finally, internet on the pacific princess!

Greetings from the Pacific Princess. I’ve been on board a week and I havn’t written because it has taken me this long to get my hands on a US $20 note to buy an internet card.

Today, we will be in Bunbury, Western Australia. Hardly an exotic location, but I am excited to see what is there! Tomorrow we will be in Fremantle/Perth and then our next stop will be in Indonesia- which is a place I can get excited about.

As my opening statement about this ship, I would like to say that this ship is the EXACT OPPOSITE of the Emerald Princess. I come from the biggest ship doing the shortest and most intense itinerary – 7 day Caribbean. I am now on the very smallest ship doing the very longest itinerary of all, the world cruise.

Almost everything here is different. On the EP, I averaged 9.4 hours of activities a day. Here, my average has been 7 hours a day- but this has been factoring in all the office work I am now doing- and the time I have spent going around to all the lockers and inventorising the stuff/crap we have in there.

There aren’t many activities on the ship , especially at night as most people go to bed between 9pm and 11pm. After 11- the ship is a ghost ship. But, the people here are SO FRIENDLY. They are on for the long haul, so you really get to know them. I spend a lot of my day just hanging out with the passengers. They love to talk and really appreciate it when you sit down with them, or join them in what they were doing. On the EP, sometimes you got the vibe they wanted you to go away.

Another great thing about this ship are the crew on board. My team is just lovely. Brett, my cruise director, is a very cool young Canadian guy – one of the newest cruise directors on princess. He is great – he knows what he’s doing and he is funny as hell. Frankie, my deputy, has been with Princess 19 years. He is from Hershey, Pensylvania and is amazing with the passengers. I have never seen a cruise staff like him- the passengers just adore his irreverent jokes and soft demeanor. My room mate and fellow JACD, Natalie, is a lovely girl from England. It is her first contract- she was originally sent as a librarian – and we get along really well. Coming to the Pacific Princess for a first contract… well, it shouldn’t happen. It’s not like a “real ship”. It’s tiny and normal rules don’t apply- we keen talking about life on the normal sized ships and I think it must frustrate her a bit. She is with me until the end of the world cruise. Hopefully we can teach her all she needs to know and at the end they will tranship her to the Ruby or Emerald and she can see what life as a cruise staff is really like.

On the small ships, the dancers double as cruise staff – and we have 6 lovely dancers, 5 of which are from Australia. They are so cute and so non-bitchy for dancers! Just a lovely bunch of kids.

The rest of the crew are also super friendly – when I first got on board they would go out of their way to come over and introduce themselves. Everyone, from bar stewards to shop staff to electrotechnical engineers. There are only 200 of us, so it is like a real family on board. This is probably the thing I like best about the small ship.

The crew bar is tiny. You would not believe how small it is. My cabin is MINISCULE. I couldn’t believe it when I opened the door for the first time. It is less than half the size of my cabin on the Emerald Princess. We have a gym locker for a wardrobe. This is possibly the WORST thing about the small ship.