Flooded cabins and drunken chaos! (warning will contain an epic rant!!!)

My personal situation on the ship was not going well midway through the world cruise, I had a frosty relationship with my senior who was a brilliant videographer but we just didn't click socially and some of that was down to the implosion of the photo team. At this point all my friends on the team had left Amanda, Matt, Lena, Sam, Travis were gone and with my cabin being on a different deck from the rest of the team and my video room being in the spa, there was a real disconnect from the rest of the photo team.

'Here come the Spa boys' was a comment we'd get when we would walk into the photo gallery to drop off the latest updates and other snarky comments, Mick & Kirsty (manager and assistant manager) were still great but the rest of the photogs to me at least just didn't get on. People talked about other people behind their backs and they seemed to thrive on creating drama so it gave them something to talk about. This contract was probably the least amount of time I spent in a photo gallery, due to the length of the cruises and because I simply didn't want to be there.

My living situation had not improved with my roommate sleeping and snoring equal amounts of time in the cabin and I was getting more and more agitated with my lack of sleep as the months rolled on, again I was just told to 'stop moaning and get on with it'. Things were building to a head and I was not far away from snapping at this point and I was becoming combative and rude to people because all I craved was a decent nights sleep.

What should have been a great once in a lifetime experience was turning into a really shit time and like most people onboard the way we dealt with problems was too drink. I don't ever think I considerd it was a drinking problem per se as I never 'needed' to drink but it was more social in that everyone drank every night and it was not unusual to have at least 10 drinks sat on the table around 1a.m. I might have bought 3 or 4 of drinks but because booze was so cheap onboard everyone usually bought a round when they came and sat at a table for everyone at it.

We always joked that the video room was a spa break room / therapists couch where they could come in and woft when they had nothing to do, at this point in the contract the girls and Dazza were like my therapists where I could vent about my roommate and my issues with the photo team.

I had also been making full use of my free steakhouse / sabatini's privleges but whereas at the start of the contract it had been mostly with the photo team, now it was usually going with the spa. There was also a small pizza restaurant onboard that we'd gone to one night and the matrie'd sent over some wine, which on top of the wine we already brough gave us a shit load of wine, I'm fairly certain I was 3 bottles deep by the end of the meal!

Tomorrow was another unending sea day with nothing to film so after bar it was onto a cabin party with more alcohol because there was no reasons to be up early tomorrow and my roommate had the mid morning shift which meant if I drank enough I should be able to sleep through til the afternoon.

I think I finally crawled back to my cabin around 5 or 6am but I really have no memory of the end of that night, but I was woken by the cabin phone ringing around 1pm. I had missed about 5 messages on my pager and I was told I had to go on the morning show in about an hour, it was around 2pm in the afternoon and after a shower I still stank of booze and still felt drunk.

The morning show is part, well..morning show and part promote your department and try to sell your product on the ships TV channel, how good it is varies on how much of a fuck the Cruise Director gives. I swung by the photo lab to pick up a sample DVD to use on the show, without missing a beat Kirsty the assistant manager asked me if I'd had a shower as apparently I still reeked of booze (which even for cruise ships was a bad look at 2pm), I replied 'Yeah, just now', 'We'll have another cos you reek!'

Not feeling the best I went to take a seat on one of the lab stools, completely missed it and stacked it onto the floor, as I tried to pull myself up gracefully (it wasn't) time was running and I needed a DVD case to take with me. There was a Reflections DVD display in the lab that was usually up in the gallery when it was open so I went to borrow one from the display until 'NO YOU LEAVE MY DISPLAY ALONE!!!' a rather angry woman yelled at me, 'I just need one for the morning show' 'We'll you have plenty in the video room' 'I know but I don't have time to get one right now' 'Thats not my problem!' 'Look I don't have time, I'll bring it back after the morning show' 'No, you go your video room and get one!'

I snapped 'For fucks sake give me the fucking case!' and I stormed out of the lab in the perfect mood to record some early morning TV! Now if this was a made up story something horrific would happen on TV but thankfully filming passed off without incident as all I could think about was climbing back into bed. The ship had also begun rocking from side to side a little bit which is just great when your still drunk!

Upon opening my cabin door I was greeted with this scene before me

Our cabin toilet was overflowing because apparently my rooommate had used all the toilet paper and used hand tissues instead which had fucked the ships feeble plumbing system! Usually the carnage is contained in the bathroom because of a raised door frame, so if the water was cascading over it something was really broken!

'What the fuck!!' I exclaimed, I saw my roommate laying on his bunk completely oblivious 'oh I've feeling sick' he said, 'Great, how did that fuck up the toilet? "Well, all this water started coming out and I didn't know what to do' If looks could kill...'You call accomodation mate and tell them to get someone ASAP as the toilet is flooding the cabin with piss water!

'Oh I didn't know who to call' 'Fucks sake you call anyone and then they'll point you in the right direction, you don't just sit on the fucking bunk while the room floods with shit! To say I was angry and having a bad day might be an understatement at this point so I gathered up as much of my stuff that was in danger threw it in a bag, grabbed my duvet, pillows and headed for the video room! My last outburst was 'If you want this fucking cabin have it mate', so word had spread to management about my day and I was called down to the lab to see the Kirsty & Mick. Thankfully because they had been around a while and probably dealt with much worse this was an easy fix and I was given my own cabin down in the ghetto of deck 3 for the last 6 weeks of my contract.

I thankfully now had some respite and the ability to sleep which greatly improved my general mood onboard, however the photo team was so toxic at the this point that I heard more than once comments like 'If he can't take it he shouldn't work on ships, and 'so I guess all I have to do is bitch and moan and I'll get my own cabin too', not exactly the most supportive co-workers at that time!

The upside for me was that now I had my own space I began to cut back on the drinking everyday and take myself out of the drama that was crewbar life for a little while, my days consisted of going on tours, hitting the gym when I got back and chilling in my cabin watching movies on my laptop.

On the next cruise ship diaries - Fiji & Dravuni Island!