has long scenes with nothing moving or changing. It’s mostly getting used to the rhythm of a new show.

One of the funniest changes I’ve found is something I knew about because I created it. During one of the tech rehearsals, we had a show stop drill where we pretend there is a problem, so when the real thing happens, we’ll know what to do. It’s kind of like our ship emergency drills. The cruising industry has many examples (both good and bad) as to why these are so important. Anyway, the tech I was replacing was doing all the procedures manually. I was confused and asked him about why he did it that way. It apparently was just the way he was taught. I ended up showing him my old show stop automated procedure. He was quite surprised that he could have been going this more easily and never knew about it. It does make me wonder how much information is just not passed on as techs change on the ship. I bet there have been easier procedures that I’ve missed due to no-one telling me they exist.

Rough Seas

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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

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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

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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

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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.

We’re Always Hiring!

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I have given it a bit of thought about if I wasn’t a techie and still wanted to work on ships. We often tell people we’re like a floating Las Vegas casino. Basically everything that would go into running a casino has an equal job on the ship plus a few extras. If something breaks, obviously we can’t call for a repairman like we would on land. That being said, if I were to try to pick a new job knowing what I know now, I would probably try to pick a job that would give me a good amount of time in port. Given I don’t have the technical knowledge to work on the marine side, I’ll be sticking with the hotel division as I don’t know what I don’t know about ships.

The obvious choice for me is cruise staff. My schedule wouldn’t change too much from what it is now, and activities are heavily reduced when we are in port, meaning I wouldn’t have too much trouble getting off the ship. They don’t necessarily need any particular skills except a willingness to dance and talk in front of crowds. Then there is the retail side. I might apply to work the shops on board. These close while in port due to taxation laws while not in international waters. This is also why the casino portion of ships are not usually open while docked. Though I don’t have the skills, being an orchestra member is appealing. You definitely won’t be performing while a majority of the guests are off the ship, and there is no reason to have to stay on the ship in a duty role. Another obvious choice would be being a part of NextCruise sales force. They don’t seem to do a whole lot while we’re in port, though judging by their office hours, they must keep someone on the ship. Then there’s Shore Excursions. One might argue that the morning gets eaten away by dealing with guests, but it still seems pretty solid for seeing what the port has to offer. Given my history of children’s theater, one might assume Adventure Ocean is right up my alley, but I would really rather not deal with kids, especially when kid counts are high.

Well, that’s all I can think of for now. I’m not sure how I would handle being a sports staff, and I am no where fit enough to be a singer in the production shows. If this peaked your interest on working on cruise ships, remember: we’re always hiring!

Back Deck

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My new ship is nice. Granted, it’s one of the oldest in the fleet and comes with its fair share of troubles, but it’s still nice to be on a ship of a different class than Radiance. The one thing I missed the most while working on a Radiance class ship was the back deck. This is a crew only area in the back of the ship where you could relax and enjoy some fresh air without having to worry about guests. Another reason to have these areas is for the smokers. Letting the fresh air take care of smoke is so much easier than what the Radiance class does. They have a smoking area at the back end of the crew bar and they try to filter out smoke. This doesn’t work perfectly, and there is always the scent of tobacco smoke lingering in the surrounding area. It even leaks to part of the mess since they share a wall and an emergency exit. The closest thing we had on my last couple of ships was an open deck in the front, but the guests could peer into the area from the helicopter pad. It’s mostly used for smoking and sunbathing. It’s also not the best place to socialize at night. Due to its location, it needs to be basically unlit at night to give the bridge officers the best view possible. The glow of a light could ruin their night vision or obscure an object without lights such as land or an unpowered ship. It’s kind of like when a driver doesn’t want a passenger to have the overhead light on while driving at night. It’s distracting and dangerous. Now, not all ships have a “back deck” in the back. Some ships have it in front but have them covered and out of the public eye.

Royal Caribbean is known for coming out with the biggest cruise ships in the world. A few years ago, I checked and saw that of the ten largest cruise ships in the world, Royal Caribbean had the 7 of those spots. That’s certainly impressive, but that’s not what I want. While I haven’t been on the larger ships, I do know that the Radiance class of ships makes basically as much as the largest ships in the fleet. What I really want is a ship about the size of Radiance class but just new. These ships are getting old and sometimes a refresh isn’t enough to cover the age of the systems. It would be great to have the latest bells and whistles and all the research that has gone into the larger ships in a smaller package that can fit more docks. As much as I gripe about working on Majesty of the Seas, it was one of two ships in the fleet at the time that could go to Cuba. Now, all the ships in the fleet are too big to squeeze into the bay and fit on the dock. Sometimes, the only dock able to accommodate us is the one for shipping. In these cases, most of the dock area is off limits due to safety and we get bussed to town. The farther we are from a facility, the more likely it is we get bussed. A neat thing I learned while working for American Cruise Lines, their ships can tie up in the heart of a city. I enjoyed walking to various parks and attractions because we were right there. Oh, and a back deck of some kind would be great on this new ship design.

In case anyone is wondering, I’m doing the exact same route as last contract, now on a smaller ship.

Round Trip Ticket

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It’s funny. This contract, I joined in Los Angeles. This was great. The only annoying thing was my flight was at 7 in the morning. I did not sleep too well due to the excitement of starting a new assignment and the fear of sleeping through my alarm. My flight lasted the normal hour or so from SFO to LAX so that was great. I’ve been so used to longer flights places like Europe and Australia. Even Florida can feel like an incredibly long flight when I get in late and then have to wait to for the shuttle to the hotel. After I got to my hotel, I looked at my watch and thought, I’ve got enough time. So, I spent the day at Disneyland. That was nice. Of course, I made sure to leave before the fireworks as the next morning was an early one to get to the ship. It was a great way to start a contract. Now that my contract is winding down, I’m set to leave in Los Angeles as the ship continues to Alaska. In a sense, this my whole contract was just one long cruise and now I’m headed back to my original port.

I’d be lying if I said I was disappointed that my contract wasn’t extended to Alaska. It is on my bucket list of places to go. My Production Manager on the ship has told me that he marked in my company file that I would like to go to there at some point. I did the math. After my next contract, I’ll be lined up to go to Alaska during the following contract. My next ship is Grandeur of the Seas, and I’ll be doing the exact same itinerary I’ve been doing. Apparently, Grandeur is taking over Radiance’s old route. Once the summer is over, Radiance is going to be doing 3 and 4 day cruises to the Bahamas. I’m glad I’m not going to be doing that, but we’ll have to see what I can write about since it’s going to be more of the same ports.

The Annual Inspection

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The number one job of everyone on the ship is safety. After all, if the worst were to happen, it’s not like we could gather everyone in a parking lot after we evacuate. This past week we had our annual US Coast Guard inspection. We do an emergency drill for them to show our readiness in the event of an emergency. During this drill, we have no guests on board so no one can be excused from participating due to attending guests’ needs. The Coast Guard then has various officers around to observe how well we do are duties and then quizzes us to make sure we know what our equipment does and how to use it properly. Once the drill is complete, we can let passengers onboard, and they continue to make observations. Any time you get on a ship, you must go through the safety demonstration. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first cruise or you’re a back to back cruiser who has spent thousands of nights on cruise ships. You still have to listen to the information. It’s kind of like going to an amusement park or an airplane and having to listen about how to put on a seat belt. This ensures that no-one can say they didn’t know what to do in the event of an emergency. Just like some of the more fun flight attendants, I try to sneak in a few jokes to keep it bearable for the Pinnacle member who has to sit through this every single time.

The Coast Guard inspection happens once a year unless something weird happens. You can fail it if proper procedures are not followed or the crew is not knowledgeable about safety. I’ve heard about it happening on others ships. They can even cancel sailings with passengers until the crew are ready and can demonstrate everything properly. The senior staff took this all very seriously and ramped up the difficulty of the questions to make sure we knew everything we were supposed to. We have to know things like what kind of fire extinguishers are on the ship and what kinds of fire they can be used on. We should know what equipment to pull out of a life boat before we start loading passengers onboard due to how hard it is to access the storage areas once the boat is full of bodies. We have to be able to demonstrate how to start the engines on the life boats in case the normal driver is out. It can be a lot if you’re not used to it. I’m just happy the ship passed with flying colors.

We’re getting close to the end of my contract, and I don’t think I’ll be able to extend out this time. A bit of a disappointment, but oh well, these things happen.