Dealing with PAX first thing in the morning, hanging out with the cast & stories of creepy weirdos onboard!

One of the coolest aspects of being a videog was getting paid to go on the excursions that the guests would pay hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars to do the same activity. The Photo department had an understanding with the Shore Excursions department that they would provide two tickets for both the videographers as and when they were needed.

There were exceptions, some local tour operators would not let us film professionally for the ship as they would be trying to sell their own DVD to the guests at the end of the tour & classed us as competition. Other times the tour would be sold out and we'd be told there is no space for a comp (free) ticket, of course we'd argue that if the tour was that popular than more guests would want to see it on the DVD.

Most times we would get the excursions we wanted and on the last day of a cruise we'd get advance tour sheets from shore ex and we'd plan out what tours we would film the following cruise. On the Coral the mission statement was always go on the most popular to get the most people on the video, on the Sun it was similar but Travis and Mick (photo manager) were experienced enough to know the tours inside out and although an excursion might look great on paper in reality it can be shit & the only way to know this is from experience.

In the mornings I'd have to go to one of 3 or 4 locations usually the Princess Theatre or Explorers lounge about 30 minutes before the PAX started arriving and as part of our deal with shore ex we'd help them organise the guests for the tour. Of course I learned if you were on time techncially you were late as the PAX always had FOMO and would sometimes be there upto an hour before they had to be or they'd open the heavy closed doors to the theatre 'to get the best seat'.

As the people came into the lounge other crew members from other departments (called escorts, yes and we've heard every creepy joke at it!) who had the day off would also be able to go on the excursions for free if they helped out with tour dispatch. You were supposed to be relentlessly happy and upbeat when you greeted the PAX at the door and gave them their bus sticker and that was definitely not me first thing in the morning.

You could have 4 or 5 different tours meeting in the same place so you had to make sure the PAX sat in the right place which was like herding cats, they'd wander over and talk to their friends on other tours, they'd pop out again and come back with food from the buffet and they'd never pay attention to the announcements. In these early days my preferred role was telling people where to sit as all you had to do was stand at the end of a row of seats and smile and point, sometimes getting away without saying a word if you were lucky!

Once the buses were ready I'd get told the route down to the gangway and then I'd be like the pied piper leading the PAX to the buses, where more than once you'd find people had left the lounge early because they wanted to get a good seat and the bus would be half full when we got there, and /or people would get lost on the way down and then we'd be sitting on the bus waiting for one or two missing PAX which of course then cuts into the time you have on the excursion. More than once I've seen late PAX get booed and jeered by other people on the bus, usually they apologise and thats the end of it, though once I did see a guy tell the whole bus to 'go fuck yourselves' someone else called him 'a selfish prick' and we were very close to having a full scale riot on the bus. Ah many more tour dispatch stories to come!

With my cabin on deck 5 away from the rest of the photo team on deck 4, I began to become friends with the dancers onboard as they were usually hanging out in the corridor or their dressing room which was right next to my cabin.

A cruise ship cast is probably one of the tightest knit groups onboard the ship as they have months of rehearsal in America before they are sent out to the ship, where they will then have a handover period to break in the new cast slowly over the cruise. The dance captain was an American guy called Sup and his partner was an Irish dancer called Wes, there was Kati & Andrea a couple from Italy & America, Jo & Zack from Florida, Danielle from Derby & indentical twins Brittany & Krysten from America.

Its funny because as soon as a new cast come aboard almost every guy on the ship will try and hit on the dancers because dating a dancer is like a ship badge of achievement. But this cast was different as many of them had partners already onboard or back home and as I've mentioned you find two main types of people onboard - those there to drink and party and those who are there to see as much of the places as possible, this cast was the later which meant I keep running into them on the tours everyday.

Most morning's I would see the twins at tour dispatch and there overwhelming positive attitude every morning would usually help me shift my hangover. They rarely drank and so they stayed well clear of the crew bar scene which meant the consenus from the 'bar' was that this was a 'boring' cast.

One of the more unfortunate parts of ship life is the unwanted attention if you are a friendly pretty girl, as one of the other girls explained 'the reason we seem stand offish or stuck up sometimes is because if you are nice and smile at every guy you see in the day you'll have a million stalkers. This could start with random unknown flowers turning up at their cabins down to plates of chocolate covered strawberries being left outside their door.

Now not to say the ship was dangerous but there would be a few times when Brittany would feel uncomfortable and ask if I could walk her to the bar and back to get water.

Unfortunately what would happen is as you walk from one end of the ship to the other on the M1 there would be all these little alcoves and corners were people would hangout and although nothing was ever said, many times some of the Indian & Fillipino crew would stop talking and just stare whenever a pretty girl walked past. As a guy its something you don't even consider but as a women walking past a group of guys staring at you and talking in a different language is not a pleasent experience and of course there would be the catcalling (not in English of course) and whistling.

On a later contract a friend and I were queuing at the Crew office and three Filipino guys were blatantly making some disrepectful remarks in their own language and staring at my friend what they didn't know was her boyfriend was Filipino and the assistant photo manager which puts him fairly high on the food chain in the Filipino mafia and she had been learning Filipino. This led to her slapping a guy in the face and and saying something alnog the lines of 'do you know who my boyfriend is?' in Filipino, and the guys didn't say another word.

I remember a sexual harassment training we all had to go to where this exact behaviour was mentioned and lots of the guys simply laughed their way through it in front of the HR manager. In fact there was one HR manager who was a worse offender than most, at one point I was filming a behind the scenes video for head office and we were in the crew laundry down on deck 2 so its was hot as balls and the HR guy 'jokingly' said 'cant we get them to all take their shirts off' while he walked round touching these guys shoulders. I think that guy should have been made to do his own course!

At the worse end of the scale was some of the officers behaviours, once a roomate had been told by security that one of the officers had their eye on his girlfriend and to keep his nose clean and keep an eye out, with the implication being that they might fabricate a reason to get him fired so his girlfriend would be left onboard alone. Needless to say as this was a security guy who told him this he really didn't feel like he had any options and they kept a low profile till the end of their contracts.

Another time a friend who was seasonal youth staff (so they were only on for a cruise or two to deal with an influx of kids) was given a cabin down on Deck 2 (affectionately known as the Ghetto) and she would regularly open her door to find a half naked guy stood in the opposite doorway just staring at her. Once she opened her door to see him shaving his chest again looking right at her while he brushed the hair onto the corridor floor!

One time I walked Brittany to the bar one of the Italian officers at least 20 years older than her goes 'Ah Brittany you look beautiful this evening, let me get you a drink' she politely replied no thanks and just got her water but while she was doing this the fat old man did this to me over her shoulder

So now I was on the mafias radar just for walking a friend to the bar!

Like every contract, every ship was different in regards to how people behaved onboard, I'm sure there were many instances of unwanted attention from creepy dudes but also sometimes it was down to naviety and cultural differences where certain behaviours are normalised in some countries where as they are unacceptable in others so you couldn't paint everyone with the same brush.

Next time on the cruise diaries - Onwards to Asia!