Nine Months

* January, 2018*

In relation to the rest of your life, 9 months doesn’t seem long but put yourself on a cruise ship, with a repetitive schedule, while working, eating, breathing and socializing with the same 20 people for 9 months and it will feel never-ending for you too. Don’t get me wrong, this line of work is amazing and I don’t regret taking this opportunity but when all is said and done this will definitely be the most exhausting 9 months of my life.

I am currently in the middle of month 7 of my contract which is why I am finally starting this blog of mine. I am well over the middle hump and in 9 short (or probably long) weeks I will be home! I feel like in the beginning of my contract I was too naive to even start writing about this experience yet, in the middle I was going through what seems to be the contagious “mid-contract blues” (which I will talk about in another post), but now I feel like I’ve been through it all and I actually made it over the hump! That being said, I have so many memories, topics, facts, opinions and feelings to share that I am sure I will still be writing once I am home/it will give me something productive to do when I’m bored and no longer working every hour of my life.

To start this off I figured I would give you a quick month to month breakdown of what my contract consists of. So as a performer working for DCL we start our contract rehearsing in Toronto, Canada for 2 months (July-August). We embarked the first week of September which was the start of all the Halloween enhancements. For us performers, Halloween season meant there was an extra show or 2, themed costumes, and events that took place each week (September-October). Directly after Halloween, was the beginning of Holiday enhancements! The holiday season was a lot crazier for us in terms of all the extra things added into our schedule. We had triple the amount of shows, costumes and events as we did during Halloween and it made our schedules chaos (November-December). Lastly, we have Star Wars which is where I am currently at in my contract. At the start of the new year, Star Wars Day at Sea began which takes place every Thursday for us. Although it’s really just one day a week, there is so much that goes into Star Wars including new shows, skills and roles to learn (January-March).

So now you can understand how I broke down my contract into 4 different phases: Toronto, Halloween, Holidays, and Star Wars. Having these 4 phases actually helped me a lot with getting through all these months because it broke up my work for me so I never got too bored with doing the same thing. Before I knew it, another phase was gone and we were starting the next one! It also helped me keep track of where exactly I was in the contract so I knew after Halloween we were almost at the halfway mark and now that Star Wars started I know that my next phase is home! I am also very grateful that I got the chance to participate in all 3 different types of enhancements and learn new shows and see the decorations around the ship change for each one. It was a lot of change, but good change, and trust me you need all the change you can get while living on a cruise ship for this long.

So here I am, 3/4 finished with this contract, very ready to share all the ups and downs of this rollercoaster ride I have been on. Stay posted as I have a lot to share including pictures, memories, fun facts and of course all the truths I have experienced while living aboard the Disney Fantasy!

Rachel xx