Thanksgiving

So last week was Thanksgiving. First of all, we had 750 kids on board, so it was insane! On top of that, we got into Baltimore at 2:00pm so we were really late getting everyone off board and we started loading people on at 5. We couldn't have our orientation meeting and just had to start registering people right when they got on board. By the time we finished it was time to open my club. So the first night was hectic!

Overall, my group was awesome. I really liked having larger group. It's a lot more fun!

Thanksgiving was rough. I had to open my club for a little in the morning and watched the parade by myself which was really sad. They made us a Thanksgiving meal in the mess, but it wasn't very good. They didn't even have potatoes! But, they tried, and they gave us free wine and beer so that was nice. I did go to Atlantis that day, but it was cold and rainy so it wasn't that fun.

I'm nervous for Christmas now, but Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, so maybe that's why it was so hard!

Halloween Booze cruise 2012!

So last week was incredible! We cancelled the cruise Sunday and had to get all the guests off. We then left around 6ish to get out of the way of the storm. We went down the Bay and anchored and just waited for the storm to hit. The storm hit Monday evening, and I honestly didn't feel it at all. Our amazing Captain kept us safe and sound the whole time. He's awesome!

In the meantime, we were allowed to roam the ship doing whatever and wearing whatever we want! Usually we have to wear dressy casual attire in guests areas, and not all crew members are even allowed to be in guest areas, so it was a treat for everyone. We were also all allowed to make reservations to eat at the Steakhouse, which my whole team and I did Tuesday night. We were also allowed in the Sports Bar and the Starry Nights lounge. Our Philippino band played for us Monday night and Wednesday night, and we had our Halloween party Tuesday night in the disco. Most amazing Halloween party I've ever been to! I was a disco queen. I felt famous; guys kept asking me to take pictures with them. Ha! Pretty funny. Everyone was there, even the captain, who got down on the dance floor!! The man can dance.

We got back to Baltimore Thursday night and did an overnight. We were allowed to be off the ship until 3am which was nice. I met up with 2 friends, Trevor and Daniel, from Charleston. It was fun and great to see them! Trevor and I went to dinner at this place called Mama's on the Half Shell. It was amazing, especially after having crap food all week.

So Friday, we then boarded guests for a 2 day cruise to nowhere. It was annoying. There was so much to do, and cram in 2 days, and it's hard to get to know any kids in 2 days, so I didn't like it.

We're now on our back to warmth an sunshine (hopefully)! We aren't sure about Half Moon Cay because we don't know how badly it was hit by the hurricane. Hopefully we can go because this is our last HMC run until May!

Hoping for a smooth and sunny cruise this week!

Hurricane Sandy 2

So, Sunday; we started letting passengers on in the morning, then at 2:00 they made the announcement that the coast guard closed the Bay and the cruise was cancelled. I was still downtown when they announced it, but got back around 3. Then we had to help with debarkation, which was NOT fun. These poor people had traveled from all over for this cruise and had to leave. There were a few people getting married; 2 actually had their weddings but 1 didn't get to. Another couple was there for their honeymoon. It was so sad. Most people were fine and not to rude, but we had some people that were being awful. Which I understand that they were not happy, but we were doing everything we could to run things smoothly. Everyone got their money back and they get 25% off their next cruise.

So we got everyone off and the dock closed at 6:00pm so we had to get out. Our plan for the week is to anchor in the Bay, then cruise around for a bit once the storm passes to make sure everything works, head back to Baltimore Wednesday, then dock in Baltimore until Friday, then we are offering a 2 day cruise to nowhere. We will see how many guests we get!

So currently we're anchored in the Bay just waiting for Sandy to come through. Hoping we don't get hit to hard! Hoping all my east coast friends and people back home stay safe!

So far, this week has been amazing. We can wander all over the ship wearing whatever we want, whenever we want. Our crew bar got moved to 2 main lounges and we are allowed to eat GOOD food up in guests areas. We will have our Halloween party ON actual Halloween. We can sleep in, no work, all play. It is so amazing! Hopefully the storm doesn't screw it all up! More updates tonight after the storm..

Hurricane Sandy

This has been an interesting week to say the least. Our 7 day cruise with 3 stops turned into 1 port day and 6 sea days, which let me tell you, we do not like sea days. Especially when we have extra ones and have to come up with extra activities to do. However, it was really awesome to see our staff work together and try to make it an awesome trip for the guests regardless of the situation. I think most of our guests enjoyed themselves. They were very understanding that Mother Nature can hit at any time and it's not our fault and that we were doing everything we could to come up with different activities to do to make their trip fun.

So we heard Monday that there was a tropical storm brewing, and didn't honk anything of it. Then Tuesday the captain notified us that our itinerary would change because of the storm. Instead of going to Half Moon Cay we would have a sea day Thursday, and instead of Freeport on Friday we would go to Port Canaveral. Well, then sandy turned into SANDY and Florida was cancelled. So we had Wednesday in Grand Turk (a windy/cloudy day) and 6. Freaking. Sea. Days. On top of this, our Halloween party that had been scheduled for Wednesday night was cancelled, and I have a bladder infection on top of all of this and feel horrible!

It was pretty scary on the sea Thursday and Friday. My darling roommate said to me Thursday night before bed "maybe we should sleep with our lifejackets tonight. It's pretty bad out". For those of you who know me, I tend to have an active imagination so, naturally, I didn't sleep that night. Every time we hit a wave I thought to myself "this is it, we're going to tip over"! Luckily we didn't. I was FREAKED out. I felt sick a few days this week. It was so rocky that it was hard to walk, even to just stand up sometimes!

So the latest: we are going to arrive in Baltimore tonight and the guests are getting off tonight which was AWESOME news to hear after the discovery of this infection. I will get to go to bed before midnight tonight! Now-- what happens next I have absolutely NO idea. I've heard many rumors. I am pretty sure that we are getting these guests off and then heading back to sea with no guests. Sandy is hitting Baltimore tomorrow and it's unsafe for us to be there so we are planning to head out to sea and just float/anchor out of the way of the storm (which apparently is safer?).The other rumor is that they've already rebooked everyone that was supposed to come next week. So I think we have at least 2 days without guests on board, possibly a week. Which is freaking awesome! We could have our Halloween party, and everyone would have access to all parts of the ship. I'm guessing we'd go back to Baltimore and dock there once the storm passed on Tuesday or Wednesday, but again I have no idea.

No one really has any idea what's going on. I'll update as soon as I can. Check back later for Part 2!

Deck 10 and 11

Here are some pictures I took of The Sun Deck (10) and the Sports Deck (11). Some I took on water slide duty and some I took during a workout! I have found that I really like running on the Sun Deck instead of the Sports Deck because it's longer. 3.5 laps equal 1 mile on Deck 10 and on the actual running track it's 15 laps. Not fun! The Sports Deck also has the basketball court and mini golf! There's also a few pictures of Serenity (below the water slide) which is the 21 and over pool area.

There's also a few photos of the famous Funnel! That's where our steakhouse is located. The one downside to slide duty is that the funnel (or something) puts out some fume on occasion that smells like sewage and it blows right to the slide. It's so disgusting!

My address!

If you'd like to send me any mail (please do!) my address is as follows:

Mary Margaret George, 455828
Camp Carnival
Carnival PRIDE
C/O Intercruises Shoreside & Port Services
10435 Reisterstown Road- BLDG 3
Owings Mills, MD 21117

The sad part..

One thing I really don't like about cruising is people leaving. It's very hard to form relationships on a ship, and I don't mean romantic relationships, I mean all relationships.

There's a few people leaving tomorrow and next week that I've become very close with since I started here. Megan, the Circle "C" director leaves tomorrow which I'm really sad about. She and I do a lot of combined activities and have similar hours so we have spent a lot of time together the past few weeks. She's awesome and so much fun to be around. I'm sad to see her go. Gumby, our Assistant Cruise Director is leaving tomorrow (but coming back in 4 weeks). Also, a bunch of the dancers are leaving next week including a good friend, Bernie.

It's all very sad! People say you get used to it but I don't think I ever would get used to that. Relationships are very important to me and I'm not the kind of person who can be happy on my own. I gotta have friends!

So the next week will be very sad. I've got some people who started around the same time as me so they'll be around. We've also been getting some new people and will be getting some more, but I know it won't be the same.

The Carnival Pride

I've learned some statistics about my ship. The Pride was completed in 2001 in Helsinki and cost $375 million to build. It has 1,062 staterooms and 80% of the rooms have an ocean view. We can hold 2,124 passengers and 930 crew members. There are 12 decks total. We have a waterslide, basketball court, mini golf, and running track. We also have 2 theaters, one of which is 3 floors! We have a whole cast of dancers and singers on board, as well as a show band that perform live shows 3 nights a week. We have a casino (of course) a gift shop, and a spa and gym.

The Pride weighs 88,500 tons and is 963 feet long.

Basically, I live on a floating hotel!

Week 5

I haven't posted all this week.. I'm starting my 6th week! I can't believe how fast my time here is going! We just finished a Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay, and Freeport trip. I hung out at the beach in Grand Turk and Half Moon Cay which was very nice. We're only making that trip 2 more weeks so I've got to enjoy my time there!

I had a good group of kids this week. Another small group, but they were fun. They participated in most things and had a good time. Last night they all give me a Club O2 shirt which they had all signed with sweet notes. It was such a nice surprise!

We found out this week that our ship is now #1 fleet wide for having the best youth program! A big part of that is because the teen programs ratings going up. Very exciting!

Coast Guard

This morning we had coast guard come and run a boat drill with us. They do this on every ship approximately every 6 months. They ensure that we all know what to do in an emergency and they make the call if we set sail or not. If things don't run smoothly and we seem like we have no idea what we're doing, we don't leave port.

We do what we usually do for boat drill. I had to run up to my club (on deck 10) only to find that the fire door was closed and I couldn't get it! The stairs that I take to get up there were also closed off because they were doing a fire drill so I was frantically running around calling my supervisor to figure out what to do! I finally got in and then had to go down to deck 3 which is where the youth counsellors meet and then I went to my assigned literacy. I am the only American and only girl in my raft, so I really hope I never have to be on that thing..

It's very nerve racking because the Coast Guard can ask anyone a question on any of the emergency things we've learned, and apparently they are very intimidating. Luckily, idiot get asked anything, although I'm confident I would have known the answer!

I'm out in Baltimore now waiting on food from Cheesecake Factory!

Training

I've had to do all kinds of training since I've started here. Some inconveniently have to be done on days we are in port like Grand Turk and Freeport, but it's all part of the job!

Our training center ladies try to make it as fun and short as possible; they are great. So far I've had to do a few environmental trainings, which I don't understand at all. First off, we learn about things I don't understand, and secondly the environmental officer is from Italy and is very hard to understand.

I've also had to do Crowd and Crisis management where we learn how to control crowds in case of an emergency. Most of it is interesting, except they show videos of ships sinking or catching fire and it scares me just a bit..

Disney

I finally got to go to Disney today! It was so much fun! Everything I expected and more. I didn't get to pose with a lot of the characters because there were long lines and we didn't feel like waiting, but we saw the parade so I saw most of them during that! I took a lot of pictures on my camera so I'll put those up eventually!

Grand Turk

So we had a sad event happen in Grand Turk this week. A woman was found face down in the water and was dead. Not sure what happened; if she had a heart attack or couldn't swim. I haven't heard a lot of details about it except that she was probably in her 70s. We left Grand Turk about an hour and a half late because they were taking her body off the ship and her family left with her. We do have a morgue on board here, but it's ultimately up to the family as to what they want to do. If they want to wait until we get back to home port or leave. That would be such a hard decision to make! Grand Turk is a very small island with a very small airport so it would not be easy to travel back, but it also wouldn't be fun to wait out the rest of the vacation.

I'm not sure what Carnival does; I don't think they would pay for the trip home, but maybe they bring a private jet in? And I'm sure they reimburse their cruise or offer then another one.

Very, very sad.

Boat Drill

Yesterday I had my first boat drill. Boat drill is where they test us/refresh us on what to do in an emergency. Every Sunday we do a safety briefing with our guests where we wait at the muster stations (where the lifeboats are) and the guests come and we line them up, just so the guests know where they go in case of an actual emergency. During safety briefing I stand at muster station D and hand out wristbands to kids under the age of 11 so in case they are separated from their family, we know where to take them.

Boat drill is for us crew to complete our full emergency duties. So if there was a real emergency, I wouldn't just go to muster station D and hand out wristbands. I would first go up to deck 10 and make sure Club O2 is clear. For us camp staff, we meet at the Ivory Piano bar on deck 3 and bring any children with us. We then take the kids to our specifies miter station (mine is D) and we reunite them with their families. If we cannot find their families we keep them with us. We ALWAYS keep unclaimed children with us. We are then supposed to go back into the piano bar with any leftover kids, but our supervisor argues this. She says why would you and any children come back into the ship where something is going wrong?! So she tells us to wait at the muster stations.

Then we wait for the announcement for crew to reach their final destination. Mine had been a crew muster station on deck 4, but it is now muster station D. Which is nice because in case something does happen, I don't have to go anywhere!

I also had crowd and crisis management training yesterday. We just learn what to do in an emergency, how to be assertive and keep people calm. They showed us a video of emergencies that have happened on ships, one of which was a cruise ship in Europe that sank in 15 minutes. Thank guys, that didn't scare me or anything...

We also have I wear our lifejackets the whole one during boat drill. Here is me in mine- Hot, I know!

Atlantis!

Yesterday we were in beautiful Nassau in the Bahamas. I think this may be my new favorite place on our trip. It is gorgeous there and there is so much to do. Right off the ship there are shops and all kinds of restaurants like Señor Frogs. Some of the Entertainment staff went to Breezes yesterday which is basically a beach bar with all you an eat and drink, etc.

I went to the Atlantis with 3 o my friends. It was an $8 can ride there an we paid $80 with our crew IDs (the tickets are usually $175). Our ticket allowed access to the water park, beach, and aquarium. The ground there are so beautiful, and the aquarium is awesome! I took a few pictures from my phone and some on my underwater camera that I will upload later. Enjoy!