gapiro

We're doing the northern europe cruise end of month/start of next month, If still looking then, it stops twice in germany so may be able to post from Germany?

My experience is that it really depends on the teenager. A friend of mine had her teenage daughter last time and she loved it, but she's also an arts student who loves dance and music, and spending time with her family, so was on the dancefloor everynight with her family and random people and just having a whale of a time. A teenager who is more sport orientated or thrill orientated might have a different experience.

It locks when you walk away...

Yeah I think the cost of doing an app like this is going to be way underestimated. You’re talking at least into a ten million mark for simple stuff. To connect it into the cruise card system and such is going to be huge amounts of work add in that if you’re doing this for on board reasons you need servers locally on the ship caching data.

Yeah it varies line to line but typically it’s general ‘need a body’ things like boarding , life jacket demonstrations , tours etc. on some lines they have to be on the fire crew rotas etc too. it also varies if you’re in the theatre band , or party band or (in the case of Cunard) the ballroom band. The theatre band on cunard is usually rehearsing in the day with the evenings guest if it’s a guest singer etc. or they work doing jazz in the lion instead. The guest artists usually have a passenger cabin or individual crew cabins.

I say that. I just dug out the last agency who contacted me about a cruise contract - The details were below Caribbean Cruise P&O Arvia Showband 27/10-31/03 (possible to split contract if starting on 27/10) £476 weekly, self employed no deductions or tax of over 4 months at sea. so salary, assuming no tax, works out at the equivalent of a taxed salary of around 28k. Given the level of ability required, it’s still rather low for a full time professional job.

As someone who is a professional musician, Cunard, and carnival in general, are VERY BEHIND with their demands on musicians. All cruise lines are struggling to recruit musicians and in some ways that’s come as a good thing - some of the US based lines now offer musicians contracts with no additional duties and access to guest facilities, and with individual rooms. Carnival don’t offer those things. Meanwhile UK cruise muso contracts are offering around the equivalent of a 25k ish salary which also hasn’t changed in probably a decade. That combined with being away from everyone you love for 6 months at a time means you’re basically looking at very young (graduates) or retirees. Most musicians in that respect would rather earn more money doing a day job and then work as a musician on land. The result is that a lot of the ensembles are struggling - our last cruise the jazz band ensemble had members of the show orchestra covering it daily for example.

Much to the anger of my wife , energy drinks aren’t in the classic package. Even though it says for drinks up to $12 (says 10 online but onboard they say 12)

Last week most soft drinks were $6 and were cans of coke sprite or fanta. Non alcoholic cocktails same price. Coffees too the only free drinks were what you could get from the buffet vending machines.

Just got off silhouette an hour ago… Our first trip on a celebrity ship. Having done virgin and Cunard before the MDR DINNER was ok. not amazing not terrible bit like standard pub grub. The flank steak , was lovely, OH had a steak dianne another night and it was massively over cooked (well sone when asked for rare) but edible. it would probably be passable for a week cruise but any longer you’d get very bored of the options. We tried speciality dining one night and that was good but comparable in quality to Cunard MDR. The wait staff were lovely but spread thin. HOWEVER I would strongly recommend not bothering with MDR for breakfast (90m to get the same food you get in two mins from the buffet) or lunch (just slow)

Just got off silhouette (currently on the trip home) can confirm this.