Friday, May 21, 2010

S'long Caribbean!

Well, we’re Europe-bound!!! It’s the first sea day on our transatlantic crossing - that’s 7 days at sea in a row, folks!! Followed by a few ports and a couple more days at sea scattered throughout there.
So we’ve officially left the Caribbean, and boy was it a BLAST!!! But with it, we also left behind the crazier schedules. Once we get to Europe we’ll have all 12-day itineraries.. That means we’ll have a LOT more free time, and I swear I’ll get better at updating this thing!!
The Caribbean was a blast - like I said. Other than that first day we missed in George Town, we had the pleasure of getting off in every single port! The cruise itineraries were shorter (7, 5, and 4 night cruises), so we kept VERY busy.. But we still had plenty of time to get off in the mornings and enjoy the day. It just meant that we’d have to get back to the ship a bit earlier to get ready for a show that night instead of having the night off too. 
Our second cruise was probably my favorite so far. Having finished a lot of the safety trainings and rehearsals, we really got to take advantage of the ports we went to: Roatan, Honduras and Cozumel, Mexico. I had SUCH a great time!! Honduras was awesome - although random, I thought. It’s definitely the farthest south I’ve ever been! So that’s cool. We had to pay for a taxi van to take us over to the beach, but it was well worth it. On the way, he stopped by one of the zip line companies to let us play with the monkeys. It was so hysterical!! The monkey kept jumping from my friends’ shoulders and onto me!! He would then take off my hat and try to climb in it!! It was so funny. I got lots of pictures, but here's just one.


After that we spent the day at the beach being lazy - we did find a huge starfish in the ocean. That was on a walk down the beach though, so I didn’t have my camera with me - darn!!
The next day, we woke up in Cozumel! We spent the entire day at a local bar called “No Name Bar”. It was founded a long time ago by a couple that met and worked on cruise ships. The bar is dedicated to crew on cruise ships, and they definitely cater to us! The place has free wi-fi, great food, even better drinks, lots of outdoor seating, a fresh water pool, and it’s right on the ocean! ha.. It’s definitely a nice slice of heaven in Cozumel.. We had a great lazy day, that included a jump into the ocean from a VERY high wall. Here’s No Name Bar and a picture of me jumping into the water!


The shows so far have gone great! It definitely took some adjusting to ship life, but now we’re in our regular schedules. For that second cruise, the head of entertainment for Celebrity signed on to see our new Broadway show. We’re the first cast to do it. Fortunately, he was very impressed! They threw our cast a Welcome Aboard party that night to celebrate our successes. It was really nice! The Captain, Staff Captain, Hotel Director, Cruise Director, Food & Beverage Manager, and many more all came out to celebrate and welcome us aboard.
Our last Caribbean cruise was a charter cruise for Best Buy. It started off pretty rough, but we ended up having a great time for the charter. We had an overnight in Miami to kick things off!! So after a Welcome Aboard show (with only 20 people in the audience......) we were able to sign off! We weren’t exactly up for a crazy night out in Miami, so we just went to a movie - our last foray in America (almost). We got to see Iron Man 2, and had a great time!!
The Best Buy charter cruise.... Now Celebrity typically has an older clientele because it’s more of a formal line. This was not the case with the charter.. We did know this going into it! The party band learned a bunch of Top 40 material to sing, and the DJ was scheduled for more hours. However, it ended up being a bit more than we all expected. Like I said, there were 20 people at our Welcome Aboard show. Apparently, Best Buy gave everyone for the cruise $300 of onboard credit. So everyone came onboard and bought the Unlimited Beer package for $40/day. They literally asked the string quartet to stop playing in the cafe - they requested the DJ - and didn’t come to our welcome aboard show. Now I know they paid for this cruise, so they get what they want - and they deserve that! We just didn’t want to do full production shows for an empty house. Fortunately, our amazing Cruise Director agreed with us!! In fact - she brought it up to us. She talked to the head of the charter, and we changed our schedules!! Instead of doing two production show performances a night, we only had to do one!! So, it ended up being a great break for us. Although, because we only had the one performance, we did have a lot more people in the audience than the first show.
The ports for that cruise were Coco Cay (a private island owned by Royal Caribbean exclusively for our use), Nassau, and Key West.
Coco Cay was fun. They had an aqua park, a giant water slide, and free food. And it was all for us!! Woo-hoo!! Nassau was kind of a bust.. We did have a show that night, and we had a Safety training that morning, so we just spent the day at Dunkin Donuts with free wi-fi! Key West was a ton of fun. We had the whole day off. We spent the day wandering around. Key West is really cute. A lot of fun restaurants with live entertainment, roosters wandering around, great weather - lots of good times!


And now we’ve left for Europe! We’ve got seven days at sea, a completely full ship, and lots of ocean ahead of us!! Our first show is tonight - and we can’t wait. We already signed up for our first crew shore excursion for Ponta Delgada, Azores. I can’t wait.
Phew!! That was quite a post.. But now that we’re at the longer itineraries I’ll have a lot more free time on my hands. I hope I get better at this thing. Fingers crossed we make it across the big blue in one piece!!! Wish us luck. Thanks for reading!

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