Semi-charter cruise

A new experience for me this week:  we have a large group of approximately 700 people from the Netherlands on board this cruise.  They have booked Studio B for a few shows during the week, for which they have brought their own talent and technical team.  We are currently short one stage staff in Studio B until tomorrow.  Not sure why but it's got to be a scheduling glitch of some kind that made it impossible to bring the replacement stage staff on in Barcelona on Sunday.  Anyway, that means that myself and Rey (the other Studio B stage staff) are taking care of these events on our own without a 3rd person.  Since we just came off of ice cast install, this is now a 3rd busy week for us.  It's actually been kind of nice not being bored so much lately.  Also, it's keeping me from getting off the ship in port and spending money that I shouldn't be spending.

The Studio B Production Manager (Marie) here is great but unfortunately she leaves soon and at this point nobody seems to know who will replace her while she is away on vacation.  Hopefully we will get some news on that soon.  It would be unfortunate for her if she has to stay here longer due to not having a replacement available.  When she returns from vacation I will be following up on my progress toward light tech... she has said that as long as I demonstrate my knowledge over the next couple of months she would be willing to submit the paperwork which would (hopefully) result an interview.

Voyager Cast Install

Wow, nearly a month since my last post.  I guess that would be because not much has happened.  My family and some friends visited me on the ship a couple of weeks ago.  That was a lot of fun but also very exhausting doing my usual workload everyday plus shore excursions in most ports.  I found myself going to sleep at about 1am and waking up at 7:45 am for the next day's excursion almost everyday.

Ice cast install started on Sunday.  Haven't really had a chance to meet the new cast but I'm sure that will happen sometime this week.  I luckily managed to avoid being "on duty" this week and next which means I will miss most of the work involved with ice cast install (ice makes every couple of hours since they are constantly tearing it up).  Just a few tech rehearsals next week as they get ready to put on their first show for an audience.

2 weeks ago I purchased a TIM USB 3G Internet stick for my laptop.  It has turned out to be a great purchase because my ship ports in Italy 3x a week (TIM only operates in Italy for the most part).  Cost of about €63 to purchase and activate the card, which included 40 hours free for the first month.  Pay as you go cost of €9 per month which is also 40 hours.  Most Italy days I can be found in Studio B surfing the internet on my laptop now.  Speed is decent, with Livorno being the fastest (presumably due to having a lower population density than Naples and Civitavecchia, therefore fewer people using the service).

Getting a new roommate today.  I like to clear out of the cabin for a few hours to give the guy a chance to unpack without being in the way all the time.  So I guess I'll meet him later.

Settled in on Voyager

Now that it's been more than a week since I arrived, I am back into the normal routine of Studio B.  Sure it may be a different show than on Explorer, but everything else is largely the same.  The production team here has been great so far, and hopefully I will be able to continue working towards the light tech position.  An interesting part of working on Voyager of the Seas is that it has some weird quirks about it.  Since it was the first of its kind and as such contained many new innovations in cruising, there were of course some lessons that were learned after building Voyager which were used to improve on future builds.  This means that there are some aspects to Voyager of the Seas which do not match any other Voyager-class ship.  Those differences are among the very few things I've had to learn since I signed-on.

My family and some friends are cruising with me next week.  That should be a lot of fun and the first time such an occasion has happened for me while working at sea.

Adventure to Voyager

I’m currently at a bar at St. Maarten airport, awaiting my 4pm flight to Paris, where I will connect on another flight to Barcelona, Spain.  It’s nice to have a brief break away from a ship and still get paid for it.  I’ll be arriving in Barcelona at approximately 10:00am tomorrow and I really hope I will be able to check-in right away because I don’t have a history of sleeping on planes.  Luckily I did manage to score myself an emergency exit row seat which is very helpful for me at 6’4” tall.
My last 5 days on Serenade were great as there was an overlap in scheduling my replacement and therefore we had an extra stage staff for 5 days, and that extra was me.  Being the extra meant that I was not scheduled for many duties and with that kind of free time I was able to run lights during shows for 4 days straight.  Since I didn’t get to run lights even once on Explorer in my 6 months, this was a nice opportunity for me.

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.