Cruise Contracts. Read Before Accepting.

The dream of never having to work on ships again didn’t last long. One year after our last ferry contract, we’re back at sea. And it’s awful.

Being on this ship is yet another reason I’ve not been writing on here lately. The first month is now over but it’s been very busy. Not in a good way either.

Although we didn’t particularly enjoy working on the ferries in the past, the chance to finally work on a real cruise ship seemed exciting.

The sunsets are one of the few positives here.

With the months of January to April looking a bit bleak in terms of work, we thought that giving an actual cruise contract a go would be interesting. It’d be an experience and hopefully fun too, even if the pay is not great.

We got an offer for a three month contract on-board a Royal Caribbean ship sailing out of New Orleans. The agent, Suman Entertainment working out of Miami, made it sound pretty good. Three sets a night in the nightclub as a four piece party band.

Sometimes we were told we might have to play four sets but we’d get a day off every week. Considering every other contract we’ve done has been seven days a week, this was a nice bonus.

We were also told that although we would have to share cabins, we’d be sharing together as a band. So the drummer and myself in one and the keyboard player and singer in another.

Having to share cabins with strangers wouldn’t have been a big deal for me or the drummer, but as the singer and keyboard player are a couple, it was worth pushing for this with the agent. They agreed and assured us that it would all be sorted by the time we signed on. As it turned out, the cabin situation was the first thing to go wrong.

On arrival to the ship, we had to go through the sign on process. This involves rushing around various conference and training rooms on the ship filling in forms.

We were told we also had to “check in”. This included signing our contracts. Even though ours had errors in them regarding our pay, they told us if we didn’t sign, we couldn’t board.

After they had assured us that we would actually be paid correctly, we signed. Somewhere in the contract was the part that said how much you actually have to work. Even though we didn’t agree with it, after paying out $850 of our own money to get to this point through visas and medicals, we couldn’t afford to just get sent home.

Once the paperwork was done with, we were handed an envelope with our room keys. Each of us were to stay in a separate cabin with a random worker.

I don’t think the musical director, who had just shown up to give us a basic safety tour of the ship, realised how close we were to leaving for Louis Armstrong International. The $850 suddenly didn’t seem so important anymore. We were only two hours into the contract and the money was wrong, the cabins were wrong and this MD seemed like a real prick.

Apparently it’s a long process to change cabins but the drummer and I got lucky. His stranger was signing off one week later and so I only had to spend one week with mine. He was actually a decent guy so it wasn’t the worst experience but I never felt completely comfortable.

The crew cabins are old and small. Ours got cluttered pretty quickly.

The process to get a couple cabin however took a lot longer. It also included providing proof that you are actually together and have been for some time before signing on. Due to this process taking so long, the other two had to live apart for over a month with people they didn’t really get to know due to different working hours.

Although the agent had left out information and straight up lied about the accommodation, the biggest shock for us came when we found out about the training.

For anyone used to cruise ship work, it is I guess normal to expect training. But being completely new to this, we thought at least the agent would have mentioned that there’s two and a half weeks of solid safety and policy training.

The safety training was mostly dull but at least useful and sometimes interesting. The final part was jumping in the pool with a life jacket and learning how to flip over a life raft. This was actually quite fun, although I’m sure if you were in a real emergency, the novelty of blowing the whistle and floating about would wear off fast.

There was a drill every two weeks. Sometimes once a week. Our job during these was to stand in the boiling heat of the sun for 90 minutes and dehydrate.

The policy training is however utter bollocks. This includes long two hour sessions where you are told why rape is wrong, why you shouldn’t have anything to do with guests in case they sue the company and what the alcohol policy is.

The alcohol policy is the best. You’re instructed forcefully to never exceed 0.05abv and to never drink at work. Then the first night in the crew bar, we see the cruise director drink half a bottle of wine before heading off back to introduce the evening show.

Most of the training is clearly there so the company can cover itself if you screw up. I understand why they do it but still, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a complete waste of everyone’s life in the training room.

We were told by the few people we met initially that life on-board is much better once the training is over. That’s true in that you don’t have to get up early for the 8am morning sessions. But I’m still not enjoying this ship and that’s mainly because of the crew.

One of the first things we were told when signing on was that this was a “friendly” ship. Apparently this is due to its size and having only around 840 crew working here.

In reality, the place is cold and miserable. There’s the obvious stuff you pick up on straight away. The majority of the crew will ignore you in corridors when you say hi. A lot of them don’t even try to avoid eye contact.

Then you quickly pick up on who is in which “group”. The way it usually goes is that someone will either blank you entirely, or try to avoid any kind of interaction, before walking quickly away to sit with a group of people they’ll hang out with every free minute of the day.

Usually these groups are made up of crew from the same department, but not always. It seems once a small group of friends are made, people here are reluctant to make anymore. It’s as if you must quickly let newcomers know that they are not welcome.

Luckily, working in a band means that I usually have someone to hang around with. There are also a couple of normal guys that work in the stage tech department to have a drink with now and again.

To be fair though, seeing how the crew treat each other, I’m not sure I’d like to get to know them better anyway. Like a lot of corporate places, it’s very much a case of “shit rolls downhill” here. The only difference being on a ship, the workers have to live together.

If people aren’t trying to pass the blame to those lower down, people are just reporting others for minor policy infringements to try and look better in front of their managers.

There’s a pizza place here that’s free for guests and some crew. As a musician, I’m one of the lucky ones. But it actually used to be ok for anyone to go in, as long as they weren’t part of the lowest ranks.

Recently however, it’s all changed because one pizza guy is going out of his way to report anyone who technically shouldn’t be there to his boss. He then threatens them by telling they’ll be fired.

If the above wasn’t enough already, the work itself is not even close to what was advertised by Suman Entertainment. Three sets a night are rare as it’s nearly always four and sometimes five.

The MD and cruise director obviously think we’re stupid as they continually lie to us that the other two bands on the ship, a Latin quartet and a Caribbean band, also play one five set evening, once a week. After checking the schedule every week, this has never been true. Plus, we are currently performing five sets twice a week right now.

Then there’s the events that we’re also supposed to work at, including an embarrassing 50’s and 70’s night, Rockyoke, and the top tier event, which is basically a night for the guests who have been on the most cruises with the company.

This is what a big budget cruise line thinks is a good look to celebrate Mardi Gras. Literally all staff had to wear these, including all entertainment. At least they saved money I suppose.

As of yet, we haven’t had to do the Rockyoke as they’re still working on getting the lyrics on the screens. But I know it’s coming.

Considering how much we are being paid for this contract, if the agent had been honest and upfront about the actual workload and all the training, I wouldn’t have accepted this. I definitely wouldn’t want to work with them again.

Talking to others, it seems like it’s normal for agents to behave like this. It’s so strange that everyone just accepts it and says something along the lines of “that’s just what it’s like on the ships”. Whether it’s work related or someone stealing their clothes from the laundry, it’s always considered normal and something that you just have to live with. It’s crazy.

So the hours are longer than we were told, we have to play at events that were never mentioned to us and the crew are mainly unwelcoming tossers. But the worst part of this contract so far have been the ports of call. They are mainly shite. And that’s if we can even dock there. The engines fitted to this 28 year old ship are so weak that even a moderate wind means we can’t always dock and have to head straight to the next destination.

I’ll write about the destinations in separate posts. For now it’s time to head back to work. As bad as coronavirus is, I’m hoping that because of it, we’ll be sent home soon.

Edit: I wrote this almost three months ago but couldn’t post it because the internet was crap and we didn’t get back on land until June 1st.  With the advancement of the coronavirus pandemic, all major cruise lines stopped sailing on March 15th. We were stuck on the ship with no passengers playing only to crew. Even that stopped after March 25th.

After two weeks of isolation in a windowless cabin, followed by six weeks wearing masks and needlessly practicing social distancing, Royal Caribbean finally got us home the cheapest way possible. By sailing us across the Atlantic.

The situation was handled poorly at times with what now appears to be blatant lies being told to us as for reasons we couldn’t go home. Now that I’m back and unemployed, I have time to write more in the coming weeks.

If any of the above was helpful in anyway, feel free to repay me by visiting my Clickasnap page here! Look at as many of my photos as possible as I get a very, very small cut of the ad revenue per view that’s longer than 5 seconds. It means I might be able to buy a beer on my next contract! Whenever that might be.