How cruising is different from land: Christmas on ships

There's no such things as holidays in the service industry.  Especially on cruise ships, where there are no days off.  Christmas and New Years are times to groan, roll your eyes and buckle down and get through.  They're long, grueling days of extra work, special events, demanding schedules and the added pressure of presenting holiday cheer.  With the depressing aspect of not being able to celebrate with family and friends as your culture dictates.

Happy Holidays, all around.

We put together a Christmas show, and I think it ended up looking quite good.  The guys did an excellent job decorating the stage, and we put many interesting acts together to make quite a show.

Let it snow.

How cruising is different from land: House on fire

Every week, we pretend that our house is on fire.  All 850 residents then react accordingly.

Today's drill started with an engine fire, and the crew's response quickly elevated from checking it out to full-on fire fighting and passenger muster to full-on abandon ship drills.

We do this every 13 days.  No one batted an eye.

We packed crew members into a muster station, simulating passengers, and took them out to their life boats.  We went to our muster stations and then out to our life rafts.  We sent the containment party to their life rafts.  Everyone was accounted for, no one went down with the ship.

Then we all went for lunch.  Just another Wellington morning, nothing to see here.