As I’ve said before, Balls are a job of work…
Decorating for the Balls has always been an interesting experience. It’s one of the few times that the entertainment staff sees each other ‘out of context’, because we troupe to the show lounge in torn jeans and beat up t-shirts, hair unfixed, no make-up (who wants to bother with make up at 11 o’clock at night when there are no passengers around?) and sit there waiting for instructions. One person takes the drink order (“Amaretto/coke please!” “Hell no, Wang Wangs and Long Islands! It’s on someone else’s tab!” and inevitably at least one: “soda water..please” which makes us all look for the teetotaler in our midst), the EM divvies up the supplies and assigns us our hallways/walls/pillars and off you go.
Hey! Are we wrapping the big pillars?
Don’t know yet, wait to see how much glimmer we have left!
Who’s doing the suicide climb?
In this weather? None of you. Feet on the floor people!
Depending on the number of people helping us out, we can usually transform the room in about an hour.
This process however, is rendered slightly more interesting when the ship is in the middle of the Bering Sea. I’m sure most of you have heard of the show Deadliest Catch, where they follow a fishing boat in the middle of some of the roughest waters in the world? That show is set mainly in the Bering Sea. At the moment when you look out our windows, you see all sky, or all sea.
Our Event Manager forbade most of us from clambering up to the top of the showroom walls , at least, he wouldn’t let me anywhere near it. I suspect he thinks I’m too little. One good pitch of the ship’s bow and I’d be on the floor. So instead I ended up clambering up on a chair in the hallways, taping silver and black-glimmer curtains to the hallway walls, which has the effect of making the entryway into a shifting silver and black tunnel. Come morning, it was revealed that the side I’d worked on had held firm (mostly because the team working on that hallway had done it before and knew how to fasten the stuff in place so that it stayed) and the starboard hallway had collapsed already and will need to be retaped at some point.
Mid-afternoon the next day, in the midst of some of the highest seas we’ve had so far, we all drifted backstage, re-secured the helium pump, and started inflating balloons. Balloons are an entertainment all their own, especially when you involve a lot of tired event staff and helium – but I digress.
By tonight, no matter how rough the weather there will be a few hardy souls who come out to snag dances with the officers and win a few bottles of champagne. We’ll swirl, we’ll smile, we’ll sparkle, and then eventually when the official ball wraps up we’ll pull down all the glimmer, the fanci-fetti will be vacuumed up by housekeeping (after it’s been trod all over the ship usually 
) and we’ll either head upstairs (if we can brave the swells) to the after-party or we’ll crawl downstairs to a warm bed and a good night’s sleep…
Or in my case, three more rows of cross stitch and another episode of True Blood…
hey! Even Cinderella’s allowed a few hours break once in a while!
I’m with you, Cinderella! I kind of wish I hadn’t gone all out at my conference a few weeks ago because I was dead tired – not used to so much activity! I can imagine how fast a room could come together when you’re not decorating to please a bride