My first week on the ship has been … interesting. Like I said, we were in Code Red, which means a gastro-intestinal virus was spreading across the ship. This continued for the remainder of the first cruise, as well as the first two days of this next cruise. The first day there were 6 cases, the next day 30, then the next day 60. After that it kinda cooled off, but we were still in Code Red. And it was mostly passengers who were getting sick, not really any crew. This is mainly because we know about the virus and they tell us to wash our hands like crazy. They tell the guests the same thing, but they don’t really do it. If you’re taking a cruise soon, wash your hands ALL THE TIME!
This affected us in a few ways. One, we had to sanitize our showroom every night after the shows. It would take about an hour and we’d be done around 12:30am, sometimes 1am. Two, this stuff we were using to sanitize everything is called Virox. It’s horrible! We wear gloves and masks, but the smell just makes you feel sick, and we don’t know if it’s from being so tired or from the virox cause during those late-night cleaning sessions we say some pretty ridiculous things. In one way it’s cool because I get to know everybody in the band better, but it’s also terrible cause we’re working extra and nobody’s happy about it. None of the crew are upbeat either cause we’re all working extra hours and exhausted. And all anyone talks about is passengers with GI, and complaining about sanitizing.
When we finally got back to Tampa, I had to wake up at 6:30am for immigration for new crew members. Then we had to clean the ENTIRE ship. This meant cleaning walls, hand railings, tables, anything in public areas. It was insane. They even hired a cleaning company from land to help us out. Then we had a busy embarkation day again once the new passengers finally came on. Sunday was a looong day.
So morale on the ship is kind of down right now. Hopefully now that we’re FINALLY out of Code Red everyone will forget about it and have more fun! Cause that’s why I’m here!
This cruise we started a couple days ago is the Holiday/Christmas cruise. (We all know nobody’s here to celebrate Hannukah but they have to say it. I probably won’t light a menorah in my room for fear of sinking the ship.) The first night I actually sang a couple Christmas songs at our tree lighting ceremony (mainly because I had to), and there’s a huge gingerbread house in our center Atrium that makes the ship smell really good!
Happy Hannukah and have a good Christmas everybody!
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