What happens to crew when ship's in drydock?

[macmax]

With Summit in drydock this week, I was wondering what happens with the crew and cruise staff. Is there a crew change scheduled? Are most given shore leave?

 

I think it would be weird living on a ship that wasn't floating.

[rjg41]

With the exception of the officers and some of the operational and maintenance people, the ships' crews are term contract employees. This is true with all cruise lines. They serve typically for 6 months on their contract and then generally go home or on vacation for a few weeks and then move to another ship of the same cruise line. Generally they will have signed up for the next contract well before they finish the one they are on. In the case of Summit or any ship in dry dock, the crew will have finished there contract and move on and no crew is scheduled back on until the ship is due out of dry dock. The officers and operational people generally remain with the ship during dry dock to supervise and monitor the work. The ship's maintenance crew is there to do some of the work while contractors due the rest.

[Bingo]

We just got back from the Summit's Jan. 16th cruise because of major snow in the north east. It was terrible as we were stuck in Florida and had to go to Key West to wait for flights to start again (heeheehee), it was terrible. We were schedualed to fly Saturday and the flights were cancled, Had to drive to Tampa on Tuesday to get back to Boston.

 

We spoke to many crew members and were told that about 60% were leaving and the rest were going to stay on the ship while in dry dock in Freeport. They actually said that going to the beach gets boring and they would prefer to be in a bigger city like Los Angeles or San Fran so they could explore.

 

I will report on the trip later this week as I am just getting back to work. This was the best Celebrity cruise to date!

 

Dan

[hajekfam]

With the exception of the officers and some of the operational and maintenance people, the ships' crews are term contract employees. This is true with all cruise lines. They serve typically for 6 months on their contract and then generally go home or on vacation for a few weeks and then move to another ship of the same cruise line. Generally they will have signed up for the next contract well before they finish the one they are on. In the case of Summit or any ship in dry dock, the crew will have finished there contract and move on and no crew is scheduled back on until the ship is due out of dry dock. The officers and operational people generally remain with the ship during dry dock to supervise and monitor the work. The ship's maintenance crew is there to do some of the work while contractors due the rest.

The entire crew will not have finished their contract. The employees starting date for contracts are staggered so you do not have an entire new crew each 6 months. When we spoke with a couple of the crew members, they told us that after vacation, they are assigned to whichever ship has an opening.

[debjac]

we will be boarding the Infinity immediately after dry dock. According to this thread and the possibility of a large number of new crew members does this affect the service you receive? If your waiter has to "break in" a new assistant things do not run as smoothly as a team that's been together for a few months?

Those of you who have sailed right after dry dock have any thoughts?

[cruisenfever]

We sailed on Summit back in September. A 14 day repositioning cruise that sailed out of Vancouver, up into Alaska and then down the West Coast. Our cruise was delayed by three days due to propulsion problems and the ship was in dry dock for eight days for repair and maintenance. Now you are telling me the ship is in dry dock again. What's happening to Celebrity ships? I have to admit, that aftering comparing Celebrity to other cruises we have been on, we aren't planning another cruise on Celebrity and will probably never go on Celebrity again. We were very disappointed in Customer Relations and in Celebrity personnel, in general.

 

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[rjack22]

cruisenfever,

 

Don't worry. This dry dock is a scheduled one. Not an emergency repair dry dock like there was just before your cruise. Every ship in every line has scheduled dry docks every so often. This is normal.

 

This time one of the things they are doing to the Summit is painting her hull the same colors to match the rest of the fleet. Another thing is to remodel Reflections for the Cirque du Soleil. Then hopefully they will be *sprucing* up things like carpeting, bedding, etc that are worn.

 

To the best of my knowledge nothing major is broke.

[LSilver]

debjac:

 

The waiters, ass't-waiters, and maitre-d's rotate after each cruise. It's rare for a waiter to have the same ass't waiter on 2 successive cruises; so there's no real breaking-in per-se.

[mari10]

Debjac,

 

We sailed on the Infinity last year right after dry dock, and the ship and crew were perfect. I don't know how many were new to the ship, but it seemed like a lot of the crew were back from vacation. They didn't miss a beat, the cruise was one of the best that I've been on.

 

Mari

[macmax]

debjac:

 

The waiters, ass't-waiters, and maitre-d's rotate after each cruise. It's rare for a waiter to have the same ass't waiter on 2 successive cruises; so there's no real breaking-in per-se.

After each cruise????

[LSilver]

macmax (Al&Gail):

 

Yes, after each cruise the dining-room staff rotate to a different part of the dining room -- apparently based in good part on the ratings they get from the pax.

 

I've been explicitly told about the rotation by some of the d-r staff. In addition to that, you'll note from my sig above that I've been on 4 b2b's. On 3 of those we really loved our waiter/ass't on the first leg and requested having them for the second also. In all 3 cases we were only able to keep the waiter (and the table). When we dined the second week, the d-r staff at the neighboring tables was different than the first week.

 

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Lee