life of an elf?

Dec 22, 2013: embark day of the Christmas cruise
The first ¾ of today was absolute insanity it seems. If I had known that they were THAT busy doing other things to think about organizing anything Christmas, I definitely would have volunteered to help organize it all because it was just a big confusing mess. Ethan, Christine and I were in the office with Amanda at 8am to fill up balloons and tie strings on them to put them all up in the check-in area and around the gangway. That part was kind of fun other than the fact that I was tired and hungry; we had a forest of balloons throughout the office. Once we got a good number, we tied them up in groups of three or four. Christine and Ethan went to take those and start decorating while Amanda and I finished the rest. They came back not long after and said that security wouldn’t let them off at the guest gangway, so they figured they’d wait on us and take them all out the crew gangway together. While we were doing more balloons, one of the new Club HAL guys came on, so Christine had to leave to get him settled and show him around. She came back just as we were leaving with all the balloons. We made it to the crew gangway and they were all confused about what we were doing, but they let us off. All but Christine because the other three new Club HAL people just arrived and had to be shown around as well. So, we get outside, and stand there for a few minutes, completely at a loss of where to go. We ask the HRM who’s there checking in the new crew, but she’s too busy to help, and then we ask the port security, who just suggest going around the building. So, we wander around the outside of the building for a while, carrying a ton of balloons blowing around in the wind, until we find the doors the passengers use to get to the check-in area. We finally get to where we’re supposed to be, and the hotel director is there, freaking out because no one can find us; as it turns out, we DID have permission to go through the guest gangway no matter what security said. He gives us a bit of direction about where to put the balloons, then leaves us to work. It was a bit complicated because before tying balloons onto the desks and the “waiting maze,” we had to first untangle the big bunches of balloons because the wind was not kind to the strings while we were outside.

It took close to an hour and a half to do that, basically just making it up as we went. Then, we got to go back in for an “on location” team meeting with someone from corporate, then we met up with the new Club HAL members. Kristin (who was here this summer for a few weeks) and I had to grab costumes and dress up as elves to wander around the check-in area to talk to guests as they waited. However, again, problems with security. Kristin just got on board so she didn’t have a crew ID for them to scan to allow her off the ship, so we stayed right inside the ship on the gangway greeting people. Bit boring really, no one gave us specific directions of what we were supposed to do. At lunchtime, we took turns running up to Club HAL and having Christine get us some lunch so we wouldn’t have to walk around the Lido as elves.

When I finished and got back down to the gangway to send Kristin up, Megan stopped me and ended up recruiting me to come pose with guests for pictures. They already had one of the band leaders as Santa on one side, so I took over being the “mascot” for the other side of the photography station, and occasionally switched back and forth, a lot of the families with kids wanted both Emma the Elf and Santa in their picture. I like to think I helped them a lot, a few people at first didn’t want a photo, but they ended up stopping for a photo with me! It was quite fun, at non-busy times we’d all just talk or take fun group photos to pass the time. Much more entertaining than standing inside the gangway where I felt in the way of everyone. Maybe they’ll ask me to help with gangway on some other port days?

Anyway, finally the flow of oncoming people stopped, and we went 10 minutes without seeing anyone. That’s when we decided to close down. I joined Kristin on the ship for another 10 minutes before we determined it was slow enough for us to leave. Finally, my first break of the day… at 3:30 after starting at 8. I had about an hour before the entertainment department meeting, so I went to the Bow to call Mom and Dad while I had a chance! The meeting was like our normal meeting, just telling us to keep up with what we’re doing, but even better because the VP is on board this cruise (with his kid, so maybe for the first time ever part of the entertainment meeting actually was somewhat relevant to us!). I met the new guys and we all went our separate ways for the next 45 minutes until dinner.

The night went by pretty quickly. We attended the Tree Lighting Ceremony at 7, and so didn’t open Club HAL until 8. Though, for the half hour after the ceremony before we opened, Christine and I worked on getting together the registration forms and going over the manifest for each age group. We opened at 8. Phil and Andy, two of the new guys (they’re really new actually, one has done a 3 week contract, the other hasn’t done any) are on tweens with me, though we have divided up the ages for this cruise since there are so many. They’re both on 8-10yr olds, while I’m on 11/12yr olds; most of our activities are together though, so I’m training them somewhat while working with my own group. We gave the kids about 45 minutes of free time before giving out snack, which took a long time because they weren’t quite sure how to handle it at first. Finally we got through snack though, and we worked together as a tweens group to come up with a Contract of Fun before splitting off into our two groups for get-to-know-you games. Two of my group of tweens actually were in my group last year for New Years, so I knew them already which was cool, my first repeat kids!! They remembered me first actually and were really excited to be back with me :) Yay! So, the boys led their group in “Two Truths and a Lie” on one side of the room, while my 8 older tweens gathered on bean bags on the other side of the room and played the toilet paper game (ripping off at least 3 squares, then once the roll has gone around, I tell them they have to state as many facts about themselves as squares they have, it’s entertaining and they usually give pretty good facts). That surprisingly lasted until their parents came. I stayed late to help Christine number and chronologically order programs since there are so many. It takes a lot less time with two of us than it would her doing it herself. After that, I met Andy, Phil, Kristin, and Alex at the OB where we hung out and talked until we all realized it was hour forward and should get to bed