The Gig is (being) Up

The ship is the Regent Voyager a vessel designed to carry about 700 passengers. There are only about 440 aboard on this leg of the cruise – from Rio to Fort Lauderdale, it will be full – and with 442 members of the crew, it makes the service ratio almost one to one. The ship has 12 decks; most of the passenger spaces are topside, with the common areas near the bottom of the ship, where it’s more stable in rougher seas. There are plenty of places to eat: The Compass Rose (the main dining room), the Veranda (where most of the food is served buffet style; you get your plate and a waiter takes it to your table), two up-scale and smaller restaurants: Signatures and Prime 7, and a pool bar/dining service on the pool deck where you can get a hot dog or a hamburger. One can hardly go hungry. And if all are eating like me, avoid putting on pounds. My cabin (or suite, as the ship prefers it be called) is on deck 9 and is very spacious, with both a presumed bedroom and living space. The bathroom has both a shower and a tub and the sink area goes across the whole space, making it much more convenient than the smaller spaces of my experience. The only complaint I’ve heard among the guests (read passengers) is the 200% single supplement, which is steep indeed. Yet many guests pay that to be on the ship. The atmosphere is similar to a country club, where friends meet again and again as they accumulate nights that provide traveling privileges. I understand from the company that got me this gig that Regent is discontinuing the gentleman host program on June 1, 2010, except for their world cruises. So this may be my only time doing this.
The food is great, and there is plenty of it. In the dining room and special restaurants, the quality is gourmet. A guest has the option of an appetizer, soup, salad, pasta, sorbet, main course and desert. That’s a lot to eat. I usually have just one first course – a salad or soup – and the main course. And, of course, the desert course is hard for me to ignore or forego. I usually have a large breakfast, my favorite meal, consisting of fruit and eggs with the best turkey bacon ever, crisp and delicious. Even the steam table scrambled eggs, usually so leathery and hard on top, are soft and delectable. As on other cruise lines, one can eat wherever one wants – the specialty restaurants require a reservation – with anyone one wants to join, at any time, and in any amount. All food and booze is included in the price. And speaking of booze, I counted 280 cocktails on the lounge menu, including 19 champagnes, all the way from those included in the basic price to Cristal Rose at $735.00 a bottle.
The weather started out cloudy: no rain, but no sun either. The temperature, and the seas, have been mild. But during the last couple of days, the sun has been out and the weather is hot. We are, after all, in the tropics. With only the sea around us, it’s easy to forget that. I’ve put away my sweater, usually a part of my uniform, until we go back north.
The passengers are mostly American, many from Florida – even they refer to the state as “God’s Waiting Room” – some from the British Isles, some from South Africa, some from Canada, but a largely English-speaking group. About 60 of the passengers are going “all the way,” meaning they boarded the ship in Athens and are going through to Fort Lauderdale. 80% of the guests (read passengers) have traveled with Regent before, which is an obvious testament to the line’s approach to service. I’ve counted only one child, a young boy traveling with his fairly young parents, the daddy a body builder with the biggest arms I’ve ever seen. The crowd, although incredibly widely traveled, seems a little less sophisticated than on other cruises but that could be only that, by virtue of my responsibilities, I am usually with the same people, especially at dinner, which Heinz and I have every night with those Solos who have no other plans.
There is a lot of variety among the passengers. There’s the very short older lady (read 70), with bleached hair she favors in pigtails with colorful ribbons woven into them; the suave upright 50 with a boy’s haircut and almost always dressed in white with a turquoise sweater I would kill her for; the 94 year old mother with the studious son and his ballroom competition black wife who likes to put her hand out delicately on open breaks, with her fingers extended in a ballerina-like pose; the bodybuilder with the huge arms and tattoos, who reads all the time, even at meals and couldn’t stop to teach his young son how to cap strawberries; the complainer from Alberta, always leaning slightly forward as if girded for battle; and the lady with the hip replacement whom the airport control would call “a heavy.” There’s the lady with the Jean Harlow hair, bright red lipstick and sad eyes who says she’s gained 10 pounds since Athens as she sucks up another Manhattan at the bar and worries about her son, asking me where she went wrong; Henry, who’s been through the Panama Canal 15 times, wears lots of gold and many diamonds on his fingers, paid for, I presume, with income from his company that makes specialty hardware for hospitals (must be a profitable business), the tiny lady from Palm Beach who looks like an older (read much older) Barbara Stern, always on deck in white shorts, a white baseball cap pulled way down over her eyes (and remanufactured face), a colorful sweater thrown casually over her shoulders and wondering out loud why she’s here when she has so much more fun with her friends at home; the couple from Massachusetts, she with the pink tops and vague resemblance to Senator Mikulski, he with his Nikon D700, taking pictures of anything that moves, telling me he doesn’t want one of the two of them because it would make his wife mad to be seen with such a beautiful woman; and the captain, who comes into the Veranda for breakfast and hides in a remote corner (so he won’t have to be with any of these people?).
My life has moved into a kind of routine where I lead a schizophrenic existence as both a host and a guest, sometimes one and sometimes the other and even once in a while both. As a guest, I’m up at five or a little after (Heinz sleeps until 9), struggling in the dark to get dressed and find the things I laid out the night before and rushing up to deck 11 where I hope to capture the sunrise. Once recorded (if there is one), I then rush to the computer room where, as a guest, I try to bring my blog up to date and read my email (not easy) before breakfast at 7 or 7:30, depending on whether we’re in port or not. I compose on Word, save (if necessary, like now), then go on line (when I finally get there) where I copy and paste, then erase what I’ve written from the hard drive on my computer and empty the recycle bin (I wouldn’t want some of these comments to ruin my gig).
8:30, host: back to my cabin to dress for the day in my uniform: pressed Khakis, one of my many uniform-like black Polo shirts, my badge.
9:00, host: go to the coffee corner and mingle/smile, remember all the names.
10:00, guest: free time to do laundry.
10:45, host: dance class where I steer ladies (and myself) through whatever is being taught that day: salsa, samba, meringue, swing, slow waltz.
Noon, guest/host: lunch wherever, alone, or with guests.
1:45, host: back to dance class, to review what we learned in the morning and add to it (we usually don’t get that far).
2:45, guest: I’m free until cocktails. But remember to smile all the time and greet those I’ve met by using their names. Hide. Take a nap.
6:30, host: meet in the Solo corner in the lounge, dance with those Solos who want to do whatever the band is playing, remember all the names, try to think of some new subject for those with whom I’ve already spent a lot of time.
Dinner, host: ditto
After dinner: escape, if I can, to the show, only permitted if I’m squiring some lady from dinner.
After the show until midnight, host; the prime dance time in the lounge. Another performance. Smile!
On the way to bed, host: pick up the schedule from the office for the next day. Fall into bed.
And the next day is pretty much the same. I try to stay tuned.