July 26, 2011

FALMOUTH, JAMAICA

All Access Tour this morning, and then nothing until almost 10PM. The tour ended around noon, and I went to sleep. I was exhausted. After napping for a couple hours I figured it was time to put the finishing touches on my Karaoke Contest, which is tonight, and time to clean my room. Luckily, that doesn’t take long. That involves doing laundry, so down to the Crew Laundry (called “Suds”), to do a quick wash on the uniforms. What was fun about the Tour this morning was that that Captain was on the Bridge and spoke with us for awhile. He is such a personable man. I wonder how they other Captain is. I hear he is much more reticent. I doubt that he will be chit-chatting with everyone like this Captain does.

I also had the chance to meet the new HR Officer. Her name is Margaret. An older, motherly type with short grayish white hair. She was back from vacation and decided to tag along on the tour to see how it went, and where it went. Very nice lady who was met with hugs and smiles by everyone everywhere we went. I suppose that is a great attribute to have as an HR Officer, but she does seem to genuinely care about the welfare of the crew. She and I had a bit of a chat and I was able to tell her that I wanted to Fast Track my career. She said she would be happy to meet with me. I am still going to wait until I am at least two-thirds down with this contract.

I decided not to get off in Jamaica, but to use the time to my advantage on the ship. I mentioned the Card Room Locker earlier. This is a small room off the Card Room on Deck 14. It is filled with the Trivia Sheets, Sudoku and Crossword Puzzles. These are laid out daily, and every day is different. There are also different sets for whether we are on the Eastern or Western Caribbean Run. This room also houses all the cards, board games, and everything else that gets stuck in there…and it is a MESS! Susan, the woman who replaced Lisa, and I have responsibility for the room and we have been trying in our ‘spare’ moments to put some order to the chaos. There are so many paper copies of each game that we will not have to order supplies for a very long time. There are BOXES of them. Apparently no one has gone through it for a long time, and if they did not see what they wanted/needed they just ordered more. I also need to clean out the extra stuff stored there that does not belong.

As I am getting ready for the Karaoke Contest tonight I thought I would write down a few Fun Facts about the Oasis of the Seas.

The ship is 225,000 gross tons, is 1,187’ long, 208’ wide and has a 30’ draft. From top to bottom it is 496’ high. It’s top capacity is 6,296 guests, and 2,165 crew members.

There are 2,704 Staterooms and 16 Passenger Decks.

Our max speed is 24 knots and we average 85 gallons of fuel per mile. That sounds like a lot, but when you divide the number of guests it is actually about 45 miles to the gallon, which is a lot better than most cars on the road.

We have six fresh water production tanks 4 which create 825 tons of water every 24 hours, and 2 which create 400 tons in the same time period. This totals 4,100 tons of fresh water every day.

The Aqua Theatre pool is 17.9 feet deep and is the largest performance pool at sea.
The Central Park Neighborhood is the first ever living park at sea with 12,175 plants, 62 vine plants, 56 trees, some of which are more than 24’ tall.


We carry 5,070,632 lbs of water in our swimming pools.
We make 110,231 ice cubes per day
There are 150 miles of piping, 3,300 miles of electrical cables, 968,751 square feet of carpet, 86,111 square feet of windows and over 7,000 specially commissioned artworks by artists from around the world.

In an average week we consume:
Beef – 15,600 lbs
Chicken – 16,000 lbs
Pork – 10,517 lbs
Lobster – 1,800 lbs
Seafood – 11,000 lbs
Salmon – 4,000 lbs
Fresh Eggs – 86,400
Fresh Fruit – 45,000 lbs
Fresh Veggies – 62,000 lbs
Fresh Berries – 600 lbs
Beer – Bottled: 10,200 and Cans: 8,500
Wine – 2,225 bottles

All our breads and pastries are made from scratch on board, and our bakery produces over 4,000 rolls in an hour.
This is just a ‘taste’, pardon the pun, of what we go through every week! That’s a lot of food…and a whole lot of cooking! We have 20 Chefs, 222 Cooks who do all that work. They produce anywhere between 30 and 40,000 plates a day! Who cleans all those plates? 102 Sanitation and Cleaning Culinary Crew Members. Talk about a never-ending job.

Today during our tour of the Galley, just like in any kitchen, the group stopped and I had to force them to leave. It proves that no matter the size of the kitchen, THAT is where the party is going to be!