Cruise Ship Diaries Part 5

I woke up in the video room with beer bottles to my right and equipment manuals to my left, and some of the head office bosses from Los Angeles were staring at me! Thankfully I wasn’t in trouble (despite the empty bottles) and they were just onboard as there was a head office Photo/Video conference in Vancouver that week and they were doing a quick ship visit to see how things were going onboard. I’d been by myself for a week already and just completed my 2nd cruise as the only videog with no disasters, but on todays turnaround day in Vancouver I had to film my first onboard wedding. One of the photogs was going to man the wide camera for me and I’d be doing the close ups, having never shot a wedding before I had to research the Princess company style and also use wireless mic kits for the first time in my life. So the night before I’d been in the video room getting everything ready and fallen asleep in my uniform.

Another reason I fell asleep in the video-room was that I couldn’t get any sleep in my cabin, although I got on with my roommate Raj he snored like a pneumatic drill and would almost always wake me when he got back from the bar. He broke some of the unwritten rules of ships like if your roommates asleep when you get back you turn on the bathroom light not the main light. This was also in the old days where people could smoke in their cabins (if both occupants smoked) I didn’t but Raj would smoke in the cabin anyway and as Raj had on ships for years and I was a newbie I didn’t say anything. I think the final straw was getting woken up at 3a.m one night with Raj bringing 5 or 6 people back to the cabin to play cards, smoke cigars and listen to loud Indian dance music, I spoke to the manager and was promised I’d be able to change cabins soon using the polite excuse of that Raj should share with a roommate who smokes as well and as I didn’t I should share with someone who didn’t too.

The more experienced photogs laughed and said rooming with Raj is like a welcome to ships test, if you can survive a month with him you can survive anything onboard. I survived and moved next door with Ron an older Filipino guy, no crazy cabin parties and no smoking, also getting a good nights sleep was a bonus as well! Ron only had a few weeks to go so when he left I was able to steal the bottom bunk (much easier than climbing a ladder into the top bunk when you’ve had one too many) and got my 3rd roommate of the contract. Morne was from South Africa and had actually left Princess for a while before coming back as he’d been promised an assistant manager spot on the Coral. When I got back from my shoot the cabin was unrecognisable, it was clean and tidy, lights had been put up, and more importantly there was a playstation hooked up to the TV, in a few hours Morne had completely pimped out the cabin.

With my roommate situation fixed it was time to finally get me some help and a new senior videog onboard, the office sent Heather from California to be take charge. It was my first time working with an American and Heather was relentlessly so, happy, positive and upbeat all the time, it was clear we were going to clash! I will credit her for moving me out of my comfort soon, onboard the photographers have to ‘smudge’ passengers which essentially means getting them to pose for a photo while they give us a torrent of abuse. The company style for video at the time was fairly similar, the whole point of the DVD at the time was to get the passengers on it and then when they see themselves on it they buy it. So everything we filmed we had to get the guests to wave and act out for the camera, even at the time I thought that sucked but I was new and this was the way things had always been done. So Heather forced me to go up to the guests and say things like ‘Hi folks give me a smile and wave and you’ll be on the Reflections DVD’ erghhh. I hated it at the time but looking back it did make me a better videog but you can see the absolute cringe inducing horror of what I had to do below.

We were now coming close to the end of the Alaska season and the weather was starting to turn which meant we were about to do a repo cruise. A reposition cruise is where the ship will do a new one off cruise to a new area and home port where it will usually do a loop for several months and we were about to go from Vancouver to Florida by way of my first stop in Mexico and Costa Rica.

Once we were in Florida we would do a 11/12 day roundtrip from Port Everglades through Aruba, Colombia, Jamaica, Costa Rica and the Panama Canal, occasionally we change a port due to bad weather and stop in places like St Thomas, St Kitts & Grand Cayman. The port in Florida is one of the largest in the world with over 20 cruise ships able to port at anytime, and therefore the local area is set up perfectly for the thousands of crew.

As a videographer turnaround day in Florida was one of my favourite days of the cruise which seems strange to say when you you are getting paid to visit all these amazing places but after months of pure chaos and a massive change to my work and personal life, turnaround day was a little bit of normality amongst the madness. You could get a free shuttle bus from the ship to a large mall or to a smaller supermarket called Publix, however there was always a queue for the shuttle and a mad rush of people literally fighting to get on it. If I was pressed for time I’d fight my way onto the shuttle but normally I enjoyed the walk with solid ground under my feet down the palm treed lined sidewalks in the searing Florida sun.

The first stop was usually Port Electronics a ‘crew’ electronics store where you could buy cheap(er) mobile phones, iPods, MP3 players, hard drives and for me a set of Bose speakers for the cabin! There was also a little Internet cafe there (as remember internet was spotty at best in the dark days of 2007) where you’d email home, check Facebook and upload pictures to torment your friends back home. I discovered Firehouse subs (before Subway for me at least!) and would sneak them back onboard in our tiny cabin fridge, this was also where I discovered Five Guys for the first time but my favourite spot if I had the time was Duffy’s

There were very few sport bars in England in 2007 and definitely none near me, so Duffys was a revelation with food I’d never even heard off back then and the attractive waitresses in their referee outfits certainly helped. Also if you sat in a booth each of them would have a small TV in the booth and most importantly if we were docked on the right day you could watch English football. Getting a bucket of hot wings with sauces I’d never heard off and watching football with a beer was always the best way to start the cruise.

In Part 6 - Its all about the onboard events!