The new blog by Guillermo Santamaria: Working for a mouse, my adventures on the Disney Magic, pt I

"You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world...

but it requires people to make the dream a reality". -Walt Disney

"Our boss is a mouse, isn't that funny" -I heard some people talking behind me, and thought the comment was funny. I never imagined that some months later, I would feel as if, indeed, there was a mouse directing not the company, not the ship, but at least the F&B department, and more particularly, my co-worker and so called leader was a mouse, or maybe a rat. But this will be explained later on.
I must say Disney Cruise Line -from now on DCL- is probably the best cruise line in the market, and I woudn't expect nothing but the best considering that The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) is the largest entretainment company in the world, not mentioning the legacy of cartoons and movies that had been in everyone's childhood.

So this story goes like this.
After I quitted the mexican restaurant in Mexico City, I had no intention of working in Mexico anymore, and one suggestion was to work at a cruise ship. I sent my resume to a hiring agent in Cancun, and they offered me a job in Royal Caribbean International, which as far as i remember, was a pretty lame deal, $1400 USD per month and I had to pay for my flight to Cape Canaveral to board the ship. However I agreed and the hiring process was about to begin; however due to my decent resume and mastering several languages, the agent offered me a better position: Assistant Chef but for the DCL. In resume, a better pay, more benefits, extensive safety training and the prestige of being part of TWDC. I had a long interview via Skype with the Shoreside HR Manager and later that day, they emailed me saying I was accepted for that positon. Then I applied and got my visa at the US Consulate and then my contract was sent to me.
In the inbetween, I changed my email addresses and therefore time went by and I never recieve further information about the flight or anything.
Thursday evening I decided to check my old email account just to notice that the DCL Casting Assistants sent all the info since monday. Oh damn. My flight was due to saturday afternoon.
Needless to say I ran like a headless chicken to prepare my suitcase, documents, drycleaning clothes, buying new clothes, and preparing myself for one of the biggest challenges in my career.

I remember walking through the main gate of the airport again, just as I've been doing for many years, seeming totally natural to say goodbye to friends and family; everyone used to this particular situation.
After the 13 hour flight to Frankfurt had the time to buy a nice german beer, buy a new watch and new lotion before boarding the plane that would take me to Barcelona , the Embarkment Port of Call for DCL.
(Oh yeah! I thought I was going to the Disney Dream, sailing from Port Canaveral, but at the end I was sent to the Disney Magic, doing the Mediterranean 14 and 7 day cruises.)

At Mexico City Airport, ready to board the 747-400

that would take me to Frankfurt.

The flight was pretty smooth, and the attention was excellent. Speaking some german is always handy, and this time was the perfect example, asking kann ich habe apflesaft bitte, saying guten morgen, guten tag, vielen danke, bitte, tschüss made me gain the sympathy of the flight attendants, what led to an excellent service and special attention.

After taking a second plane from Frankfurt, I arrived to Barcelona

I took a shuttle bus which took me to FrontAir Congress Hotel, in the outskirts of Barcelona, where I'd be staying for 3 days before embarkment day. We attended Traditions, part of the DCL welcoming/training/familiarization program for 2 days, and last day we had a safety training at sea.

Now that was interesting. After watching some videos of what can go wrong on a cruise ship, and having safety lessons, we headed up to the dock, where we had to put on neoprene suits and jump into the sea. In short, I learned how to properly wear a lifejacket, put on a full body neoprene suit (pretty complicated) inflate a raft, carry a injured, light up flares and smoke bombs, etc. It was pretty much an interesting training and we recieved our certification.

We spent the rest of the day in Barcelona.

This is Las Arenas, a brand new shopping mall at an antique plaza de toros

that luckily stopped performing that cruel "entretainment"

After visiting Las Ramblas, and going to Fnac (almost felt like I was in Paris), I went back to the hotel, ate dinner (btw the food at the hotel was horrible), and went to my room to prepare everything for the big day. The embarkment day.

We woke up early that morning and met up at the lobby. I was impressed of how many people was there, around 200 of us, although from those 200, only 14 of us were new hires.

We arrived to the port around 6 am, and this is what I found:

The Disney Magic, a 294mt- long, 32.2 mt- width and over 10-deck height ship,

with capacity for 2400 guests and 1000 crew/staff.

Despite having seen the Queen Mary 2 in Stavanger, Norway, which is way larger than the Magic, I was quite impressed since I was going to spend several months working there. But lets not hurry.

After several hours in the HR room and more training and orientation, we headed up to the the upper deck to see the sail-away time.