Guest Entertainers

On By D. EndoIn Ship LifeLeave a comment

In addition to our own shows, we get guest entertainers to add variety to a cruise. You may wonder what kind acts do we get. We’ve brought on board a wide variety of acts from singers and tribute bands to jugglers and balance acts. We’ve had a fair number of magicians and ventriloquists as well. Every cruise also has a couple of comedians as well.

Most of our acts have some claim to fame. The comdians are often from comedy competition participants or have been on TV. The singers and magicians have all performed in Las Vegas or have gotten pretty far along in a TV talent competition. Regardless, all of our guest entertainers have something unique about their show. We had a juggler who holds three Guiness World Records, one of which is in regards to how many bowling balls he can kick up to his forehead. A pianist we had played with another famous musician named Liberace for several years. In Russia, we had an entire dance group of a couple dozen peope sing and perform traditional music and dances. I’ve seen a balancing act take a 15 foot ladder and balance it on his face. Even some of the non-guest entertainers are minor celebrities. One of our singers started working on cruise ships because she would get swamped by fans everytime she needed to go to the grocery store. A lounge pianist on the Explorer actually has fans who will book a cruise solely because he is performing on the ship.

Oh, Right… The Blog

On By D. EndoIn Ship LifeLeave a comment

I was going to write in the blog sooner, but I’ve been a bit busy. It really started right after we got to Florida. First we had to deal with the charter cruises. There were over a hundred road cases brought on board. We spent hours bringing them aboard and sorting them. They even made a stage on pool deck. I mean that literally. They raised platforms and added a huge sound system for the bands. Once our charters were done, we had to break down everything and get it all off the ship. That was all fine, but then we went down a stage staff.

Crews operate on a rotating basis. Usually, crew members will cycle out as their contracts are up and new ones cycle in. Entire staffs tend to not change all at once unless the group is a band or the singers and dancers for the production shows. Even the orchestra will follow the usual rotation. In fact, the Music Director mentioned the next few home ports there will be new musicians coming in so he won’t be able to get off the ship to enjoy Florida until next year as he has to stay aboard to meet them. Getting back to new crew members, if there are multiple positions in the same venue that are very similar to the each other, the new crew member is brought in on the same day the old one leaves. For the more unique or specific positions, there is a transition period where the new crew member has a chance to train under the old crew member. This transition period isn’t always necessary as some of these crew members end up returning to the same ship so only notes on the changes are required.

Every now and then, there is no replacement ready to step in once a crew member leaves. Sometimes this is because the person is being sent home due to medical reasons. Other times, it’s because something weird happened with a visa or the paperwork and the replacement can’t come yet. Ultimately, this just means that the people on the team need to step up more than usual to fill the duties of the whole team. Sometimes this can be hard when you only have four people on your team when you’re at capacity. Being a part of cruise division, we had to pull other people to help us during the production shows. Even the cruise director got to work a puppet on the stage to help us out. Things are starting to look up, though. We’re getting a new stage staff today. Soon we’ll be close to normal. I hope.

Adventure is Out There!

On By JoeyIn PortsLeave a comment

You never know what you’ll find when getting off in a port sometimes. I mean, it’s great to plan trips and research where you’ll go. How else will you know that you can see a reef in an actual submarine in Cozumel or see the world’s only cryptozology museum in Portland, Maine? Still, there is something nice in discovering things while simply wandering around. There is a little museum in Philipsburg, Sint Maartin created and run by a man known as “Yoda Guy.” He is an amazing makeup and visual effects artist that has been involved with many great films including Men in Black and, of course, the original Star Wars trilogy. Having made many friendships throughout his career, he was able to get his hands on some amazing pieces of movie history, such as parts of the original scripts for Star Wars as well as some death casts and life casts of famous people. It was a lot of fun.

Souvenirs and Things

On By D. EndoIn Ports2 Comments

As far as souvenirs that I like to bring home, I am now quite partial to magnets and coins. I decided upon magnets that represent the ports of call after my first contract as they are relatively light and easy to transport. When I was packing right before coming home that time, I was having a hard time fitting everything into my suitcase. I ended up buying a second one, and I still was having a hard time making everything fit. My goal this time is to not need to do that. Flights have weight limits for luggage that are more expensive than I want to pay and trying to pack all the extra stuff in my backpack is a bit of a pain. The coins are something I have been collecting for a while. I do not look for rare or old coins, just ones not from the United States. The problem with currency exchange is that you usually cannot use coins when doing a currency exchange, only paper money. While some may complain about this policy, I view it as a relatively cheap souvenir.

There are some ports I do not get off the ship for various reasons and those I do not have any magnets for. It would be easy enough to ask another stage staff or even my roommate to get one for me, but part of the appeal of the magnets for me is finding one that represents what I experienced in the port. I am also trying to avoid rectangular picture magnets as I find that how a magnet is designed and shaped to be important to the experience. Sometimes I just have to make do with what is available. Some examples of places the ship went but I did not get off include the Canary islands, Vanuatu, and St. Johns in Canada.

It is getting really cold in New England and Nova Scotia. In fact, it is raining as we leave Boston one last time. Thank goodness we are changing our itinerary to go out of Florida to the southern Caribbean.

Red Sky at Morning

On By D. EndoIn Ports, Science, Ship LifeLeave a comment

We had some rough seas going to Halifax with what seemed like 20 foot swells. That’s about as tall as a two story building. It reminded me that there is an old saying for sailors that goes “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” Believe it or not, this phrase is ancient wisdom that works well for the most part. You see, weather usually goes from east to west while sailing. The beautiful red sunset at sea can be caused by water and other particles in the air, but because of the way the winds usually blow, the likelihood of a storm is actually low. On the other hand, having the red with the sunrise means that whatever system is there is likely to come your way. We have much more sophisticated equipment now that gives us lots of data and more accurate predictions. Being from California, I have a hard time reading the clouds and have had to run up to protect band equipment from rain on more than one occasion.

In the event of a storm, the captain is the one to make the decision about what happens next. One of the possibilities is to stay in port longer and try to wait out the storm. This hinges on a few things including the protection the port provides and if there are other ships schedule to take that spot later on. This does not always work out as sometimes the storm lasts longer than expected and there is a limit before a ship has to leave or else it may miss the next port. On Majesty, the ship ended up doing a double overnight in Havana and not doing the next port of Cozumel as this would have taken us right into the back end of a Hurricane. The other option is to sail around the storm. We did this on Serenade and ended up switching around the itinerary order to stay away from the storm but still make all the ports. If there seems to be no safe way of sailing, there is the possibility to cancel the cruise, but that cannot happen just because of a few bumps along the way.

Of course, what affects us the most is the rockiness of the ship for shows. We ended up canceling and changing shows in order to make sure our dancers were safe due to a storm system that hung around. Our juggler was also not sure about what balancing tricks he could perform, but did not want to cancel the show until he was sure he could not perform anymore tricks due to safety. We told him that the audience would understand if he felt unsafe. I also added what I usually tell jugglers on rough sea days, “This show is either going to be even more amazing or a total disaster.” He laughed and did two awesome shows much to the delight of the guests.

I Think I’ll go to Boston

On By D. EndoIn Ports, Ship LifeLeave a comment

So, I got a new contract on the Serenade of the Seas. We sail out of Boston for the month of October, and then we get to switch to a southern Caribbean run pretty much for the rest of my contract. I’m quite excited to see parts of New England and Canada with the possibility of seeing some of the beautiful fall colors you don’t always get to see in California. While I will be seeing some familar destinations in the Caribbean, most of the ports will be new to me.

As always, there will be an adjustment period as I need to familiarize myself with the ship. I no longer have to worry about an ice rink as this ship is slightly smaller than the Explorer of the Seas. Part of me wishes I could go back to one of the other ships I’ve been on, but there is something to be said about exploring a new ship. There are already things that are widely different from the ships I’ve been on. For starters, there is actually no way to get from my cabin to the theater without going through guest areas. On the plus side, I don’t have to worry about taking care of a band on pool deck, which means no more having to rush up there in case of a sudden rain and getting soaked to the bone. There are also the little things to discover like finding out where staircases and elevators drop you off as well where all the lockers are. It seems to me that even if the ship class is the same, storage may shift around due to the needs at the time. Some of my coworkers have commented about going to the wrong locker due to working on a similar ship before and just getting confused.