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In mid-December we finally had our official Naming Ceremony. I had imagined that all of these first ship ceremonies would happen all at once, so it was interesting to have the ship be officially named via semi-live video cast a month after we’d been sailing with guests. I went up to the open deck to host Ceremony which was broadcast on the Movies Under the Stars screen (really I just made an announcement to say it was about to happen, since Dan, the Cruise Director was hosting virtually on the big screen), and then furiously took notes during the 45 minute presentation. Two hours later I did an Enchanted Princess Trivia with things I’d learned about the ship during the broadcast. I had a lot of fun putting it together, but I may have overestimated the amount of people who wanted to nerd out on fun facts about this new ship with me. I assumed that most of the guests who had booked the newest ship in the fleet for its inaugural season would have done so intentionally, but most of the guests I spoke to were on the ship because they had lots of future cruise credit that they were trying to use up after a year and a half without being able to cruise. They were just slightly pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be the inaugural season, but it wasn’t why they were there.
Then the Holidays came, where we do all of the things we usually do PLUS all of the extra Christmas stuff. We’d start the Gingerbread House competition and then sneak out to go to Carpet Bowls. Every night we were trying to put together a variety of Christmassy gameshows that didn’t have too many repeats of the same Christmas songs. It’s exciting and a little frustrating to put so much preparation and work into activities that are only used once or twice a year.
Based on my past experience, I’d learned to lower my expectations for the Christmas cruise. In the past, I’d imagined a ship full of people who were in the Christmas spirit only to find people that wanted to be away from their families for the holidays and didn’t want to create any of the Christmassy spirit themselves (that is to say I found them particularly grumpy and difficult to please). This year oh so pleasantly surprised me. I was ready for the grumpy people looking for things to complain about, but instead we had a ship full of happy grateful people who were so happy to cruise, to be together for the holidays and to enjoy the entertainment we had. They were laughing, they were singing along to the songs and I was having three times as much fun. For the first time there were families, and an overall younger demographic, so I was able to do my Disney Trivia (which we called Princess Animated Movie Trivia) wearing my Princess Dress for the first (and so far only) time on the Enchanted Princess.
In the outside world, there was a new variant of COVID, who’s rumors were starting to whisper on the ship. Our strict protocols were increased. Masks would be required to be worn by guests everywhere indoors (previously it was only in specific venues), and we would have to wear masks while we were performing onstage (up to that point we could remove our masks while performing as long as we were socially distanced from the guests). We were concerned that we would lose our connection with the audience without them being able to see our whole face. I started putting pictures of my face on a slide at the beginning of each trivia. The hardest event to do is Liar’s Club, since we are not only telling stories, but we are reacting to other people telling stories.
A couple of hours before the Holiday show for the crew, there was an announcement that all crew gatherings would be suspended until further notice. The Crew Bar would be for takeaway only, the Crew Gym would be closed, and Cabin parties were not allowed. Luckily, I was so busy that this didn’t really make much difference in my day to day experience—I didn’t have time to do anything besides go to work and go back to my cabin to sleep or prepare for something.
Holidays on the ship are very different from Holidays at home. We’re creating and running the party for strangers while trying to find little pockets of time to celebrate with each other for ourselves. This year those pockets were miniscule. Fortunately, the guests were so much fun that I was especially enjoying going to ‘work.’
One of the gameshows that we’ve been doing is called You Be the Judge. I copied it from Corey, my Cruise Director on the Golden Princess, and was always baffled by how successful it was. I would dress up as a judge, get the guests into ‘Juries’ of twelve, present cases and they would guess how the court ruled. The fun of it was that I would tease and play with the guests giving them a hard time about how they addressed me as such a high status person. I would consistently get more comments from guests the next day about how much they enjoyed it, so I really wanted to try to bring it back. Now on this ship, in this new world, with our new protocols, we can’t encourage people to make a team of people outside of their travel party, so we adapted the gameshow. I take one of the cases and the other cruise staff play witnesses in the case and we have the jurors ask them questions to help determine how they would like to rule. It has turned into barely contained chaos that doesn’t quite make sense. The case is about a man who hires a boy to move his cattle, one of the cows gets away and goes into a lady’s house and scares her and her three-week-old baby. The first witness is the Lady who is played by Jayson and has turned out to be a sloppy, unreliable drunk. Then Niki comes out as the young boy and we learn that he can’t count, he gets paid in candy and may or may not be the son of Gilligan, the owner of the cattle. Then Jayson comes out again as Gilligan but he only speaks Afrikaans (even though the story takes place in 1910 in Scotland), and then Niki comes out as the cow. It is absolute ridiculous chaos and every cruise I am nervous about how it’s going to go because there are so many factors (mostly what is going to come out of Jayson’s mouth) that I can’t control and every cruise I am baffled by how we are allowed to continue to do this event.
(I usually give up on the arts and crafts about halfway through the project)
The day after we did You Be the Judge, Jayson and I were approached by one of our favorite guests. She stopped us to tell us that she had come on the cruise for her and her husband because they had both had a really hard pandemic. He works as an EMT and the PTSD from seeing so many people needlessly die was starting to cloud his happy personality. She had booked the cruise hoping that some snorkeling and daily massages might start bring him back, but it was Liar’s Club and Jayson cradling an afro wig and claiming that it was a three-week-year-old baby, where she heard him giggle for the first time in too long. And that’s when I understood how important it was to keep that ridiculous game show in the schedule. We ease the guests into the fun. We humor the ones who like structure and following the rules, but as the days progress I try to find as many opportunities to toss the rules out the window and have as much fun as possible. Sometimes chaos and silliness is just what someone needs.
A couple of days later we learned that those guests were going to renew their vows, so Jayson and I invited ourselves to be witnesses. I loved their sentiment of making real actual promises that matter rather than the unrealistic ones they had made as kids. Once again I found myself in tears.
So the Christmas cruise was absolutely wonderful in a ways that I never could have imagined. Our recreational opportunities were suspended but I found so much joy in other places that it didn’t even matter.
Then in a matter of hours the Christmas cruise was over and the New Years cruise began. The audiences were quiet and we missed our boisterous friends from the days before. We threw together one more set of once-a-year events before we were finally able to get some rest and go back to doing things that we’d practiced and done before.
My personal guess was that all of our extra precautions were a bit overzealous. I thought that Princess was being a bit excessive getting out ahead of things just because of the holidays. I know that out in the real world people get together more during the holidays than they usually do, but we do it all the time on the ship. I didn’t understand why the Holiday cruises would be particularly more dangerous than any other cruise. I thought that they would amp up the precautions and then after the Holidays things would go back to how they had been before.
Then Deck privileges were suspended. We went from being able to get coffee at the coffee bar throughout the day, and to eat at the Specialty restaurants and Guest Buffet when it wasn’t busy to only being able to get food and coffee in the Officer’s Mess during their limited hours.
Then Crew Shore Leave was suspended. When it was announced, I didn’t care because I was IPM the next day so I was going to have to stay on the ship anyway. Then I realized that the upcoming turnaround in Fort Lauderdale was the only day my friend Matt and I would be in the same port (with both of us in the Caribbean for the season). I had asked favors and moved things around so I could get off the ship while he could get off so we could go get sushi and see each other in person. The nose of our ship was parked facing the back of the Caribbean Princess. I was out by the crew pool frantically downloading things with my cell phone data that I couldn’t download on the ship’s internet when I heard Matt make an announcement. We Facetimed for a little bit, and then he gave me a shout out at their sail away.
Then we had our first positive case in the Entertainment Department. When anyone has any symptoms (or if they test positive for COVID) they are put into quarantine and their close contacts are isolated. The cruise after the New Year’s cruise there weren’t enough members of the production cast out of isolation to do the production shows.
Members of the front desk staff started disappearing into isolation (our office is right behind theirs and they live in the same corridor that we do. It spread through the dining and bar staff, the rooms division and security. So far, knock on wood, the cruise staff have stayed healthy, but we can see the other departments working really hard trying to cover shifts with fewer staff.
Today, as I write this, we had our first port cancelled. The Captain made an announcement that because of the number of cases we have onboard among guests and crew, St Thomas has denied us entry. I did some internet research and found that if the ship’s cases are higher than 1% it won’t be allowed in St. Thomas (each island has different rules). There are just under 1700 guests onboard and 1300 crew. We aren’t told the actual number of cases. So today has become a sea day and tomorrow we will hopefully get to go to Grand Turk instead, and then our scheduled port of call in Princess Cays.
So things are not getting better yet. The crew are actually staying away from each other because they are actually scared about getting sick. I’m just trying to enjoy each day as much as I can while I am still healthy and can still leave my cabin to go to work. I’m really grateful that my job is so much fun. I am rested more often, my cabin has never stayed so tidy, my laundry is done, I’m caught up on the office work and all the little tasks I can think of, I have plenty of time to read and work on my tan, for the first time while working on a ship, I’m able to post in present time (well, this week at least), and I am so ready for more adventure.