(Dis) Embarkation

Well, I’m officially on my second week of cruising!
Yesterday we disembarked the old and embarked the new – 3000+ new passengers to get to know over the next 7 days.
Mark and I were on IPM yesterday (in port manning) meaning we were the suckers stuck on disembarkation and embarkation – the most painful process in the world.
The day begun at 6:20 am, when we started directing passenger traffic as the 700 or so passengers who chose to carry their massive suitcases down the gangway themselves started to assemble in the michaelangelo dining room. This was about 2 hours of non-stop pain – we docked on the port side (unusual) creating a massive bottleneck, seeing passengers lining up for ages to get in to the dining room- all the little old jewish ladies (originally from NY – but now of del boca vista, florida) got in a real tizzy.

The second part of disembarkation involved us mustering passengers with a variety of different coloured luggage tags in different areas of the ship that boast comfy chairs, then leading them one at a time down to deck 5 and the gang way. This is harder than youd think – with over 2000 passengers still on the boat and a massive organisational team of pursers and cruise staff on 2-way radios. I didn’t mind this part as I got to be on the microphone in the explorer’s lounge (love being on the microphone) and I got to make jokes and try and cheer up passengers that were totally zonked out from 7 days of drinking, partying and lying in the sun.

Mark and I then had to do sports check and ceramics restock before heading down to the deck 5 gang way to let the new lot of passengers on.

Basically passengers come down the gangway, and we meet them (with extreme cheer), get them to stand and look into a camera mounted in this little unit, insert their cruise card and get them to smile (or try to make them laugh)… their photo is then loaded onto the cruise card for security purposes. If the passenger has a blue card (meaning this is their first cruise with us) we say “welcome aboard” and if their card is gold, sliver or black we say “welcome back”. This is all well and good for the first 10 passengers.. but try doing it for 2 hours straight without a break!!!

The nice thing about disembarks/embarks is that you get to say a proper farewell to your favourite passengers, and you get to meet a lot of the passengers straight away- I already made some new friends on the gang plank.

IN all, my first week was great – now I’m familiar with everything and know what has to be done, I can start to relax a bit and have fun- hpefully do some tours this week (especially the stingray tour on st turk)