Finishing up the Holiday season

Now that I am well settled into the Oasis I guess it’s time for a bit of an update.  Everything is going well so far and I am still really enjoying this ship; I’ve been asked if I would like to return here for my next contract and I said absolutely yes.  We truly have such a remarkable product here in terms of the ship itself and the shows we deliver, and it continues to be a thrill to deliver this product week after week to our guests.  Oasis of Dreams (the primary aqua show) is remarkable in just how many different elements it delivers within one show and it is great to see that we continue to have full audiences day after day.  One thing that is challenging about the aqua shows is the winter season.  The seas are rougher with higher winds which sometimes makes for some serious motion in the pool.  This is something everyone takes very seriously and the situation is evaluated thoroughly prior to any show taking place.  In particular, the divers are the most at risk as they are faced with a unique situation.  Rough seas make any show challenging for any performer.  In the theatre if a dancer jumps and the ship moves they might not land where or when they expected to.  The same goes for the ice skaters in the ice shows.  The main difference is that, for the dancers and ice skaters, the amount of room they have to perform doesn’t change with the movement of the ship.  The ice is still an inch and a half thick, the stage floor is still the same as it always was.  For the divers, the pool sloshing back and forth can lead to the depth at the sides (where the dives take place) varying by +/- 2-3 feet at a time.  Even not being a diver, it is understandable that when diving from a 10 metre platform, you would expect there to be the same amount of water to land in each time you dive.  While on land that is something easy to control, at sea it is a constant variable.  During Eastern Caribbean itineraries this is particularly challenging and during the past 4 Eastern Caribbean cruises we have had to postpone all 4 shows on days 2 and 3 to later in the voyage.  Luckily the guests who have talked to me about this were very understanding of the situation (if they were not I made sure to explain it to them so that they would be) so overall it doesn’t seem to have much of a negative effect on our guests’ vacation experience.

One of the downsides to being on such a large ship is the number of ports we can visit.  When the Oasis of the Seas was built, most of the ports she currently calls on had to be modified in some way in order to accommodate such a large ship.  The biggest problem is width as Oasis is not much deeper or longer than the next smaller class of ships, the Freedom class, which can visit so many more ports and also ports that require tendering.  So there is not a lot of variety here.  We call on the same 6 ports every two weeks (plus Fort Lauderdale) and at this point I usually can’t be bothered to get off the ship.  I guess it was a bit of a shock to go from a ship visiting places that I never really thought I’d get to in my lifetime and come back to a ship that does the same old routine constantly.  The ship itself is awesome, the shows are amazing, and the crew is great and well taken care of for the most part though; so overall it is a fair trade.  What will be really fun is when I have people come to visit me because then it will be worth it to go out in the ports.  My friend Rob is coming to visit me next month, he is another technical person like me (although not of the production/theatre type) and I’ll have a great time showing him the ship and all of the technology that goes into making our shows work (and I know he’ll enjoy the opportunity to see everything--and probably push some buttons too).  My mom and our wonderful friend Martine (who insisted she be mentioned) are coming to visit a few weeks after that as well, so there will be lots of ship tours going on and I’ll be getting plenty of exercise.   It really helps to break up these long contracts when friends and family come to visit.  Around mid-January I’ll be at roughly the halfway point in this contract and having a few visitors to look forward to after that is great.

Christmas and New Year’s celebrations were as big as ever on the ship with nearly record-breaking passenger numbers with over 6200 guests onboard last cruise (6400 is the absolute maximum possible occupancy, with every bed, bunk, and sofa bed filled).  It’s been a busy few weeks for sure, and I’m looking forward to having a few easier days coming up.  One unfortunate thing that happened over the holidays was that our Studio B light technician, Peter,  had a family emergency at home and he had to leave to go home and take care of his family.  As he is very new to Royal Caribbean (he had only just started his first contract) I was really hoping that this would not interfere with his hire status because he is a great light tech, a team player, and overall a real asset to the company.  Luckily it sounds like we were able to convey this information to the folks working shore-side and they have confirmed that his position will be waiting for him whenever he feels he is ready to return.   Of course this meant that we were and are short by one light tech at the moment but we have been able to work around that and it hasn’t been a real problem.  We worked out a way to split the Studio B duties between me and the theatre light tech, Jack.  I was happy to take on the extra work as I love working in Studio B and it was great to have an opportunity to do a few shows in there.  We now have a technician coming in temporarily for a month starting tomorrow to bring us back up to par on staff, and then my friend Tom, whom I first worked with on the Voyager of the Seas in 2010, will be the Studio B light technician until mid-April.  I’m really looking forward to working with him for a couple of months as we get along very well and also he played a big role in helping me to get promoted to Light Technician.

Frozen in Time, the ice show on the Oasis of the Seas, is a fantastic show, probably my favourite in the fleet so far and the Studio B facility on Oasis is very well-equipped.  It seems as though the designers took all the lessons they learned from the Voyager and Freedom class ships and very thoughtfully designed the space on Oasis to be more efficient, easier to work with and around, and more flexible than any of the previous versions.  The ice surface itself is a little bit bigger, and there are far more seats and the seats are better laid out to allow for improved viewing angles.  Additionally the retractable floor concept was completely reworked for the better, as well as the process for setting up the rink for guests to skate.  While I am no longer a stage staff, I can certainly appreciate how these improvements have made their lives easier on this ship.

So there is still plenty to look forward to this contract and then it looks like I can expect a late-April vacation, to return in June.  I can only imagine how hot it is going to be out here in the Caribbean at that time of year, but now that I’ve done Asia in the summer I’m fairly certain I can handle it.