I'm back again!

Well I’m back here on the Dream and almost three weeks into contract number three… it’s going really well! I’m settled into my new department, they were all very welcoming and with every day I’m there I ask less questions so that’s good. It’s definitely very demanding… if merchandise was a country road then guest services is a highway! 

There’s a lot more responsibility in this department – firstly you’re handling money. That alone requires plenty of concentration and filling out forms correctly (if you’ve read my blog for a while then you’ll know my life revolves around filling out forms for everything!) and then we do things like change gratuities, move guests into different rooms, track down lost luggage, make housekeeping requests… all the way down to running around the ship to source carrot cake for a guest! No joke, I did that today.

I definitely feel there’s an element of being a server in this job in the sense that in both departments you have to constantly be thinking about several things at once, chasing up jobs that need doing and multi-tasking along with working out when you can fit things in. Even just right now I’m on my break but I know when I go back at 5.30pm there will be at least three things for me to do and several rooms to visit all around the ship to drop things off.

But overall I’m loving it. The schedule is much different to merchandise – you work either an early shift, mid shift or late shift… last week I was on the early shift so I started at 6-7am and finished at 8-9pm… this week I’m on the mid shift so I start at around 9am and finish anywhere from 10pm to midnight-ish. And then there is the late shift where you don’t start until about midday but you finish at 1-1.30am in the morning. Of course we are open 24 hours a day so we have one crew member who works a night shift… maybe one day I will be given the responsibility to do that. I hope so because it’s a good opportunity to show you can cope alone and also you get the whole daytime off!

Since I’ve been back we already had a character meet and greet with Mickey & the gang dressed in their Halloween costumes which was fun. I think we just have one more Halloween cruise which starts tomorrow and then… CHRISTMAS! I’m very excited for the festive season this year! We also had our crew Halloween party which was great fun – I went as a 90s kid but I saw some great costumes… Russell from Up, a ghost of the titanic survivor, lots of clowns, frozen Anna, Pocahontas, Rapunzel, Jasmine, lots of witches, the joker from Batman, a box of Crayola crayons, the list goes on. Everyone makes a lot of effort for the Halloween party and that’s no mean feat when you have limited access to shops and creative sources like glue, glitter, make up and paper! We have a recognition party on Saturday to reward us for some great results for past voyages and we even have a dinner in Cabanas coming up… I will be starving myself in preparation. We also just changed our schedule and now we are in Port Canaveral on Mondays and Fridays… so nobody knows what day it is now, I have to actually think about even where we are each day! I can’t get off the ship much now I’m in GS… in 3 weeks I’ve only been off the ship twice – once in Nassau and once in Port Canaveral.

The only thing that has been weird so far this contract is the fact Nick isn’t here. He gets back in 3 weeks. It’s been good to be able to adjust to my new job before he gets back but I will look forward to hanging out with him once we are both back here together. My mum and dad have just booked flights to come and sail on the Dream in February – super excited!