Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines

[Ben_Uk]

On board Vision Of The Seas and really enjoying it, if anyone joining a ship has any questions feel free to message me on here.

[Fi_363]

Hello,

 

I'm joining Explorer of the Seas at the end of this month and I was wondering if anyone had any little bits of advice? I've read most of this thread so most of my questions have been answered =) I'm looking forward to it!

 

Thanks, Fi

[DSMpirate]

Hi,

 

So I finally got my ship and will be joining Legend of the Seas at the end of June as Stage Staff. Is anyone on-board already/ know anyone? Would be nice to have someone to get to know before I go.

I know it will be a lot of work but I am hoping to work my way up to Production Manager (Been DSM/SM for 5 years on land). I would like to thank everyone who has posted about cruise life as I feel it has helped a lot in giving me realistic expectations. Fingers crossed we suit each other. If anyone has questions about current conditions ask me after the end of June.

 

G x

[Seaboy]

Hello, Ledies and Gentlemen! I will have an interview on a stage staff position and in the most efficient on lighting technician. Prompt, please, what questions and what is asked on an interview?

Thank you so much.

[mac.calder]

If it is RCCL, from what I can tell they are fairly desperate at the moment - it's been 7 or 8 years since I worked for them and I was REALLY zonked during my phone interview (it was at 3am in the morning), but the questions were pretty much what you would expect - what experience do you have? how do you think you will handle working 6 months straight? are you comfortable sharing space with someone else? then a few more attitude style questions - name your weakness, name your strengths, name a time you went above and beyond for a client etc.

 

-Mac

[Reinard Steyn]

Hi everyone.

 

I'm in process of applying to RCCL as a sound tech. Can anyone tell me which consoles and PA they use mostly across the line? Specifically in the theatres.

 

Thanks!

[mac.calder]

It may be outdated, but they were all DiGiCo when I was on board - the newer ships were all planned to be SD7s. Older ships had Crest analogue consoles but I believe those ships have probably all been retired by now and there were a couple of ships with Euphonix Crescendos - to be honest I would be surprised if they had ever employed a tech that was familiar with that particular range of console. I am having a blank on PA - I was LX - but I THINK it was a combination of various boxes - there was lots of Meyer, but IIRC the theatre's main arrays were passive - perhaps EAW boxes.

 

Small rooms were Yamaha.

 

The ships RCL was pumping out late 90's, early-mid 2000's were really high tech for their time - the small rooms all had small yamaha digital desks - in a time when digital was not yet really a thing in small format. This was largely because they could not be certain a lounge tech could be in every location required and they didn't want to pay for additional ones. They also tended to employ some really shoddy lounge techs. Digital meant that the lounge tech could run out the lines a couple of hours prior to the event and leave the desk on the "bgm/cruise staff" preset (radio mic always live which ducked the BGM with a long release) and the band when they came in would just plug their instruments in, recall their preset and have at it. It meant that where there were two lounge techs on board, the "good" one would be scheduled by the head sound and light tech to get the band set up first time 'round (or the theatre sound tech would if both were rubbish). Basically compensating for lack of quality and quantity with technology. They did much the same in the theatre. Incredible amounts of automation just in case they ended up with a rubbish tech.

[Reinard Steyn]

Thanks for the insight Mac. It's good to know that the gear is either already up to standard, or in process of being upgraded. I don't personally know anyone that's ever touched a Crescendo! http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif I'm glad to hear that the PA is most likely EAW. We'll get along just fine. I'm assuming the smaller desks are most probably O1V's or LS9's. What Digico consoles were on your ships? Also SD7's?

[Reinard Steyn]

What kind of acts should be expected in the theatre? How long are handovers usually?

[ImagineerTom]

Acts in the theatres - literally absolutely everything; a cinema showing, a full production show (with 12 piece orchestra & 20 performers on mic to mix live) and a stand-up comedian/multi-instrumentalist all in one evening wouldn't be particularly unusual. You also won't be "the sound guy" for just one venue, on smaller ships you'll be covering multiple spaces as part of your official title, on bigger ships you'll be providing sickness cover so looking after everything from the piano PA system in the restaurant to fixing the speakers in the Parade floats to repatching kareoke machines to mixing the Caribbean steel band playing poolside at 1am in the rain.

 

theoretically you should get a few days handover but the loss of staff (people being fired or quitting) is so high that you should routinely expect no handover at all then be pleasantly surprised when you do get some. As crew on a cruise ship your primary skill is the ability to improvise and busk-it because outside of the resident production show it's highly unlikely you will get any formal traditional tech rehearsal for anything you're doing.

[mac.calder]

On average I got a week... Ideally you should expect to have a run of every production show. But sometimes that is not to be... like I got a week handover whilst we had a charter on board - the theatre was not used for a single show that week; it was used for corporate presentations. Sound - not a huge issue if you know the systems - as LX, it was a huge issue as the Cruise Director had a whole light show for every show that he had made up - completely undocumented and he was a complete diva about it and absolutely cracked the sh!ts when I got it wrong on the first show (despite having never seen it before).

 

SD7 would be Oasis class - it was D1's or D5's on the freedom class IIRC. Vision class was analogue - Crest IIRC and _some_ of the voyager class had the euphonics IIRC.

 

The onboard produced shows on RCCL were all heavily automated. The older ships were all ShowMan from Richmond Sound Design run by LX. Newer ships (Liberty of the Seas and beyond) were all Meyer CueStation with Wildtracks; Oasis and beyond used Medialon in the aquatheatre.

 

As ImagineerTom said, you are not just confined to the one venue. If I was theatre tech, I also made sure I learnt the ice shows and the parade setups. Then there was the R&M. If you end up on a ship with other technicians who cannot do R&M, then one person ends up doing the majority of it.

 

My favorite R&M task used to be repairing the on table jukebox controls in Johnny Rockets restaurant. They were basically a mini jukebox that took quarters which triggered a media player adding songs to a queue list. The thing was almost completely mechanical - built just like they were made in the 50s. You had to press the page then song number, one after the other. When the mech got blocked (usually because people tried to push both the page number and the song number at the same time) the entire station was then out of order - it meant spending an hour or so repairing the boxes at about 9pm at night whilst they were starting to close down the restaurant. We usually got free onion rings and chips and a drink whilst the head sound tech and I sat in a booth pulling these gorgeous pieces of machinery apart listening to our own playlist of some great music.

[sameness]

On average I got a week... Ideally you should expect to have a run of every production show. But sometimes that is not to be... like I got a week handover whilst we had a charter on board - the theatre was not used for a single show that week; it was used for corporate presentations. Sound - not a huge issue if you know the systems - as LX, it was a huge issue as the Cruise Director had a whole light show for every show that he had made up - completely undocumented and he was a complete diva about it and absolutely cracked the sh!ts when I got it wrong on the first show (despite having never seen it before).

 

My favorite R&M task used to be repairing the on table jukebox controls in Johnny Rockets restaurant. They were basically a mini jukebox that took quarters which triggered a media player adding songs to a queue list. The thing was almost completely mechanical - built just like they were made in the 50s. You had to press the page then song number, one after the other. When the mech got blocked (usually because people tried to push both the page number and the song number at the same time) the entire station was then out of order - it meant spending an hour or so repairing the boxes at about 9pm at night whilst they were starting to close down the restaurant. We usually got free onion rings and chips and a drink whilst the head sound tech and I sat in a booth pulling these gorgeous pieces of machinery apart listening to our own playlist of some great music.

 

 

Sounds exactly like my introduction to Royal... wasnt a CD with the initials JB was it?

 

Agree with the Jukebox fixing...the trick was to avoid getting zapped!

[mac.calder]

It may have been... His picture in my mind merely has W@nker Cruise Director written on it.