Day 1: Arrival

Here's the post I should have made at the beginning of the blog: I may talk about more stuff from the first week, but it'll have to wait til later.

Day 1: We arrived at the ship on July 13th and after waiting for them to check our passports, we stood in another line on the dock underneath the passenger gangway (which is a skyway to Deck 5) to actually board the ship. There is heavy security on the ship to deter any sort of crime and/or terrorism, so all of our stuff went through metal detectors and scanners. British Airways had lost one of my bags flying to Barcelona, and in retrospect this made it much easier to carry everything to the ship. I over-packed, so picture me with a roller duffel, a cymbal bag, a small duffel, and a laptop backpack, plus a garment bag (the lost one). I don't see how I could have managed it with all that stuff, but it worked out OK in the end.

Once on the ship we were led to a small theater-ish space to take care of medical and contract paperwork. Several important people said things, none of which I can remember, but I think it was something like a “welcome to the ship” talk. We met our bandmaster, Jeff, and he took us on a tour of the more relevant areas of the ship and gave us all of the training session info, room keys, and our schedule for the night. The tour included Mingles (the non-smoking crew bar and hang) Connection (the internet spot) the crew mess, and culminated in finding my room.

I’m rooming with Tim, our bassist, and our room is pretty small. If it ever looks marginally clean, maybe I’ll take a picture, but I assure you, its tiny. After unpacking a bit, Tim and I went exploring the ship, resulting in the pictures that you see. We ran into Tom, a glassblower from the US, who we had met at the hotel before getting on the bus. He had lots of helpful info and we hung with him up for awhile up on the Lawn Club, next to the glassblowing studio.

We then went to the soundcheck/rehearsal for the “Welcome Aboard” show in the Solstice Theater. We met a bunch of people very quickly (the production cast, the specialty acts, the stage managers, the other musicians, etc.) and I still can’t remember a lot of their names. Small world though- Natasha, the dance captain, is originally from DC (and actually DC, not “near DC”) and we talked for a bit. Everybody was really nice, which was great as I was feeling fairly overwhelmed by the whole thing.

Our quartet has a bit in the show, doing “Slow Boat to China” at breakneck speeds. Amy and Stu rise out of a hydraulic lift (with the piano on it) at the front of the stage, and Tim and I are setup in the back with the Solstice orchestra. I’m behind plexi-glass shields with no monitor and Amy and Stu are at least 20 feet away, so this proves to be a challenge.

The Welcome Aboard show is pretty spectacular in general, with a couple of fly rigs that maneuver in the air around the front seats, an aerial bar that lifts 4 of the dancers that do crazy things 20 feet above the stage. The production cast does a song from Wicked called Defying Gravity which is no small feat, especially for Jana H, who sings lead while flying around the room.

That night, our quartet played a set in the Ensemble Lounge on Deck 5, which is our usual playing spot. It was only the second time that we had actually played together (not counting the soundcheck), and it was the first time we had performed so we were still feeling each other out, but it was a lot of fun. During the set we started to feel the boat rocking back and forth, and when we went to perform in the Welcome Aboard show, Tim and I both started to feel pretty sick. It turns out that the theater is right at the front of the ship, so the motion is exaggerated. After a brief rest and some water, we started to feel better and played the second show. After, we were all tired but excited to be on the ship, so we went up to hang out on the top deck to check out the stars. Then it was off to bed, we had lots of training and stuff the next day.