So some cruise ships are old, no other way to say it.  If you can visibly see the wear and tear on the carpets and couches, think of the inside of the ship - I mean the pipes and guts of the ship.  Trust me, it's not pretty.

As a crew member, there is a process to reporting a cabin issue - if your  toilet is plugged, there is a leak, no air conditioning, and so on.  This is a huge pain in the ass, because you never know when they will show up to your cabin to fix it ... and if you are at work, well then you're outta luck if they stop by.  Then you have to go report it again, and hope you will be there next time.

So my cabin was in a group of cabins at Deck 2 aft, notoriously leaky cabins.  Before I moved into my room, the previous occupant had told me a month ago about the huge flood that ruined anything she had on the floor, including her luggage.  So I wasn't surprised when there was a small leak from the ceiling.  I reported it properly, and the Joiner came to fix it later.  The joiner unscrewed the ceiling, and then told me that yes, he saw the leak, but he couldn't do
anything further because that wasn't his job.  I needed to call the plumber...  

So I was supposed to go report that on the piece of paper at Crew Administration - which was closed, so my request wouldn't be answered until the next day... with my ceiling open and nothing to catch the leak anymore.  So I called Guest Services to ask for the plumber on duty's number (not supposed to do this at all.)  Fortunately, they called him and maybe twenty minutes later the plumber came and checked it out.  Fiddled a bit, then told me he couldn't do anything, it wasn't his job because he thought it had something to do with the air conditioning.  At least this guy called the Electrician for me, who came a bit later to tell me nope, it wasn't the air conditioning.  He called the plumber back...

Plumber gets in there a bit and manages to 'fix' the leak.  Ha.  So I thanked him and as he packed up to leave asked if he was going to put the ceiling back.  No, he said, that's the joiner's job.  Joiner didn't come back that night ... so the ceiling was off for a few days and I had a lovely view of the pipes.

Now... this same thing happens two or three more times and I go through the same crap - however, the next two times I didn't wait to report it on a list because I am afraid the room will get flooded again.  Oh PS, these incidents happened at midnight/1am, so I and the joiners/plumbers were not happy campers.  They said that they couldn't actually fix the problem now, the ship was going into dry dock in November and they would take care of it then... that was 8 months away! Crew members would pass me sitting in the hallway waiting for them to finish 'fixing the leak,' and they would just know.  "Cabin leaking again?" "Yup."

The next night (after the last 'fix'), I'm laying in bed watching TV when I hear a knock at the door.  It's one of my best friends from three doors down, and she had makeup dripping down her face along with the tears (she had just finished her Aerial Adage show), and asked if my cabin was flooding.  I glanced back at the ceiling and said no, but upon further inspection I saw that the carpet on one side was getting wet.  I asked her what happened...

Celia and Julien had come back from the show to a literal waterfall.  Their entire ceiling had collapsed on the bed and water was gushing out of the pipes onto the bed and all of their belongings.  Everything except what was in the closets was soaked - computers ruined, cameras dead, phones destroyed, shoes soaked.  It was a pool in there, and it was all coming out into the hallway.  The water was spreading into the next cabins and was starting to seep into mine - checking back a minute later, my carpet was now soaked, not just damp.

So I quickly grabbed everything on the floor, all the luggage and souvenir bags and shoes and random objects.  I stuffed suitcases in the bathroom and piled stuff on the bed.

They had called immediately, and two housekeeping stewards came with a vacuum to suck the water - yes, there was only one working on the ship.  One.  The water was still coming out of the pipes - not as fast, though, but at this rate it was going to take them all night to get Celia and Julien's rooms done, let alone start on the next cabins.  We knocked furiously on their next door neighbor's cabin and called and called, but the guy in there kept on sleeping.  Security came and went into the cabin, and the guy apparently said there was no problem - just plain weird, because his cabin was obviously flooded.  Anyways...

Nobody from HR came to see what happened, we don't know where the other plumbers were.  None of us could sleep in our cabins, and they were being jerks about giving us spare rooms - it was now 2 in the morning!  The a capella guys had gone down to crew bar and gotten a bunch of beer, so we were all in the hallway making the best out of the situation, trying to get Celia and Julien drunk so they wouldn't think about all they had lost.  The rooms were starting to smell from the wet carpet, and HR was saying that they weren't going to replace it.  I was not about to sit there and let them tell me I would be breathing in this disgustingness for the rest of my contract, so we pushed and pushed and called for the next few days (thank goodness they finally gave in and gave us spare cabins to stay in.)  A few days later they finally agreed to replace our carpet, but they stopped with my cabin - the acappella guys next door had to live with their carpet which didn't get soaked, but was still damp.

Replacing the carpet took a few more days and involved some more lovely glue fumes.  HR was giving Celia and Julien a hard time about paying for their ruined belongings - at first they had said they would pay for it, but then they demanded a list and to see everything they put on it to make sure it was actually ruined.  They called in the Photo Manager to make sure their camera actually wouldn't work!  They wanted evidence to prove that the computers weren't on the floor (because if they were, they wouldn't reimburse them!)  It was a ridiculous situation.  Nobody had even apologized for the inconvenience, or even acknowledged that all of Celia and Julien's pictures from South America and Antarctica were gone forever.

The killer is, I had constantly been telling them that there was a problem with the pipes, that they were not fixing it and it would only get worse - I was so sick and tired of this, and was so mad to see what had happened because they just didn't give to craps about the crew cabins.  Had this happened in a guest cabin ... I can imagine the amenities they would provide.

Let's just say I will never take for granted a proper ceiling that doesn't leak and plumbers who actually fix problems.  I would advise cruising on new ships...

It was my first time off the ship on Sunday in Miami.  My new best friend’s family lived fifteen minutes away from the port, so her Dad took us out for breakfast and we did some shopping for the day.  Back on board was 3:30 for crew members, so we allotted ourselves an extra fifteen minutes just in case.

We left her house at 2:45, plenty of time… (of course, my brain was stressing out about being late, thinking of all possible delays and what would happen if we were late.)

As we got on the freeway, she realized she forgot her purse at home … which had her Crew ID in it… so we didn’t even have a choice, we had to turn around.  My face paled…now my brain was in full panic.  I knew it was only a five to ten minute delay, and that we had left extra early just in case something like this happened.

So ten minutes later we were back on the road… until another just-in-case moment happened.  Traffic.  At the toll station.  Now I was really panicking inside, I knew we would be cutting it close.  I didn’t want to ask her Dad to speed as fast as he could, but I was hoping he would.  It’s a good thing Miami drivers are a tad on the nuts side, so we were booking it.

Of course, you know the drill, we got stopped at every possible light, we got stuck behind slow cars, everything in the universe’s power was trying to stop us from getting to the ship.  Finally we are racing across the bridge to the port, we can see the ship.  I can also see that the clock says 3:25.  My lips are pursed because I think if I say anything, it will spend energy needed to get us there, that somehow it will slow us down.  Does it make any sense?  No…but I had no idea what was going to happen if we were late – I had just had a week full of trainings with all the rules thrown at me, all the consequences other crew members had experienced, and I did not want to be on Security’s radar my first week!

We get to our terminal’s crew entrance after going around some twists and turns in this busy port, and we grab our shopping bags and spring from the jeep.  We run to the customs guy, and cringe as he starts looking through our bags.  I’m thinking omigod hurry up, but of course can’t say that!  It doesn’t even occur to me to try to think of a good excuse to tell Security why we were cutting it so close or why we were late … I didn’t know which we were yet!

So we make it through customs but still have to run across the length of the ship to the Crew Gangway… it seemed so far away!  But at least they could see us and that we were seriously trying to be on time.  I knew it had to be around 3:30, maybe they would be lenient and give us a few minutes leeway…

Nope, we were three minutes late … I still remember exactly how many minutes because they drilled it into us as soon as we got up the gangway.  They were not happy.  It had only been three minutes past back-on-board and the head of security was already there!  We told them about the traffic and the toll and that we ran and were so sorry and didn’t mean to be late and it wouldn’t happen again… (run-on sentence strictly for panicked effect.)

Too bad, they grabbed our Crew IDs, meaning we couldn’t get off at any port the entire cruise, endured a lecture from the Chief of Security on the spot, and we had to meet with the Staff Captain later to decide when we would get our IDs back.  As we’re standing there accepting our fate, crew members are rushing past with life jackets getting ready for boat drill … which we were now wondering if we would be late for as well.

I know this was completely our fault for being late, that we should have allowed more time, but it still kills me that three minutes made us public enemies.  However, it was really Security’s anger we had flared, and we had later heard stories
about how Americans frequently were late … in groups … eh hem, dancers.  I thought it was a little unfair to be grouped into the American category, assuming that I would be breaking the rules.  Let me tell you, I followed the rules more than most crew, staff, and officers… So now I just had to prove it.

We did talk to the Staff Captain and get our IDs back the next day – despite everyone telling us we would never get our IDs back in time for next Sunday.  I didn’t even care about my ID, I was just embarrassed that I was late at the first
opportunity.

I would often get asked by guests about complaints that other guests have made and how crazy some of them would be.  While I didn't like to badmouth past guests and mostly kept them to myself, these are just complaints that I have witnessed and remember.  You’ll have to forgive my sarcasm, and know that I consistently got many positive comment cards, so you know that I never actually made any sarcastic remarks and tried my best to help out. :)

* I want my 12-year-old in Club O2 (that’s for 15-17 year-olds)… well she’s almost 13 and very mature.  (Why would you want your 12-year-old hanging out with 17-year-olds… on a cruise nonetheless! Trust me, teenagers love the saying ‘what happens on the ship stays on the ship’.)
* The elevators don’t go down to Deck 1! (That’s because that is the crew quarters, for crew only.)
* My teenager won’t like your club, just saying.  (1) why are you here? 2) have they even tried it?)
* There are too many stairs… (then take the elevator…)
* The piece of art I want is too expensive.  (Then find a cheaper one … remember, this isn’t Wal-Mart, this is actual art not printed off a computer.)
* The Teen Club always has their activities during our dinner time.  (Yeah, we have activities during all dinner times and all night long…your kids aren’t the only ones on the ship.)
* We aren’t allowed to play video games in the Teen Club.  (I once had four men from Italy open the doors to my packed-with-teenagers club and walk right up to a monitor and start playing our Fifa Soccer video game, and of course when I tried to explain that it was just a club for the teenagers they spoke no English at all, not even hand-gesture-English.  So I called Guest Relations for a translator, and they stood there complaining on the phone about how they should be able to play, and the Guest Relations team member was asking me why they can’t… I mean … if there were adults hanging out in the teen clubs, would you want your teens in there? Would it still be an exclusive club for teenagers?)
* I don’t like the Free Work of Art, can’t I just pick anything?  (Are you serious? Pick anything? Sure, instead of a free lithograph, you can have the $5,000 original.  Guys…it’s free, it’s not going to be a Monet!)
* This bottle of wine was terrible, we want a replacement.  (After you drank the whole bottle… and it was terrible… so you want the exact same bottle of wine?  The Sommeliers may be from other countries where English isn’t there first language, but they’re not stupid.)
* There was too much walking on my tour.  (That’s why it was listed as a strenuoustour, and also why there was a
description explaining the hiking tour.)
* Nobody told me what the weather would be like. (This is a good one.  I was a tour escort in the Falkland Islands…southern tip of South America, heading down to Antarctica.  A man stopped me in the Theater where we were getting ready and gave me a dirty look, sternly saying we should have told them what the weather would be like today… I politely said that it is predicted to be in the high 50s low 60s so definitely have a jacket, especially because the weather is known to change fast in the Falklands, and if he wanted to check the weather in the future it is always in the daily.  I didn’t first tell him Hellooo it’s always in the dailies, even though I was offended at the way he talked to me.  He then proceeded to tell me that he was upset because he didn’t know what the weather was supposed to be like the whole cruise – this was a two-week cruise to Antarctica…So we are supposed to predict two weeks of weather and be perfectly accurate?  By this time he was on the verge of yelling at me … for not being able to predict the weather …   Well me, somehow managing to keep a calm exterior even though I desperately wanted to tell him I was not a meteorologist, said if he liked, I could call Guest Relations and ask them to deliver a daily with the weather highlighted to his stateroom each day.  He ignored me and then continued to yell at me about something else, so I just said I was going to call Guest Relations with his request.  I actually did just so that he couldn’t report me for some other ridiculous complaint, but oh my gosh.  After I hung up I stood by the phone just seething.  Then put a smile back on and went to continue to help out.)
* My stateroom doesn’t have a window…yes it’s an inside cabin. (Wait…your inside cabin doesn’t have a window to the outside? Let me get right on that…)
* I’m reporting you because you’re not keeping a good eye on my kid.  He’s up on Lido Deck with his friends unsupervised!  (Circle C, my teen club, is not a baby-sitting service, I don’t follow kids around in the ship, we have a daily schedule where I tell you exactly where we will be, there is no sign-in and sign-out like in Camp Carnival and I can’t stop them from leaving.  Maybe if you handcuff us together I can keep a better eye on him.)
* There is no Art Seminar in Spanish. (Got this call from Guest Relations.  Obviously there isn’t one in Spanish because we don’t know the language.  We did even offer to make a powerpoint and ask someone to help us translate…but apparently the guest wasn’t actually interested in the seminar, hmmm…)
* She called security on my teenager! (Well, see, the entire cruise ship has this whole “no fighting” policy… and I also have a pretty strict contract.  Thing is … if I didn’t call security, I would have gotten that complaint, too.)
* The tour I want is sold out, and nobody told me! (Next time, we will tell the whole ship when a tour sells out, don’t worry … but maybe you should have read where it said ‘this tour sells out fast!’  Keep in mind that this complaint came the morning of the tour, too.  And I have nothing to do with Shore Excursions.)
* I want a refund on the food because there are no gluten-free meals.  (A) there aregluten-free meals, there are places where this is explicitly stated B) you can’t just get a refund on food, it’s included.)
* My drink is too strong…..(thirty seconds pass)… My drink isn’t strong enough! (having a conversation with a woman at the bar, this is just a funny one, nothing really to be sarcastic about.)
* There's not enough atlases in the library.  (I was putting away a couple books I found around the deck in the Ship Library, where you can check out any book for free, and a man stopped me and asked me a) who checked out the atlas (how the heck would I know?), b) when it would be back (again, I don't know how fast they read maps), c) could I get it for him (sure, just find me a key to this mystery person's stateroom), and d) why is there never anything good to read in here (well, didn't you say you wanted the atlas, so there's at least one good book in here?)
* You don’t schedule enough video game time in the club. (Well, I would rather want my kid to do activities outside and with other teens than play video games all day, but whenever we’re in the club, the video games are there … because the law doesn’t allow me to force kids to do things.)

These are only some that I remember, I wish I had kept track in a journal or something!  I can laugh and be sarcastic now, but back when these actually happened, I could feel my ears turn red or my face pale in disbelief/anger.  I also had Security complain to me because I didn’t keep an eye on the teens when they weren’t in the club … I mean …. I run the club, not the teens.  Sigh. All in all … you can never win on a cruise ship!  Crew members mind their p’s and q’s, know the rules, and aim to please.

One of the most incredible tours I have been on was in the Chilean Lake District in South America. There were several tours I could have gone on that would take me to the Osorno Volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the Chilean Andes, and Petrohue Rapids, but I didn’t just want any tour. So I pleaded with Carolina, our amazing Shore Excursion Manager, to take the hike to the volcano – I had even bought hiking shoes at Bass Pro Shops before I came to the ship and I wanted to use them! She said yes, and then I looked at the tour details. Sure it said it was strenuous, but I had been on strenuous tours before that I could have worn flip flops on, so I was excited, thinking one day I might share these pictures with a science class of mine when we studied volcanoes.

So our bus takes a long drive through the Lake District and some German-looking towns (German settlers way back when.) It was a cloudy day, and even as we were getting close to the National Park we couldn’t see the volcano. Of course, that didn’t stop me from taking a million pictures of the clouds covering the mountain. We make a stop at the entrance to the park at the base of the volcano, where we meet a small wild fox and take a short hike to the green river meeting the blue lake. I decided I wanted a more close up picture of the green river, so in my stiff boots I try to slide down a little bit and end up falling (of course.) But at least it was a good introduction to the guide who saved me from plunging in the river, especially since he proceeded to tell me about the nutrients in the water that were responsible for the color.

We got back on the bus for a two minute drive to where we would begin our hike – it was literally an entrance to the woods in the middle of nowhere. The guides gave us Ziploc bags with our ‘box’ lunches … a soggy sandwich, apple, granola bar, and bottle of water. It was kiiind of a pain to have to carry around the whole hike, but I wasn’t about to litter.

The Guide-who-saved-me (you would think I would remember his name) was our hike leader, and set the pace pretty fast. I was towards the middle at the beginning, but slowly passed people so that I could be near enough to my guide to hear
what he was saying. It didn’t work… this was one strenuous hike, up and down on uneven terrain that wasn’t even solid dirt – it was mostly loose rocks that caused trouble, as you would be propelling yourself upward to make it over a hill, but would slide instantly backwards on all these little stones. The guides didn’t stop, as there were several at different intervals. Despite the strain to keep up with the front of the pack, it felt good to stretch my legs and work hard as opposed to being contained inside a ship. (I was also glad I wore black to hide my sweat … until I realized the sun was baking me.)

After about an hour-and-a-half, we made it to the lava field full of volcanic sand and rock from the last eruption. It’s erupted 11 times in the past several hundred years, so it was a neat feeling standing on the remnants. The funny thing was, the sun was up and shining, but there was this one big cloud covering the peak! About a dozen of us made it to the field first, so we had time to sit down on some boulders and eat our soggy sandwiches while waiting for the rest of the group to catch up. Although we waited about a half hour, it paid off: the cloud cover cleared the volcano, and we got some perfect shots!

After some more stragglers made it, we started the hike again towards the Petrohue Rapids. It was pretty anticlimactic since we had already been standing in the lava field and were just making it to where the bus would meet us to take us the rest of the way to the Rapids. Again, many people’s paces were slower, so we waited at the end for another half hour.

Let me tell you why we had to wait so long… it was this one couple around 60 years old. It wasn’t because of their age … it was because the woman wore Uggs! UGGS! Ugg boots … to HIKE! I was baffled … boggled … I couldn’t understand, I mean didn’t she read that it was a strenuous hike?? Needless to say, we were all pretty frustrated, but props to the tour guide who had to stick with her and still had a smile on his face.

I had thought that we were done with our sightseeing after the hike was over, I didn’t know what to expect at the Rapids… but boy was I wrong not to be excited. It was breathtaking, The pictures I was taking looked like you would find them in National Geographic! I mean I am not an expert photographer, but with this view you couldn’t go wrong unless you dropped your camera in the gorging waters.

The perfect end to this tour was what I found in the small gift hut: a gnome magnet that said Petrohue:)

In 7 months on board the Carnival Valor, I had one day off (and that was lucky!) It was the perfect day in Cozumel – and it was a lot better knowing that I didn’t have to work as soon as I got back on the ship! I could have as many margaritas as I wanted without having to worry ;-)

I had been planning all week what I was going to do, which included watching the movie at the outside theater on Lido Deck. After the movie finished, I was just walking around the outside of the ship, enjoying the view at night (since I would
always be in my club or DJing at the disco). I was leaning against the top deck rail staring at the surrounding darkness when I noticed an out-of-place flickering light. It was pretty small, but slowly we were getting closer to it.

I soon realized it was a small boat that wasn’t moving – the Bridge crew must have noticed it too, because the ship turned and headed towards the small craft. I had never heard of a big cruise liner picking up stranded passengers, so I was excited and wanted to see what was going on. I went down to the open deck on Deck 3 when we came next to the boat so that I was looking directly down into it.

The ship slowed down and came to a slow halt next to the boat. I was standing with my Security Guard friend debating what the boat was doing so far off the coast of Mexico near Cuba... The only legitimate thing that made sense was that it was a fishing boat that got stranded, maybe a dead motor, but there wasn’t enough gear. So obviously we assumed it was some marooned refugees.

The ship slowed down and came to a slow halt next to the boat. I was standing with my Security Guard friend debating what the boat was doing so far off the coast of Mexico near Cuba... The only legitimate thing that made sense was that it was a fishing boat that got stranded, maybe a dead motor, but there wasn’t enough gear. So obviously we assumed it was some marooned refugees.

Pirates had been ravaging the seas surrounding Somalia lately, so it was in many people’s minds… However, this was a small fishing boat, and although they may have had a gun and intended to board the ship … there were over 4,000 people on our boat compared to 3 on theirs. I don’t know what their plans were, but I was pretty sure that it didn’t include a hostile takeover.

Eventually some food was delivered to the ship via basket, and the forlorn ‘fishermen’ sat around eating sandwiches while waiting. For what, we didn’t know yet.

Perhaps a half hour later, another light in the distance came closer and closer… the Mexican Military to the rescue. They quickly took control of the small boat and whisked it away.

We never found out what the story was, but it made my one night off quite an adventure :)

When you're young and travel, you sometimes take for granted that everyone will understand you - both language and customs. In America, the college kids play drinking games, it's a fact of life. We make up all these silly and bogus rules to force people to drink during these games (oops I accidentally swore on purpose, now I have to drink, darn...) Yet if you go to almost any other country, drinking is not as big of a deal - they can all do it by the time they are 16. So imagine our (my fellow Americans and my) surprise to hear that foreigners have never heard of Beer Pong or Flip Cup! These are staples in our late teens and twenties, so it boggles our minds that others are missing out on the mind-numbing fun...

Flip Cup has to be the easiest drinking game to teach - there's maybe one rule, otherwise it's all drinking and flipping. If you've never played Flip Cup, you have two teams with equal numbers. Each person has a cup in front of them filled with an equal amount of beer - some people put a shot of liquor in instead, I strongly advise against this... On 'go' the first person chugs the beer, then puts the empty cup on the edge of the table so they can flip it upside down. When they have properly flipped their cup, the next person goes, and so on and so forth until the first team to complete flipping wins. Simple, and there's only minimal cheating involved ;-) Flip Cup can be played in any language and is easy to teach with hand gestures, too! Again, minimal knowledge required, no strategy involved (except it helps if you practice flipping your cup sometimes.)

I have helped teach Flip Cup to people of many nationalities - this game in Barcelona, I don't even know where everybody was from! You can play it with twenty people, or you can play it with eight people, and it is equally fun, trust me. It's a great icebreaker if you are trying to impress someone or if you just want to meet as many people as possible. If people see you play and know the game, they will want in immediately. If people see you play and don't know they game, they will want in immediately too, even if they wonder what the hell you're doing...

And a bottle of rum!