8 days ‘til Voyager

Today I’m in St. Thomas, and as is usual on the Serenade, there are no other ships in port (on Explorer we were usually in port with at least 1-2 other ships). St. Thomas without 10K+ cruise ship passengers is a very quiet place, with long lines of taxis hoping for passengers when there are a limited number to go around.

Just 6 more days for me on Serenade of the Seas, need to start packing again soon.  It’s been a great (albeit short) time on Serenade for me.  I have had my own cabin so far (although probably my replacement will join me tomorrow in San Juan until I leave in St. Maarten), the stage staff team is quite good, and I actually ended up with a light tech I can work quite well with in the theatre (to help me work towards my long-desired promotion to a light tech position).  Light techs are an interesting breed, there are many of them who will not provide opportunities for others because they feel it is a very specialized profession and nobody else should be allowed in.  Over my time with Royal Caribbean, I haven’t encountered many of those (thank goodness) but I did have some trouble getting some of them to trust me doing lighting-related work, or sometimes appearing disdainful towards me when I came to a solution to a problem faster than they did.  The fact is, I know I have the knowledge to excel in lighting, but the process of proving myself to others in the field gets very tedious in the cruise ship industry when people change places so regularly.  As I said, the light tech on Serenade (Eric) has been great about giving me opportunities to use my skills and knowledge and seems to respect my opinion.  Hopefully on Voyager I can find a similar person to work with.

It has also been tough proving myself even as a stage staff.  We have to adapt to the ways of whatever ship we are assigned to and on top of that, we can be assigned to either the theatre or studio B.  In addition, Production Managers have shorter contracts than other production staff such as myself and therefore we have to adapt quite a bit to suit each manager’s style.  Unfortunately, some of them don’t realize this gap in working styles where we may need a bit of time and instruction to catch up, and therefore when we make a simple mistake, according to their preferences, they start talking down to us like we are working in theatre for the first time.  It isn’t that I don’t KNOW what my job is, or HOW to do it.  The biggest problem seems to be the way I express what I know or the way I do what I know how to do.  Even very minor differences in work processes can make a big difference to some people, and this can lead to some big problems if we aren’t on top of changes at all times.

I don’t mean to sounds like I hate my job, because I do enjoy my work, there are just some obstacles along the way. On the positive side, I am going to be in Europe for a while which will be a great change from being in the Caribbean for 8 months.  Also, a different ship means different people and you never know what you are going to get.  I am hoping for the best and I have heard for the most part that Voyager’s black shirts (tech team) are great.  At the very least, I know I’ll be going back to Studio B which means I’ll get slightly better work hours and fewer late nights.

Start of week 3

Getting into my 3rd week here on Serenade of the Seas, and therefore about halfway through my time here.  I have learned the production shows and been through my duty cycle a couple of times now, so I now know most of what there is to know about being a Stage Staff on a Radiance-class ship.

There are some big differences in the way the Stage Staff team operates on this ship compared to Explorer of the Seas.  The obvious one is that Serenade is a smaller ship and does not contain an ice rink, so that eliminates 3 Stage Staff, bringing the total down to 4.  The duty period on this ship is 2 days instead of a week, which so far seems to be a better way to do things but would probably only work on a smaller ship such as this one.  I’m only the stage staff on duty 2 days at a time (and the preceding 2 days, the Assistant stage staff on duty).  It’s nice not having to go a week at a time not being able to get off the ship in port.  The food runs (where the duty stage staff goes to the ship’s galley to get food for the production cast after shows) are also much easier.  Because there is no studio B, there are no stage staff NOT working during production shows and therefore we can only leave at the end of the show to pick up the food.  The process has therefore been delegated largely to the room service team and all I have to do is show up at room service and pick up the food directly from them in one place instead of from each individual prep area in the galley as was the case on Explorer (and on multiple decks might I add).

Stage staff in the theatre operate spotlights during non-production show times.  Originally, the spotlights were in the light booth, which is the usual place to put them on ships of this size.  Unfortunately, there is a pathway right in front of the light booth in which guests would often stand or pass through, blocking the spotlights’ beams from hitting the stage.  A decision was made to move the spotlights up into the 2nd catwalk above the theatre.  Since they weren’t designed for this purpose, the catwalks are quite cramped and therefore very uncomfortable for me as a big and tall sort of guy.

Spotlight operator’s chair.

My view of the stage from the spotlight chair

Above is a photo of one of the spotlights.  Notice the lack of any leg or head room at all.  My head touches the ceiling and it took me a week to work out a position I could sit in without both of my legs falling asleep for the whole show.  It was quite painful for that first week.

It’s been great working in the theatre on Serenade and experiencing the difference work hours and a variety of guest entertainers, most of which have thankfully been very good so far.  However, the production manager here sent an e-mail to the voyager of the seas and found out I will be going back to Studio B on Voyager, which I am very happy about. Studio B has more of a laid-back feel usually and the hours are usually less which should mean that I will be able to put in more hours of lighting work (which I have not been able to do at all on Serenade, even though the light tech here is a great guy and would let me run lights if I had the time).  Not to mention, I’ll be able to get back to driving the Zamboni :).

I have to get going now, have a Rock wall shift starting in half an hour (weather-permitting of course).

Settling into Life on Serenade… But not for Long

Now onboard Serenade of the Seas, finished unpacking, and have completed the necessary training for this ship.  I will not be staying long, but more on that later.  I really like the size, layout, and decor of this ship.  RCI guests always rave about the Radiance-class ships and I can definitely see why.  So far, I can see it is also a great layout from a crewmember’s perspective: easy to navigate and not so huge that it’s nearly a mile-long walk roundtrip just to get a meal (which is very much the situation on Voyager-class ships).  I have now met all of my co-workers and everyone seems very friendly around the ship.

I got very lucky and (at least for now) have my own cabin.  It is an ECCR cabin, which is basically a spare cabin used to house crewmembers when there aren’t enough crew cabins of a particular designation (IE. by division and gender).  So this particular cabin is not in the same area of the ship as all the other production staff, but for me that isn’t really a problem.  The crew cabins on Serenade are a much nicer layout than those on Explorer of the Seas in my opinion.  I haven’t seen any other crew cabins on Serenade but I’d be willing to bet that all 2-person crew cabins on this ship are identical (Update: I was wrong about this.  My cabin is part of about 10% of crew cabins that are oriented with the door on the long side of the cabin.  The remaining 90% are the same layout as voyager-class crew cabins, but slightly smaller).  The interesting thing is, I’m pretty certain that the cabin itself is smaller than the crew cabins on Explorer and yet the layout still seems better to me.  I guess of all the interesting quirks to be found in this German-built ship, one of the things they got right was the crew cabins.  One downside however is that it appears all of the internet terminals which the crew cabins on radiance-class ships were fitted with, have been removed.  I guess they sustained some damage over time (not all crew members take good care of their cabin and its contents) and the company opted to simply remove them instead of replace them (which I can imagine would have been a huge expense).  There is still an internet cafe and I also discovered that by plugging my laptop into the now-available Ethernet port in my cabin (where the terminal was previously connected), I can access the ship’s internet service at the standard crew wi-fi rates.  This is pretty useful but could potentially become very expensive to have around.

So as I mentioned earlier, I will not be on Serenade of the Seas for very long; about a month actually.  After signing on yesterday, I received flight details to join Voyager of the Seas on August 8.  I will leave Serenade on August 6 in St. Maarten and fly to Barcelona (connecting in Paris) to join Voyager for the remainder of my contract, or at least until such time as I am promoted (hopefully).  Until November, Voyager does 7-day cruises out of Barcelona, Spain calling in Naples, Rome, Livorno (Florence & Pisa), Villefranche, and Nice.  About mid-November, Voyager relocates to Galveston TX for the Winter where it sails Western Caribbean cruises.  I’m looking forward to doing a European itinerary for a while but it means a quick and massive change of plans for my mom, sister, and some family friends who were going to come visit me on Serenade in mid-August.  Luckily I told them not to make too many plans ‘til I was on Serenade because I know these kinds of transfers can happen towards the beginning of a contract and if they had booked the cruise it probably would have been non-refundable and they would show up here after I left.

Anyway, that’s all I have to report for now.  I will try to post again sometime in the next week to report my progress this week after learning the two production shows and whatever else there is to know.

Day 1

Today I finally join Serenade of the Seas after a long 3-month vacation.  My flights to San Juan were uneventful... well at least there were no negative parts.  I did manage to score my own exit row (that's right, the whole row) on both flights, which was quite nice.  I'm sure in both instances the flight attendant saw how uncomfortable I was (I'm quite tall at 6'4" and as such, need some leg room) since they only offered the move after I was seated.

It took quite a bit of time to get checked-in at the hotel this time.  They kept saying they needed to do my paperwork before they could issue the room key -- whatever that means -- which resulted in approximately 30 minutes of sitting around.  And that's when I realized exactly how much of a hurry-up-and-wait process joining a ship is.  In my experience so far, there isn't really a part about sign-on that moves quickly.  Last contract I was waiting in the crew terminal (tent) for 1.5-2 hours before I got on the ship at all, and during that time all that I accomplished was handing my paperwork over to HR and Medical.  Then there was more waiting once I got on the ship after that, but luckily I really hauled ass when they finally did take us on the ship which led me to the 3rd or 4th spot in the line (of probably 40 crew).

Last night I got some rather unfortunate news from my mom: one of our close family friends passed away yesterday.  An unfortunate part of working on a ship is being away during others' times of need without the means to do very much about it.  Compassionate leave is offered but only for immediate family members as far as I know.  Even then, the process is a hassle for everyone else because during the 1-2 week leave, there is no replacement for the missing crew member.

Anyway, at 8 am today we (the crew at the hotel, probably 30 or so) are being picked up and taken to the pier to go through the usual ritual of nothing much happening for a while, then off to do pre-departure safety training and meet my new coworkers.  I've already met someone I should be seeing quite often.  My roommate here at the hotel is a musician (sax) in the orchestra on the ship.


I shall report back sometime in the next few days how the whole process of getting myself settled in on board works out.  Since it's a new ship layout for me, I'll be spending the next few days just trying to get myself oriented.