It's cruise season for Flyhouse! We service the hoists on nine Celebrity Cruises and four Costa Cruises ships every six months, with regular service all ships in either spring or fall. This round for Celebrity, we’re thrilled to bring back training for their aerial performers and technicians. With that, it’s officially a return to normal operations for both us and the cruise lines post-pandemic.
In addition to regular inspections, service, and training of these 13 ships, we’re giving special attention to bungee cords on some older ships.
They use pit lifts that are moved using a system that was designed a built for pits on land, and a system meant for maintenance and utility moves, not performance. Most stage machinery built at this time was intentionally built on a per-project basis, but these utility lifts were what we call “package systems”, bought off-the-shelf and installed. These systems are much less expensive than purpose-built systems and allow for easy long-term maintenance of the equipment because the parts are part of a production line, rather than custom. Unfortunately, these package systems were not made for use at sea.
These lifts rely on gravity to hold a significant amount of downward force on the lift for it to work properly and safely. Without, the lift can fail and allow the platform to fall. On a ship, gravity is more temperamental than on land due to the waves that toss the ship up and down, there are occasional moments of weightlessness. These waves cause a decent-sized risk on stage, as pit collapses are incredibly dangerous.
A workaround solution is to stretch bungee cords between the bottom of the lift platforms and a secure anchorage in the floor. Bungees are stretch out, pulling down on the lift platforms, to combat any short moments of weightlessness. However, because these bungees are stretched all the way out for most (99%) of their lives, they wear out quickly and need to be changed.
We’ve been servicing Celebrity ships—and these bungees—for about a dozen years—it’s dirty, tedious work but essential for safety. The bungees are 3/4" in diameter and each ship uses 24 total, eight on each of three pit lifts. We have developed a process to remove the old cords and install new ones, stretching them to make the connection to the lift without damage the bungees and minimal risk to our technicians.
In addition to these cruise ships at sea, Flyhouse is making a series of trips to the Celebrity rehearsal studio to conduct training and install a new storage solution in one of their aerial studios. Over 104 calendar days this season, we will have staff on ships for 55 days, often with multiple teams on ships at once. Coincidentally, that’s 104 person-days of labor!
Destinations include Alaska, Puerto Rico, South Florida, Italy, Portugal, Japan, France, Greece, Malta, and the Caribbean. We’re quite literally spreading safe rigging around the world. That’s how we fly.
