independencelogbook

[independencelogbook]

10.22.19

You ever have those moments where you're like, "whatttt circumstances could have possibly lined up in the universe to put me in this absurd situation right now?", cause working in entertainment does that to me a lot. Like sometimes you find yourself wrestling a gigantic inflatable laser tag arena on a very noticably moving ship at midnight, or you're rolling a pac man suit down a flight of stairs, on a boat off the coast of Spain, and it's just a normal Tuesday evening... The pac man suit was tonight for me, in between two performances of Once Upon A Time at the end of a very long day, and you can't help but pause and think honestly, wtf am I doing haha.

Duty is a lot of work even though it doesn't sound like that much more than normal on paper. It's been pretty long days, so I'm glad it's not like this every week. Ready to hand off my deck phone on Thursday at the stroke of midnight to the next poor victim. Our new ice cast has joined us on this cruise, so they're in install right now. For me that means way more ice makes in one day, but I'm genuinely enjoying driving the Zamboni, so I don't mind because it's kinda fun. I think I have 4 or 5 makes tomorrow where normally we would do maybe 2 makes and a scrape on a show day, or nothing if there's laser tag in there.

People are starting to talk more about Halloween and the crossing and the Caribbean. All getting closer.

I've also heard some about the rigging situation today but I'm gonna go talk with my boss about it tomorrow. They might be looking for more commitment than I wanna sign up for (which I was kinda anticipating because it doesn't seem like a wise investment on their part to pay for my training if I'm not gonna continue to work for them for x amount of contracts) so my full move up to rigging may not happen in the end. Not too crushed by that- I'd prefer the flexibility over being forced into more contracts. We'll see more tomorrow though. It's all very vague to me tonight still.

I can't remember if I've already mentioned this but since I'm not fresh into my contract anymore, they've moved my emergency duties to something more substantial. I now assist with one of the life rafts, so I've done some training with that recently. Today actually they timed us on a training life raft pod to get a feel for using the davit, which is the crane that helps you launch the raft, and all the different ropes and the order of procedures. I had been nervous about that one but it's actually pretty straightforward and knowing ropes/rigging from theater stuff helped make that easier. So it ended up being kinda fun to practice that today too.

Crazy how much it's a revolving door on ships, as far as crew members are concerned. I'm used to meeting a lot of new people and working together in an intense burst for a couple months and then potentially never seeing a lot of them again, but this is even crazier with the turnaround. Seems like there's always some prep for a new person to start shadowing someone. Two of my immediate co-workers leave at the end of the crossing, as well as the majority of the ice cast, and then a couple weeks later the current Grease case will be gone. We already had a light tech leave, there's a new sound guy and new trumpet player on this cruise, and another stage staff who left two cruises ago, his replacement comes in a few days. So it's constantly new faces, and everybody from our division knows when there are new people in the department cause you hear about who's leaving and when replacements are coming. Not much new, exciting stuff to talk about day to day except people and work haha. We're all together all the time, and we see each other every day so new news travels very fast.

Looking forward to the Caribbean! I've heard it gets repetitive but I'm still excited for the new locations and maybe a bit more of a routine, since the lengths of the cruises should be more regular. Probably wishful thinking. Lots of hype around here for St Maarten, and I believe with my current duty rotation I should be able to get off for all of the ports at the end of the crossing. Those are all one-timers so I'm lucky again with my port days.

[independencelogbook]

10.14.19

I'm coming up fast on my duty rotation, so that should be the next new thing that I'm figuring out. I start right before our next Southampton day, so I actually won't be getting off again in England. I'm basically cooped up for the last Europe cruise that this ship is doing, and then I'm free to get off againnnnnn...right when we start the crossing haha.

I've gotten my training dates now, so I know I'll be on the Indy through the start of January but I'm not sure yet which ship they'll be putting me on after training. May not know until a few days before, and anything they tell me could change too, so we'll see. I'm excited to learn the bigger flying shows though, that's not really anything I've done before so that'll be really great to do for a bit.

As for updates: I'm driving the Zamboni more, I'm doing more and more show tracks on my own, and finding (and remembering) direct routes to places so that's all nice to be settling into. Still trying to adjust to learning how to spend free time when it's all broken into chunks and is at irregular times and for different lengths every day. It's also hard to meet up with people if you don't have any way of contacting them, so you kinda just go to a common area and see who shows up. I've been spending a lot of time hanging out in the staff mess because it's quiet and the tea is always out even between open hours. People usually filter through there a few times during the day too, so you're bound to catch someone to hang out with for a bit.

They've brought the pool table balls back out! It's just been an empty table sitting there for the first two weeks, so I tried playing with some people the other night. It's definitely a learning curve lol, cause the ocean gets to take a turn whenever it wants to. If it's really smooth you don't notice but usually there's a few times when everything rolls to one side or your cue ball will drift after you've shot it. 😅 Foos ball and air hockey are a little less thrown off by the ship moving haha.

Getting off the ship is pretty great. I got lucky and didn't have my duty shift this week so I've been able to get off on all these island ports that we're only going to once. Not very often that you get to walk around on the beach on an island off the coast of Africa so I've been making sure to get off every chance I get. It's a bit of a mindset change too because you only get maybe 3-6 hours off in each port, so that's enough time to walk to about one thing, get food and head back. A bunch of short bursts of a new place each day instead of a handful of full days in one place like I'm used to doing when I've travelled. I think that will be one thing that's nice about the Caribbean, (although everyone says you get really tired of going to the same two ports every week) you can explore one place a number of different times so you eventually get to know it really well instead of the dine and dash that we've been doing in these one day only ports. There's ups and downs to all of it, I'm sure. It's a very surreal experience lol, but I'm enjoying myself so far.

[independencelogbook]

10.8.19

The Royal Theatre is our mainstage theater, in which we do three different shows: Invitation to Dance, Once Upon a Time, and Grease. Once is the most manic of the three, from backstage anyway. It's a fairytale themed song and dance medley with different characters performing to modern music back to back to back. Grease is Grease- I'm pretty sure they've trimmed it down to be as quick as they can make it, cause none of the shows have an intermission. I don't think any of them go over an hour 40. Invitation to Dance is a showcase of mostly jazz and Latin dance numbers, and they sing during that one too.

The tech process is definitely different than on land, in that they don't follow the normal order of things as far as a schedule goes. Instead of rehearsals, tech, preview, opening, they have a show that's been running for years and the cast rotates out as one big group when their contracts are up. So for me, that means I'm jumping in to performances straight away because I've joined in the middle of a pre existing cast. Definitely trickier to learn because you're just shadowing the track of the person you're replacing during live shows with an audience, instead of having dedicated tech time to work through transitions for the first time. There also isn't the normal schedule of the show running several days in a row for a month straight. You do Grease one day, intro to Dance a couple days later, once upon a time the next... So you're following someone's track for the first time, waiting several days and then doing the same thing again but with three shows at once. 😅 Luckily there are understudy rehearsals the morning before the performance, and in the case that you have totally new stagehands, they might schedule a dry tech with just crew to hit the transitions so that you can test things without the cast there to potentially injure, and without the same time constraints as a live show. There's also what they're calling install, which is a true tech process when the old cast leaves and the new cast starts, which for Grease should be right after the crossing. We're also doing an install with a new ice cast I believe right before the crossing. All of these shows also have a sort of secondary version for rough seas. Ice cast will do less dangerous lifts, they might not wear heels on stage, some of the flying units won't be used, etc. So there's a whole other element there that luckily I haven't had to experience yet. If it gets realllllly bad, then shows get cancelled.

Our other random tasks throughout the ship are the stowaway piano, which is when we bring the piano to random locations where she'll play for an hour or so before moving to a new one. In front of restaurants, bars, inside the elevator, kinda wherever. There's a couple of bridges that cross the promenade (the main thoroughfare for guests that has a ton of bars/restaurants/shopping) that they have performances on quite a lot. So we set and strike the drums and speakers and mic stands for those. They have a silent disco some nights, so we bring out the headphones for that but don't have to run it. They also do a parade at the end of the cruise, which involves roping off the middle of the promenade to have a big runway for performers and a bunch of other people to walk up and down. There's a band set up way on an upper deck by the pool that we help with. Movie nights in the theatre which is just bringing in the projection screen, all kinds of small things at any point in the day. Every night they have a mainstage performer who will do two shows back to back, so we've had comedians, a lot of singers, a magician- I hear this cruise there's a juggler that's really good. Since I'm a studio B tech mainly, I haven't had to work those shows, and I've been able to watch a good chunk of them from either the light or sound booth. Definitely a nice perk. I've been soaking up a lot of the free and very talented entertainment while I'm here.

Word on the street is that we have to do a full melt of the ice soon, just to reset the space instead of patching gouges indefinitely. I guess re making the ice from scratch involves 24-48 hours straight through of pushing thin layers of water across the deck with giant squeegees. So the entire entertainment division takes shifts in teams to keep people on it the whole time. Sounds like it could be miserable, but anyone who has mentioned it says it's kinda fun. You put on a movie or something and have your little team for a shift and then hand it over to the next group. An unexpected team building exercise haha.

We're on our initial sea day for cruise number 2 now, and like clockwork it's as rough as the first sea day of last cruise. That's one thing I won't miss when we head to the Caribbean lol. It really feels like you're in a big, slow washing machine for an entire day. Praise mezcline. 🙌 It is kinda fun trying to walk down the halls on days like this though. And going to sleep is definitely easier, like being a baby in a rocking chair. If you ignore the occasional thud of the anchor hitting the side of the ship haha. I had the whole morning off since it looks like training is done or at least slowing down. And we're on our way to La Coruña! And very soon to the Canary islands, which I'm pretty excited about.

[independencelogbook]

10.3.19

The low down on my position, as I'm learning, is that this ship used to have dedicated rigging staff, but they've recently cut the minimal flying parts from any of the shows on board and now have no real need for riggers going forward. That also means there are some residual stage staff duties left over that rigging techs would do on their tracks for the shows, which is all the stuff I'm currently shadowing. Basically, the entertainment department has been understaffed since some of them ended contracts a few months ago, and the three of us new hires have been put here to cover the next few months as two of us wait for our rigging training, and as this ship changes officially over to not having any heavy rigging or flying involved in their shows. Right before and after we cross to the Caribbean, we'll be swapping out the cast for all of the shows, and there will be all new people on the same page about the rigger-less shows. That's when I get pulled for the training and put on a new, bigger ship that has more fly-heavy shows. Hopefully that clarifies my position a bit lol. It's been a lot of playing telephone and some general info gathering to piece all that together. And I'm still waiting on the final word from somebody higher up to know exactly what dates I'll be pulled from this ship.

As for the spaces and shows onboard this ship, there's one mainstage proscenium flyhouse theater space that does 3 different productions, and studio b which is a smaller procenium ish stage with an ice rink for the thrust. We've got two ice shows in there, and there's a secondary floor that rolls out so that we can do other random events in there as well throughout the cruise. I work as a stagehand for all of the shows, and then my additional duties are mainly in Studio B, but also include random areas all over the ship. There's also one person from stage staff per theater every week that is on duty. This pretty much means they're the point person to be on call for their performance space if anything changes or goes wrong or whatever else. I'm gonna back up a bit and add that every head person here, shipwide had this phone that works locally just withing the ship. So when you're on call, you're literally on call and carrying a phone with you 24/7. The other fun part about being on duty is that you're tied to the ship for that week, so we all alternate having one week where we can't get off the ship so that there's always someone available to ten to the theaters in case anything comes up. I'll be on duty the week after next in studio b.

Since this is my main space technically, here's some of the stuff we do in studio B: there are the two ice shows, which I'm a stagehand for, (Strings and Freeze Frame) and the things involved with maintaining the ice. Strings follows the life story of a violin that's being passed down through time from culture to culture and features a violinist who come out to stand on the ice during the show. Freeze Frame is a walk through of music from the 40s through the 70s. Both of the ice shows are pretty incredible to watch. It kinda blows my mind how they're able to do all these stunts not only on ice skates but in a noticably moving ship. Once we cross over though, we're cutting Strings and only doing one ice show since the cruises become a lot shorter.

There's also all skate a few times per cruise where guests can have some time using the space as an ice skating rink- that one, I don't have to man. Maintaining the ice involves manually patching the holes from the blades after shows, scraping the frost off the top layer with the mini Zamboni that we have on board, and then driving the Zamboni around again with essentially a hose and a towel attached to he back so that it spreads out a new, smooth layer of soon to be ice on top. I've only driven the zam once so far, but I'm sure that'll happen more often once I have some more practice time.

Also in studio B there's laser tag, which means we pull out these humongous sections of inflatable bouncy house mazes and unfold them, then inflate, and hook/velcro them together. As well as striking them by stomping around on them afterwards and re folding them into what we "lovingly" call the burritos. They are obnoxiously heavy and if anything we're doing on board is gonna throw your back out, it's surprisingly the laser tag setup/strike. This isn't done on the ice floor, if you're wondering haha. The ice rink has an automated floor system that slides out over the ice so that it can turn into an event space. Definitely can go more into detail on the ice make or the moving floor if you're interested. There are a few other small things that happen in there, but I haven't really interacted with them yet so I'll skip that part for now.

[independencelogbook]

9.29.19

So I'm still figuring out how to make this whole "writing about things" situation happen in these circumstances- I had written posts on day 1 and 2 and had saved them on the app on my phone, but without service or wifi I guess they didn't stick. Had an empty drafts page after connecting to wifi in port today :(

Regardless, I'll just do a recap of those first-day proceedings here from day 4. As I'm writing, it's 9:46 pm on our first day in port on this cruise. Luckily they were kind to us with training and didn't schedule anything today, and since hardly anyone is on board when we're docked, there's not much work to do in the theatres. So I was able to get off the ship in Malaga, Spain for the afternoon!

Honestly kind of surreal still to walk off the ship (it has also not sunk in that this ship is my home for the next few months) and be walking around in Spain like it's an everyday thing. Reminds me of being on the subway in New York where it feels a bit like you've teleported. You step outside and suddenly you're in a totally different place without really seeing it happen like in a car or plane.

The first day of my contract involved a wake up call at 4:30am, shuffling on to a couple of private buses with about 50 other people starting their contracts that day (lots of which were returners coming back from a break between contracts), and a quick, hour long drive to Southampton. At the dock, we put our stuff through an x-ray and into the void of the building somewhere for more security screening, and lined up to have them double check that we had all the necessary medical/marine security/passport requirements to get onboard. The other stage staff new hires and I met up with our supervisor and she took us onboard to get our ID badges and room keys. Dropped off my stuff in my room and came back out for a tour of all the relevant crew areas of the ship. That was a whirlwind, and a confusing maze of all the plain, off-white crew stairwells that look the same. It's definitely not a straightforward path anywhere haha, but I think I'm just starting to get a handle on how to find any of the important places on my own. We got our luggage from the I-95, which is what everyone calls the literal only staright shot of a hallway for the crew. It's the pathway on deck 1 that runs along the whole length of the ship. It looks the same in both directions and so do all of the little hallways and turn offs that lead to the equally confusing staircases haha. Finding anything here feels like a puzzle, and I'm determined to figure out the most direct, and least guest contact, ways to the places I need to get to. Most of the crew cabins are down there too, so it's kind of like home base on the ship for crew. Pretty much anything I need to get to is on decks 0-5, so at least I'm not regularly traversing the entire ship. Boy it's a ton of stairs though lol.

We got to tour the theater spaces a bit, had our first encounter with the mess halls, and I had some cabin switchery that led to me moving all my stuff in to a different hall down the way from my original one. I believe I'll be moving back to my proper cabin spot at the end of this cruise though. They like to room people within the same department so your schedules match, and they group the same department's cabins together somewhat too. The room is small, but not claustrophobic or anything. I'll have to give you a square footage estimate sometime, cause it really is tiny haha. Glad I didn't bring any more clothes than I did.

Seas on day 2 (starting around 3 am, which I know because the rocking woke everyone up) were horrendously rough for about a day and a half straight through, and I was definitely really seasick in the morning. Luckily they have seasickness pills readily available in a bin outside of crew medical that everyone was popping like candy that day lol. That stuff worked like a charm and I felt better by the afternoon. After that little roadblock, it was just the fun game of getting better at not stumbling around everywhere because your whole environment is moving around you. It felt sort of like being on a gigantic carousel- like a slow, circular motion, but for hours and hours. Or like a slow-motion version of when you first drop on a roller coaster- that kind of light-headedness and weird feeling in your gut. Plus a semi frequent, erratic lurch thrown in there to keep you on your toes haha. Funnily enough, when I was sitting down at a restaurant off the ship today, it felt like I was swaying and it was super disorienting... Guess I've already got my sea legs thanks to that rough weather lol. On the upside of the rough sea day, in one of the many trainings that is keeping my schedule packed this week (and will next week as well), I got to use a fire hose off the back of the boat! That was pretty neat. Also good things from the training: figuring out how to better navigate the stairwells after learning how to read the signs better, and learning how the recycling and water systems work on board. Actually pretty interesting how they end up pulling this all off. It's such a crazy concept when you start to think about it.

This one's getting long, so I'll call that good for now, but that's the general idea of what my first days on board were like. Next time, I think I'll describe some of what my work on board is gonna entail.

Thanks for reading! It's a big learning curve on a lot of drastic lifestyle changes, but I'm enjoying the process and I think things are going well, all things considered!

#cruise ship staff #ship life #independence of the seas

[independencelogbook]

9.25.19

Writing this one quick cause I’m really tired from this 2-in-1 mega travel day, but London was really fun.  Since I’m never coming back here again on my European leg of the trip, I knew this was my one chance to see the city.  Luckily, living in New York for two years gave me some readily transferable skills as far as navigating public transit and I was able to zip around a good chunk of the city in the ~6 hours when I ventured away from my hotel. 

Got to see Kings Cross station (let’s be real, I only went there for Platform 9 3/4), walked across the Thames on the millennium bridge, passed by the Globe Theatre, wandered though a food vendor festival thing which reminded me of Smorgasburg in Brooklyn, saw a giant box that had Big Ben inside (it’s totally enclosed in scaffolding atm) and Westminster Abbey and the London Eye, walked past people protesting Boris Johnson and for/against Brexit, saw Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, and got dinner (lunch? breakfast? I don’t even know at this point lol) in Carnaby.  Plenty of riding the Tube and seeing some sights.  I’m dead tired but glad I got out, since it was my one shot.

Tomorrow I wake up at 4:30 am to be able to catch my shuttle to the port of Southampton, which will be my ship’s home base for the next month.  The official start to my contract! I’m sure it will be another long, whirlwind day.

#ship life #cruise ship staff

[independencelogbook]

9.24.19

How do you pack for 7 months of travel? I have only my best guess lol. Here's what I ended up bringing: a backpack and two duffel bags, with intentional room for souvenirs I assume I’ll pick up along the way.

Not pictured are some things I added after I took these pics: flip flops, toothbrush and toothpaste, power strip.

I'll let ya know in a month which crucial things I didn't even think about, and what's just dead weight. 😅

For now I'm sitting at the airport, waiting to board my overnight flight to London. This is my one shot on the whole trip to spend a day there, so I'm hoping to fight the jet lag when I land and make it out to see some sights. The next day, I board my ship and the journey really begins! Hard to process that it's actually happening after months of prep.

#independence of the seas #cruise ship staff #royal caribbean crew #ship life

[independencelogbook]

9.21.19

I’d like to share the steps that I went through as far as the hiring and onboarding process that have led to the crazy reality of myself being three days away from flying to Europe and living on a ship for 6.5 months. I can only speak for what getting on with Royal Caribbean is like; I have no idea how different the process is for other cruise lines. But from from what I’ve gathered from talking to friends, it’s all fairly similar, which is a comforting thing to know when you’re in the middle of it, because it does all seem like a big, confusing series of checklists from start to finish.

I applied to Royal in January of this year, knowing that I already had a seasonal gig lined up from June through mid August and hoping to aim my start date for somewhere around the middle of September. All that took to get things started was applying online through their portal: entering some personal info, answering a survey about some questions relating to my desired position, and attaching a resume.  I was expecting this to take a couple of months to process through their system, but they emailed me back I believe within two weeks of my application.  I had two very quick Skype/phone interviews with recruiters in February, and had received an offer letter by early March. This letter basically informs you that they’re interested in having you hired, and that you’ve made it through the interview process.  Your actual letter of employment and contract ensuring your acceptance into the company come much later, after passing the pre-employment onboarding tasks. They’re saving you a spot, but you’re not guaranteed yet.

The main items involved in the pre-employment screening were a medical clearance, background check, local police clearance, and seafarer training/certification course. A semi intensive process haha.  These things all have their varied timings and expiration dates so they have to be done the correct amount of time from your availability date.  So I sent in my background check info in April, finished up my time in New York, moved to Virginia for the summer, and otherwise waited around so that I was closer to my start date to complete the remaining tasks. Over the summer I drove out an hour and a half or so to the nearest approved medical facility for my tests, and when I got home in August, I finished the rest of my major pre-employment roadblocks (the seafarer training was done online).  After that came a bit of talking back and forth with my onboarding representative, who has been answering my questions diligently since I received my offer letter however many months ago, and we tried to pin down my availability for that rigging training as well as the final bits and pieces of my contract. Like I said in the last post, by the time I had gotten my stuff turned in, the rigging courses were full until the new year. The rep and I decided to have me start closer to my intended date, but as a less specialized position at first instead of waiting around a couple months to be trained for the rigging work.

So finally after all that, I got my ship assignment email at the beginning of this month. Yay!  That one certified that I had cleared all the necessary no man’s land tasks and that I could officially be considered hired by the company. It also let me know where I’d be starting my work, and on which day.  I’ve since been given various crew sites and apps to log into to check on travel information, I’ve done a bunch of online HR training modules, I’ve gotten a clearer checklist of what to bring on board, and its all juuuuuust starting to dawn on me that this is a real experience that I’m actually going to be partaking in. For seven months. Crazy. I have no concrete idea what to expect, but I do expect it to be a great experience and a lot of hard work. I just don’t have any clue what the day-to-day life is like...  Guess I’ll let you know lol.

Overall, this process was a lot of getting partial information and then having a million more questions about how to proceed.  It was never a single, clear checklist of the things I needed to get turned in to RC.  My rep has been very, incredibly helpful (despite the 15 hour time difference, as they’re located in Manila) but it’s definitely a confusing process.  It also involves putting some of your own money down for the medical clearance, which is done through a third party company. And that, a hundred million percent, feels like you’re being scammed when you’re writing that check.  But now that I’m not in the middle of being overwhelmed by all the startup things, I feel like the lack of one consistent guideline for being hired makes plenty of sense. People are hired from so many different countries and RC has to line all this stuff up through all of those separate governing bodies, and so that everything complies with maritime laws as well. I’m sure it’s incredibly complicated on their end.  Plus now that I’ve gone through all that, it’s comforting to know that everyone else working on board has been screened as thoroughly as I was haha.  

But just know that if you’re going through the pre-employment process: yes it’s very hectic and there’s a lot of back and forth to figure out how exactly you need to get everything completed.  And yes, it’s normal to get info fairly last minute. I got an offer letter back in March and had only just now (in early September), three weeks before my first day, been told which ship I would be on and exactly which day I would be starting.  It’s kinda just dropped upon you when you get everything lined up and turned in, and from what I’ve heard from every other person I know who has been on other cruise lines- that’s absolutely normal.  Just gotta roll with it, and be diligent about asking any questions you have. (Seriously, my onboarding rep has been my lifeline)  Maybe that’s just your first test to see if you can handle working on a cruise ship after all. Ha.

So there’s all of that, in case you were curious.  It has been an adventure already, full of paperwork and waiting rooms. Now it’s time for the fun part.

#thank you for reading #the big day approaches #ship life #cruise ship staff #royal caribbean crew #independence of the seas

[independencelogbook]

9.9.19

Hello!  I’m shipping off in just over two weeks, and I wanted a place to update friends and family on what exactly ship life is like.  I have virtually no idea what to expect, although I’ve done a lot of researching and talking to friends about what their experiences are like, but I don’t suppose I’ll really know until I’m in the middle of it all.  I know I’ll have limited internet access over the next few months, so I wanted a place where I can write down what’s been going on while I’m offline, and where I can upload things when I’m in an internet cafe somewhere for whoever’s interested in how things are going.  So welcome to that place! 

For a quick rundown: I’m starting with Royal Caribbean on September 26th (I fly out on the 24th) as a Rigging Assistant on the Independence of the Seas for my 29 week contract- so about 6.5 months. I’ll be on board for every major holiday this year haha.

Since the September rigging training course was full by the time I got all my documentation and everything in, I’m technically starting off with Technical Stage Staff duties (i.e. running the theatrical productions backstage), and should hopefully be pulled back off the ship around January to do the rigging course. Then I’d return for the last half of my contract doing actual rigging things.  We’ll see how that shakes out.

As of right now, I’m trying to do whatever I can think of to prep, like stockpiling some media since I won’t have internet to speak of, making a packing list, looking into the weather and things to do at the ports I’ll be visiting, asking friends about the dos and don’ts of what to bring with you, and making sure I have all the paperwork/courses/requirements done for my upcoming stint as a sailor lol.  My first month I’ll be in Spain for the most part, with my home port in Southampton, England, and there will be a couple other offshoots to Portugal and France thrown in there too.  After that first month, we swing over (on a 14 day transatlantic cruise that will have 9 straight days at sea- can’t say I’ve ever had that experience before) to the Caribbean for the remainder of my contract. Never having been on any cruises before this, it should be quite the learning experience.

All in all I’m thrilled to be dodging winter in the Caribbean this year, and so excited to have a chance to see some of Europe on the front end of this thing.  Very grateful to be learning yet another different side of the entertainment industry, and scratching the travel itch (on RC’s dime) while I’m at it.  I’m intending for this to be the last big blowout for my vagabonding days post-undergrad, but I guess we’ll have to see how that shakes out too. I will say, moving every year, or less, is getting a biiiiit stale.

What I’m expecting from all this is to meet a ton of people on board from all over the world, to get the chance to see different countries, to learn a new thing or two (or twenty) about how these kinds of productions are run, and to find a bit more independence myself by jumping into this entirely foreign environment on my own and with no one I know waiting for me on board.  It’s daunting for sure, but I think it will be a really worthwhile experience and I’m absolutely as excited as I am nervous. And no, the serendipity of the ship’s name is not lost on me haha.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and hopefully you keep me honest on actually continuing to post updates here. 

#royal caribbean crew #ship life #cruise ship staff #independence of the seas