The Life of an "Aqua Captain"

As cruise lines evolve and offer new features, new positions, never imagined a decade or two again, are created. I remember a few years back interviewing the gardener on the first ship to introduce live shrubbery and plants. Just a few years, I talked with professional ice skaters who told me when they were doing competitive skating, and they considered where their careers could take them, they never imagined they would be skating in an ice show on a cruise ship.

Just thee or four years ago, the position of "aqua captain" didn't even exist. Dance captains had been around for years, but there was no need for anyone to be in charge of the divers and swimmers until Oasis of the Seas came along.
Now Royal Caribbean has two of them, and this week, one of them was a guest blogger for Royal Caribbean.

Nicholas James Thomas McMahon is the Aqua Captain of the Aqua cast aboard Allure of the Seas, and his blog takes readers behind the scenes at the Aqua shows on the giant ships:

The three levels we have in our aqua shows, “Ocean Aria” and “Let You Entertain Me”, are a 3 meter springboard, and a 10 and 17 meter platform. All of the divers in our cast dive from the 3m springboard, and the 10m platform. However, only our two featured high divers can dive from the 17m high dive.

Before each Ocean Aria performance, we have a half hour warm up period where the lifts and boards are down so we can do a few dives. At 8 o’clock the stage staff presets the props underwater, so we have to get out of the pool. After this we have an hour to stretch and warm up until the show starts at 9:00 PM. In between shows we usually grab a bite to eat, and if necessary, fix any problems that occurred in the first show. During the course of a regular week, we have two “Ocean Aria” performances on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and two “Let You Entertain Me” shows on Saturday.
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"It is possible to never forget as life goes on"

Ten years ago today, I was watching Good Morning America, from my home at the time in the Midwest, thinking about getting ready to go to my office when Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson began reporting on the events which were beginning to unfold in New York. As more and more became known, and then other tragic events occurred, I was glued to the TV. There was no point in trying to be on time going into my office. I doubted anyone in America was in theirs to be calling me.

As time passed that morning, I began to think about what I should do. Was there really any point in publishing Cruise News Daily that day? Who in their right mind was going to be interested in reading about a cruise line's new itinerary or some other now-insignificant event in the cruise industry? I finally decided that it was my job to go to the office sometime that day and put out an issue. I concluded the right thing for me to do - for everyone to do - was try to make life again as normal as possible.

I still subscribe to that theory, and each time I talk about it, I'm still a little unsettled. By making things "normal" I don't want anyone to think I'm saying we should try to forget what happened on that day, but neither do I want to dwell on it. Life and the world moves on, but we shouldn't forget the past either. It's a delicate balance.

This week, in a report for ABC News about a 9-year-old boy - who wasn't even born yet on 9-11 but is one of the people most touched by the violence - Bill Weir got it exactly right, when he said, "It is possible to never forget as life goes on." And this almost-10-year-old shows us how.



(Please excuse the ad which plays prior to the piece. Even on 9-11 ABC has to pay the bills. The story itself is worth the wait of a few seconds. If you'd like to see it without the ad, it is available on YouTube, but embedding was disabled.)

Other Things You'll Want to Know

CND subscribers also read about some consumers who weren't too smart before they paid for their cruises.

Details appeared in the September 28, 2010 edition of Cruise News Daily.

The MSC / Costa Rivalry

Both MSC Cruises and Costa Cruises claim to be Italian - each claiming to be more Italian than the other.

There's an interesting article this week in Lloyd's List about the rivalry and worth reading.

Gulfport Mounts Campaign for Cruise Ship

After seeing the money rolling into nearby New Orleans and Mobile from the cruise industry, Gulfport has decided they want a cruise ship homeported at Gulfport.

An article in the Gulfport Sun Hearld talks about the advantages and what the city is starting to do to position itself correctly. The city isn't without any experience because occasionally, ships have used the port when their regular homeport wasn't available. They have done the studies (some of which seem a little dated in their findings), and they understand what's going to make them more attractive to the cruise industry.

The one thing they don't seem to understand, however, is the tremendous competition for ships worldwide. Since the euro began to strengthen a few years ago, and cruise ships became more expensive to build, there has been a big slowdown in building and expansion of the fleets for American brands. Not only that, but at the same time, other lucrative source markets have begun to emerge around the world, so the folks in Gulfport aren't just competing just with Mobile or Charleston for a ship, but also Santos, Singapore and Perth.

If the Sun Herald article is correctly capturing the mindset of the city, unfortunately, they seem to believe that if they invest the money and do what their studies show, they will be successful and cruise lines will be anxious to homeport a ship there. Unfortunately, they can talk to a lot of ports around the country that can tell them that just isn't so. Ironically, the two nearby ports, New Orleans and Mobile, which are used in the article to demonstrate how good the cruise industry can be for a city, are also good examples of how their hopes can be frustrated too. Both cities have been pursuing the cruise lines for additional ships for a few years now without success.

Someone may be looking for YOU

Cruise bulletin boards often have postings from people who have lost a camera while on a cruise. Usually the person has called the cruise line and filed a report, and they are just sure someone stole it and cannot believe they someone would take something especially since it had all their vacation memories on it.

Many of these cameras probably weren't stolen, but rather lost somewhere different that the person remembers it being the last place they had it. The number of unclaimed cameras in cruise lines' lost and found departments attest to that. (If those people realized they had lost them on the ship, they would have contacted the cruise line.)

There is an interesting article on KOMO news. A woman lost a camera in Seattle while on a cruise, but it's really more about the camera being found. But the story is much more interesting than just that; it's about the finder's search for the owner. It's not really about cruising, but it's worth reading.

Norwegian Sun's Cancellation Hurting Vancouver

As we noted in an earlier item, Norwegian Sun moving to Europe in 2010 is costing Alaska money, but the Port of Vancouver will also suffer.

In an article published today, the Vancouver Sun notes that loss of the ship will have an impact of about $38 million on the Vancouver area, and saying port officials are calling the cancellation "a surprise."

Babados' Cruise Growth Inhibited by Lack of Air Lift

Most Americans don't realize how Barbados has become a real powerhouse as a port of embarkation in the Caribbean. It's at the eastern end of the Caribbean (1600 miles from Miami), so Americans aren't likely to fly there to board a cruise. But that also means it's closer to Europe, so it's only logical Europeans will gravitate toward it. (It also eliminates the hassle of entrance into the US, if the ship's itinerary avoids US ports, which many of them now do for that very reason.)

An article in today's issue of Barbados' The Nation quoted Michael Ronan, the chairman of the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA) and also and executive at Royal Caribbean, saying that Barbados' growth will be inhibited by its lack of airlift. As a result according to Ronan, the largest ships won't be homeporting there, and the island won't be seeing them until they include it seasonally as a port of call on their winter itineraries.


View Barbados in a larger map

Cruise Ships Lining Up for Victoria Shipyards

Victoria's Times Colonist has an eye-opening article today about the bustling cruise ship repair business at Victoria Shipyards and the huge economic benefits it has on the area in British Columbia. According to the article Golden Princess arrived on Saturday, Holland America's Amsterdam replaces it in the drydock as soon as Golden leaves, and after that, it's Celebrity Millennium's turn.

Galveston Recovery

Hurricane Ike came ashore at Galveston seven months ago closing the port only for a matter of days, but it took several weeks for cruise ships to return. The primary reason was because so much of the tourist infrastructure had been severely damaged.

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article today reporting on the area's recovery.

More Trouble for Alaska

Cruise lines recently announced cuts that would bring about 100,000 fewer passengers to Alaska in 2010. Part of the reason is that demand for Alaska is down, so rather than discount to fill the ships, they are reducing the supply of berths to more closely match demand and therefore increase pricing. Carnival Corp has already said that if the 2010 cuts aren't enough to move pricing as much as they need, there will be more reductions in capacity in 2011 for their brands (Carnival, Holland America and Princess).

Now the Fairbanks News Miner reports that interest in travel to Alaska is apparently waning because an annual blitz of television shows which spotlight Alaska and normally generates a surge of bookings has failed to produce that flurry of bookings this year.

Meanwhile the state's citizens continue to push for measures to increase the costs for cruise lines operating in Alaska (see our earlier CND article), making it more profitable for cruise lines to deploy their ships elsewhere.

Vancouver Gets the Fallout from the Alaskan Reduction

As we pointed out in a recent article in Cruise News Daily, Vancouver is the innocent victim in the cruise lines' reduction of cruises to Alaska in 2010 and beyond. An article in today's Globe & Mail details how the effects are reaching much farther in western Canada than just just the loss of the cruise ships. Unfortunately the reality of the economic impact has yet to actually be understood by most Alaskans who will be hit harder and are responsible for the cruise lines' decision - and who are not acting to stop further losses in 2011 and beyond.

What's It Like Working in the Gift Shop?

There's a first-person account of working in gift shop aboard a cruise ship on the IOJobs website. The female writer says she works aboard Celebrity Solstice and loves it. The article is worth looking at, but the writer loses a bit of credibility when she says that Celebrity Solstice is the largest ship in the world. (Celebrity Solstice is 122,000 grt, while Royal Caribbean Freedom-class ships are 154,407 grt.) That's also kind of in line with what she says about the job being rather easy and not taking much brainpower.

From the different perspectives department:

Last week, Carnival Ecstasy left Galveston as Hurricane Ike was headed toward the port. The storm caused both a change of itinerary, to stay away from it, and delayed the return, first while the storm passed and then because the port was closed due to damage. While Carnival worked to find an alternate port for the ship, it went to New Orleans and disembarked passengers who wanted to fly home, and others stayed aboard the ship and ended the odyssey yesterday when the ship arrived in Houston.

Aboard the cruise was a group of 30 from the Wichita Falls Board of Commerce and Industry. (The group does different outings and is called "Just for Fun.") With the hurricane coming only four decided to cancel.

The group has now all returned home, and Tuesday the local news media began carrying the first interviews. It's interesting how they have entirely divergent perspectives. Two articles interview different people from the group, but they have entirely different outlooks. The first was in the local newspaper, the Times Record News. The person interviewed for that one seems to have a very balanced view that understands the situation and is accepting it in a very matter-of-fact manner. The second story is from the Texomas website (an outlet from a combination of three Wichita Falls TV stations) and quotes a gentleman, part of the same group, who enjoyed the company, but isn't at all happy with the way things were handled by Carnival.

These demonstrate why you shouldn't just accept one posting on a bulletin board or one article you read as speaking for the group. (How often have you seen someone say, "Everyone was complaining about it.")

For the record, contrary to what the second article says, it is safer to take the ship out when a hurricane is approaching since it doesn't sail through the hurricane, but rather stays far away from the strongest winds. Carnival was offering full refunds to passengers who asked for them, on the day of sailing, once the storm's path toward Galveston became clear.