This Tuesday we shared the Nassau port with another Royal Caribbean ship. It's called the Voyager of the Seas and it's significantly bigger than my ship the Majesty. Blair and myself accompanied by one of the Majesty stage techs, Albert, made our way over to check out the digs on the Voyager.
Our tour guide on Voyager was Alberto. He has been doing ships for over 5 years and is on his 8th contract. He's been moved around from ship to ship throughout the fleet. In addition to the Voyager he has been on the Radiance of the Seas as well as the 2 largest and most innovative ships in the fleet, the Oasis and Allure of the Seas. Alberto was aboard the "takeout" launches for Oasis and Allure. This is where the ships go out for months at a time and the test all the equipment onboard before they take on guests. Alberto helped install all of the tech and sound equipment for the theaters onboard those ships. He said it was horrible. Lots of work and they stayed in Finland for 20+ days. Part of the fun of working on a cruise ship is traveling to different places. Staying in one port for almost a month is not that cool.
The Voyager of the Seas was the first ship built in the Voyager class on Royal Caribbean. Maiden voyage in the late 90's, Voyager is among a group of other ships that are the 3rd largest in the fleet. It's very tall with 15 decks. They are based in New Orleans and do 7 day cruises. Well, that's what they used to do. Voyager is being re-deployed to Asia and is in the middle of making the Atlantic crossing. Currently, the ship is on a 16 day cruise. After this one, they will disembark and take on new guests for an 11 day cruise. The itinerary during the crossing includes 6 sea days as well as many ports in Europe and Dubai. Eventually they will arrive in Asia for the season. Alberto said that the itinerary doesn't have a repeat port until mid-June. Quite a change for someone who visits Nassau, Coco Cay and Miami twice a week like me!
Aboard the Voyager there are several theaters. Their main theatre is twice the stage size of Majesty, but, seats only a few hundred more. Voyager has several more bar areas, an ice rink and an aqua theater called Studio B. Alberto reports that the aqua theater is the most dangerous venue he has ever worked and says there have been some bad accidents on Voyager. Broken legs, compound fractures…I didn't listen very long. He says that he sits there during rehearsals just waiting for something to go wrong. Usually happens to new hires and people who don't know the ship. I don't see what the big deal is. I've spent LOTS of time in theaters. Looks like a normal theater to me. All you need to do is keep your head about you and you're fine. He did say that the casts on Voyager have been very young. Maybe that's the deal. Inexperience, possibly.
Voyager carries a 9 piece band. 2 more players than Majesty (1 extra trumpet and saxophone). The biggest difference I noticed is the sound monitor system. Each musician in the orchestra has their own Avion monitor. Short version? Each musician can control the volume of every other musician in the orchestra. If you're playing trumpet and want to hear less guitar and bass with more of yourself, you can control that from your seat. Pretty nice.
Wasn't able to see Studio B or any of the passenger areas. For one thing, we had to leave after about 45 minutes due to a rehearsal. Additionally, Voyager was in "wet dock" where they were doing some refurbishing of carpets and other interior items on Deck 2 and the Casino.
Overall, pretty cool being on a much bigger ship. If I'm going to do more contracts, I definitely want to be on a ship like Voyager or bigger. For size comparison here are some numbers:
Majesty: 850+ crew, 2,500+ guests
Voyager: 1200+ crew, 4,000+ guests
Oasis: 2,300+ crew, 6,000+ guests
Some pictures below. I didn't take very many, but, tried to take some video as an experiment to see how it would look on the blog.
Finally, some quotes that I remembered from watching DVDs earlier this past week.
"It's for the same reason anyone does anything. To impress women."
~Sportsnight
"You can't control things. Nobody can. There's only one thing that's certain. Everything changes."
~Six Feet Under
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