So far, this has been a wild experience. Not just including the rollercoaster ride of emotions before leaving, and stressing out about everything once I got here. The ship is huge, biggest of Royal Caribbean's fleet, and it's hard to keep track of where everything is. I'm getting better, but I still get lost on occasion. I've also had a whole lot of training, safety and security training, and all the things about living and working on a ship, as well as job training.
Everything also just seems so unreal. It's November and it's 28 degrees out, I can walk around in the middle of the day when we're in port, even get off the ship, I just can't get over that I'm actually here. So far I've only managed to get off in Cozumel week one, and Nassau week two. Didn't do much off the ship, mostly just wandered a little bit through the tourist areas, hopefully as time goes on I'll explore a bit more. I'm definitely hoping to get back to Atlantis at some point.
My room is small, but that was expected. This is actually our second cabin, it wasn't ready when we came on so we were in the extra crew cabins. I've even managed to find a home for almost all of my stuff. And the some stuff that doesn't have a home is mostly because after the initial putting everything away, I've been super lazy. I have the top bunk, which isn't terrible. If you leave a chair at the bottom of the ladder it makes life way easier. There's a tv for both bunks, and a light and a shelf (our first room didn't have shelves and I was annoyed), and then we have our curtains. My room mate is American, also a new hire for sports staff so that's nice.
The sports staff department consists of 19, plus a supervisor and a manager. There are only 4 girls. I'm the only Canadian, a couple Americans (though one's leaving this week), 3 from England, Portugal, Spain, quite a few from Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Trinidad and Tobego, and I'm sure there's more that I just can't remember. They seem like a pretty good group of people, though they all seem to drink a lot.
The job itself seems alright. We run the climbing wall (5 decks high), zip line (82 feet, 9 decks up), and the flowrider (surf simulator). We also occasionally do set up for events and doors (scanning cards to check for show reservations). The hours vary quite a bit, especially with having to do doors, we can start anywhere from 7:45 in the morning, to not starting until after noon on port days, and we can be done by 6pm, or doing doors we can finish at 10:45 at night. We also sometimes get random hours off in the middle of the day, sort of like split shifts. It's not horrible, it's just hard to get into a routine. We work 7 days a week, sometimes we can be "on call" and get a port day off, which so far isn't too bad because it's not like I have much I can do on my days off anyways.
We get to clock our hours practisin on the flowrider, which is kind of cool. We need to get good enough so that we can teach lessons. I don't suck as much as I did my first time but I'm still not great. At the end of every cruise our staff does what they call a flow show, which is a half hour show with them doing little skits and tricks and things. It's super cool. So maybe by the end I'll be good enough to take part haha.
All in all it's been a pretty hectic last 2 weeks. Stressful, and a lot to learn but interesting as well. Hopefully I get a few more chances to get off the ship in port and get to explore a bit.
I think that's all I have to report on my first 2 weeks on the ship. Stay tuned for more updates over the next 6 months.
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