Celebrity Cruise Lines, The GTS Summit

Posted on March 25, 2014

So hey there, it’s been quite a whilst since I last posted anything of substance, so for that I apologise. I wanted to tell you a little bit about the time I spent working for Celebrity Cruise’s.

I’d taken a few months off following my slightly acrimonious departure from Festival. To be fair I’d been made team manager too young, too soon and spent too long on the same ship. The break I needed even if I didn’t know it at the time. It was good to get some time off though, and I knew I’d have a job to go back to. In this case I had to take a few steps back and just go back to shooting images without any additional responsibility.

If I remember rightly I flew out to Vancouver, Canada to join the Summit. I flew in on the 10th September 2012, so tensions around all of the airports were high following the events the year before.

One of the best things about flying into Vancouver was it meant I got to hang out with a friend I’d stayed in touch with, Christie from my days on the Imagination. She let me crash at her place and we went bowling and grabbed a bit to eat too.

One of the best things about this lifestyle is the friends, the real ones who are around after the contract finishes, not the ones who you never hear from after the contract is done, and believe me there are enough of those.

So embark morning came around pretty quick and Christie drove me to the port, via the scenic route albeit. Vancouver is easily one of the best cities I have ever visited, probably I’d say up there with Stockholm.

The first views of the ship were a welcome relief, I had done some web research so knew it was quite a modern vessel. I think it had a capacity of about 2200 passengers, off the top of my head anyway I maybe wrong.

I embarked the ship in the modern port, handed all of my documents into the crew purser and made my way to my cabin. It was a rarity as the day I signed on, so did my roommate Alex. It’s not often that this happens but we hit it off straight away, he was from Guisborough, which is somewhere North of Yorkshire.

I felt pretty much at home within the usual 4 week time frame, and I met some great friends onboard during my time. Some of the closest I’m still in touch with, and have seen since the two contracts I spent onboard. The likes of Kelly, Andy, Nick, Emma and Tina I still count as close friends now.

So my first couple of cruises, the first more so will forever be stuck in my memory. You see on any US ship as a non-American citizen you are given a slip of paper which allows you to get on and off the ship. If i remember rightly it’s called an I-95, visa, this is in addition to the C1D visa which you have to obtain prior to embarking onto a ship calling into a US port.

So the reason for me telling you the above is that within what must have been hours of me stepping onboard and collecting my I-95, I lost it, The only problem is I didn’t notice until the night before the first port or the morning of the first port. We had 4 days at sea on our way to Hawaii. Even with all of this in mind I now had no choice but to wait until we reached our turnaround port of Honolulu until I could meet with immigration to get a replacement. I couldn’t so much as set foot ashore to shoot gangway.

I felt like a total idiot for losing it in the first place, but it also meant I was confined to the ship for 10 days straight. Still what could I do, the situation was as it was.

As I mentioned our first four days were to be spent at sea, which meant plenty of time to meet new people, and as usual the photogs and the shoppies were a social bunch 🙂

In many respects it was nice to be back on a US ship, little things like we could order of the menu in the staff mess which doesn’t sound like a huge deal but trust me being able to order a cheeseburger when your at sea for four days is huge.

I’d come from a ship where there were only 3 on the team, the ship was full of predominantly Germans, the food was pants, it was a small ship, ran by Greeks and they knew it. Even though the ship was owned by a Greek company it was a different world from the one I had left behind in Kiel, Germany earlier in the Summer.

So after that first cruise we made it to Honolulu, and I went to see the immigration officials and thankfully managed to get a replacement I-95 Visa. This meant for the first time on over a week I was able to get off the ship. So when in Honolulu, do as the Hawaiians do right, yeah right, so I went to Hooters hahaha.

So we completed our turnaround I think I only had a small amount of time off as I had to be back to shoot embarks, and then we headed back towards Vancouver. The only other noteable thing I recall from the two cruises, was the night cruise to the Volcano, It was incredible to see an active volcano at night, and the molten lava flowing into the ocean.

As crew we had an awesome advantage as the forward deck, where the helipad is located was a crew only deck, meaning pretty much we had the best seats in the house for this and a number of other occasions.

So as we arrived back into Vancouver we had a repositioning cruise to look forward to which involved my first visit to Acapulco, and then my first transit through the Panama Canal and then over towards our new home port of Ft. Lauderdale.

So we left Canada behind, and looked forward to the upcoming cruise which in the end involved a game of football in Costa Rica. The funny thing was the pitch we were supposed to play on was double booked so we ended up playing with some local kids which was an awesome experience. Neither side could really speak to each other but it didn’t really matter as the game was just played out without the need.

Moving down the itinerary We entered the Panama Canal, something which I had never done before, and the main thing we had to do, was to take photographs of people on the open decks as we transited the canal. The one thing I will never forget is the humidity of the environment, the heat was so dry it was crazy. That was in the early hours of the day too, so it got even hotter, the air conditioned environment of the ship definitely provided some welcome respite.

All this in mind, it was still an amazing experience, something which I’ve done on one other occasion since.

So as far as the rest of the itinerary goes, I think we called into Cabo San Lucas, and Acapulco. Both of these ports are in Mexico, one is a tender port and the other is alongside.

Cabo I’ve been to twice and only got off once. It’s probably better known to the spring breakers and jetset of the US residents, but otherwise it’s all about the beaches here.

As for Acapulco, and the cruise contingent there are a couple of things generally which people will want to see or do. Either the cliff jumpers/divers for passengers or crew, or for the crew the beaches and the bungee jumping which is not too far from the port.

Other than that we had a fairly uneventful repo to Ft. Lauderdale as I recall where we began cruises east and west to the Caribbean.

Thats all for now I’ll break off and fill you in on the next part of the adventure soon…..Oh and don’t forget to follow my Instagram for my travel photography.

– That’s all for now
JD