Goodison78

Hi Everyone,

I'm a former princess cruises employee who has been writing some blogs on my 7 years at sea during lockdown and was wondering if anyone on the forum could help with the following

Is there a website / list of Princesses old itineraries by ship from 2007 - 2014 as my memory needs some jogging on where and when we were sometimes!

Thanks

Exvideog78

Now the show is finished I can say its much better than the one they produced on the Royal. I was working on the Royal at the time of the shooting and to say some of the 'documentary' crew were inexperienced would be an understatement. Lets just say they must have spent 5 weeks enjoying their cruise and about one week filming from what we saw.

I'm sure Princess head office listened to some of the criticism as finally in the Regal show we had more input from the captain and I noticed many more scenic shots of the ship showing how good it looks.

Working in production myself I would have loved the show to just follow around one person per episode (an hour long) but over the course of the 6 -9 contract, that would really show you the life of a crew member and show you it can be a completely different experience depending on what your job and rank is onboard.

A senior officers 3-4 month contract with their own cabin, cabin steward and full deck privileges is going to be different to say a photographers 6 month contract, who has to share 2 to a cabin and has some deck privileges compared to a galley cleaner who is probably doing a 9/10 month contract and has to get permission to get deck privileges.

I definitely think filming over a longer time period would help give a better insight into the running of the ship and crew involved.

I was working on the Ocean a few years ago and the two days coming into Cape Town were some of the roughest weather I'd experienced in 7 years at sea. I'm remember just trying to stand upright down in the photo lab on deck 2 forward while you could see and feel every wave hit us.

I loved the Ocean to work on, I had just come from the inaugural season on the Royal with a team of almost twenty to four of us on the Ocean and the pace of everything was so much slower than the Royal.

With a crew of only around 370 everyone gets to know each other pretty well amongst the crew. Almost every ship has seperate crew,staff and officers mess rooms except the Ocean & Pacific which has no staff mess - the bonus is if you are staff on those ships you get to eat the same food as the passengers in the officers mess.

It was so relaxed on board and even though many crew didn't make as much money as on the bigger trips the itineraries are fantastic on the smaller ships which are usually markedly different from the larger ship and most of us felt like we were on vacation. Less passengers meant less time to do the work in some cases, meaning more time off to explore those fantastic ports.

I was flown out to Papeete to join the ship, where we did 3 months of Tahitian & French Polynesia cruising, before going over to Australia, a quick jaunt down to Hawaii before heading back to Oz and doing a 3 month trip from Sydney back to England.

It was even part of my decision to call it a day at sea because it was such a good well run relaxing ship that I don't think I could face the over complications of the big ships again

I used to work for Princess and without a doubt the worst cruise I've ever seen for sickness would be the Bejing to Bangkok cruise. Part of it is down to the extreme change in temperatures, you begin in Bejing with snow and freezing temperatures before ending up with steaming heat in Vietnam & Thailand.

I'd never been on so many tour buses with people coughing and sneezing all the time, thank god for the Ipod!!!

Usually if someone has Noro virus they are quarantined for 3 days and if they had another incident of vomiting or diarrhoea another day will be added until they've been clear for 3 days. One of my colleagues who was brand new to ships joined in Thailand and I'm guessing the local food and temperature changes, coupled with jet lag hit her pretty hard. Unfortunately it got worse as we were starting a repo cruise and had some rough weather so add in the fact that you've never been at sea before, you have norovirus, the poor girl then had to deal with sea sickness on top of that. In total I think she spent a week in insolation.

I used to be a video guy for Princess over 7 years and so it was my job to go ashore and film the excursions whenever we were in port! One of the best (but also tiring!!!) jobs onboard.

I did so many excursions that it got to the point where I got to the tour description of a place I'd never been before and I could tell if the tour was going to be good or not.

The highlight of the 7 years was getting to go on the Overland tour to Angor Wat in Cambodia, we had a small group of 9 and we got off the ship in Singapore to fly to Siem Reap where we stayed at a fantastic hotel called the Sokhra. As we had a small group we all decided to get up as early as possible for breakfast and started our tour 2 hours early, our tour guide was fantastic in that he took us around the site in a way that avoided the large crowds.

After a full day straight to the airport to fly onto Vietnam and another fantastic hotel overlooking the river Saigon. A full day tour of Vietnam followed again before we were taken back to the ship that night.

On my 1st contract I got to do a helicopter shoot of the Panama Canal, looking back there's no way I'd ever get in that helicopter again. It was absolutely tiny, had no doors and one tiny belt across my waist and of course the pilot spoke only Spanish so trying to communicate was an issue.

I forgot the name of the port but the Helicopter tour of Hawaii where they filmed Jurassic Park is amazing, this wasn't offered through the ship and was something we organised i

The one major tour I turned down doing was an overland trip to the Taj Mahal, looking at itinerary it seemed you'd spend most of the 3 days travelling and have very little time to see the Taj Mahal, also I'd checked and your not allowed to film the Taj professionally or use a tripod. Also we were docking in Oman and another port I forgot during those 3 days and I was the only video guy on the ship meaning no footage from those two ports if I went to the Taj.

Other good tours

White Pass Railway - Skagway, Alasks

Whale Watching - Juneau, Alaska

Jumping Crcodiles - Darwin

Kroschell Wildlife Park - Haines, Alaska

Hobbiton - New Zealand

Inkwenkawenzi Wildlife Safari - South Africa

And there are countless others.

I always preferred walking tours as you would usually get great info from the tour guide and I'd always hang back to keep an eye on the slowest person on the group 1( to make sure they were still with us 2) So I could get shots without lots of people in them.

So good tip whenever your on a Princess ship at least speak to the video guys about the tours as well, as they've probably done all of them at some point.

As one of the previous posters said the ship is split into 3 ranks, Officers, Staff & Crew - Officers can more or less do what they like, Staff are allowed to use most of ships facilities as long as its not interfering with passengers use and Crew can sometimes but have to get supervisors permissons to go to the Crown Grill for example.

I worked for Princess for 7 years and when I was on the Emerald doing the 12 day Batlic run, it became a regular thing for most of the photo team who were off on the first night to go to the Crown Grill or Sabatini's as usually they are fairly quiet on the first of a cruise and we still pay the $25 cover charge and tip generously as well! So Princess would still make money off the crew!

There would be subtle changes between ships in regards to the rules, some ships we would have to wear formal uniform, one ship we had to wear casual uniform but most would let you wear you own clothes (and name badge of course).

It was great to throw on a smart suit for a night out when you live in a polo shirt most of the time, and the girls used to love any excuse to get dressed up, it was almost like being a passenger sometimes. You'd go to whatever backdrop the rest of the team had set up that night and mess around get your picture taken then you'd meet in one of the bars for a few drinks before dinner and depending on how much food you ate, we'd all venture up to the usually empty nightclub for a few cocktails before heading down to the crew bar.

Then sleep well and not have to eat the next day! since I started working on land Crown Grill is one of the biggest things I miss from ships, the food and service was almost always excellent and being English paying $25 is nothing for a fantastic meal like you'd get onboard. You'd pay close to £25 just for the steak on in the UK.

Hi,

I'm a former video guy for Princess and did this tour a few years back however as crew I'm not 100% what the rules were for going ashore independently for guests. We had a fairly large group that did a 3-4 hour walkaround in a big figure of 8 and saw only two dragons, admittedly you can't guarantee wildlife to co-operate and it was very hard to shoot with so many people. On my way back the guide asked me how it went and I said I could have done with a lot more footage and he told me I should have done a private tour, which was something that wasn't offered onboard.

I asked him how much and for how long and I could see the guy making up the price in his head!! but he quoted me $40 for as long as I needed. It seemed a fair deal and it was just me and him, we walked about half a mile to the left of where we got off the tenders and there was loads Dragons near by. Probably spent about 2 hours getting some great shots and the best being a 2 year old Komodo dragon climbing down from a tree stopping infront of us then climbing up another tree.

Like I said I think you have to book a tour just to get off as you cannot wnader around by yourself on the island and bar the tour there are a few small stalls as you get off the ship and thats it. But do ask the locals about a private tour if you get a chance, of course I might have just been lucky as they knew I worked for Princess and it would be good promotion for them.

Hi,

First time poster and ex-princess employee here and after 7 years with them I definitely have some stories relevant for this thread.

First off on the issue of entitled Elite guests my last contract was on the Ocean, doing the Tahiti run before we did the Sydney to Dover cruise which was almost 3 months long. Pretty much the whole ship was Elite or Platinum at this point, by large it was a great group of guests who many of us got to know each other on a first name basis.

However like previous posters have mentioned there were always a few people who thought this entitled them to more than it did. I remember one of our biggest issues was during tour dispatch in the morning as the cruise went on many people wanted to get 'the best' seat on the buses so they'd come to lounge collect their tour/bus stickers and then just leave the lounge and go queue up at the gangway rather than waiting for the whole group to leave at once.

So you can imagine the issues this caused! by the time I would lead the guest to the buses and get on the bus they would be half full. This again caused problems because people would lost or get in the wrong queue when they didn't leave in the complete group meaning we lost time from the tour or left without them.

I lost track the amount of times I had to explain to people to 'please wait because other tours were leaving first' and that all the dispatches were timed as well as they could be so that we could bypass the queues.

Again this caused problems for our genuine disabled guests as they would register with the front desk so that we would know to get them down to the buses early and when we get to buses they'd have to sit from the midway point of the bus onwards because ignorant people wouldn't move.

I'd eventually got to the stage where I stood and blocked the way to the gangway and would turn people back if they were trying to sneak down early to a torrent of abuse. Nothing like someone yelling and swearing at you at 7am in the morning! :) I had someone push past me once and say I'm going to the bus when we hadn't even docked yet!

With the amount of people and the average age on some cruises it is very hard to decide who has a genuine issue and who is just trying it on, especially when it comes to priority for tour dispatch.

I know on more than one occasion when helping the disabled guests to the buses via the lifts I'd have to throw able bodied guests out of the lift by politely asking them had they registered as a slow walker at the front desk and when they said no I'd politely ask them to get out of the left and rejoin the queue.

And one funny story to finish, me and a friend were in the photo gallery on a quiet day when a couple walked through obviously a bit worse for the wear, at one point the lady managed to trip over her own foot and went sprawling onto the carpet initially more concerned about dropping her bottle of wine than any potential injury, until her husband started telling at us 'theres a divit which made my wife trip' I ventured over to help the lady up which she refused so I asked did they want medical called? The lady got up pretty quickly then but I then had both of them yelling at me about this 'divit'...A young guy in his twenties walks past and apologises to us and says 'mum get up of the floor your making an embarrassment of yourself again' Unfortunately my colleague burst out laughing at this point and then had a complaint put in that she had laughed at this lady falling over! :)