Kyndall Magyar can barely cross a room on her ship before someone wants a hug or a selfie. Some fans plan whole vacations around being on her ship. When she walks into the main entertainment hub, guests shout her nickname, Fire. She's 31. On the Carnival Jubilee, she's the biggest star on board.
Jacob Passy tagged along on a sailing for the Wednesday Journal's A-hed. Magyar is the cruise director of the Jubilee, one of the world's largest cruise ships. Game shows, morning programs and deck parties are hers to run, and hers is the voice on the loudspeaker. Some days run from dawn until after midnight. Her advice for anyone who wants the job is short. “Just make sure you like people and don't like sleep.”
The only free photo booth on the ship
She figures she takes 70 to 100 photos a day with guests. She calls herself “the only free photo booth on the ship.” Nearly 300,000 people follow her online, among the most of any cruise director. She posts schedule changes and scenes from life on board. People act on what she says. A rainy-day spa sale she announced drew dozens of bookings. Kayshaun Harris, 43, flew her family from Jacksonville, Fla., to Texas last month just to sail with Magyar again. “She had the boat rocking,” Harris said.
Carnival (CCL) employs 48 cruise directors. They typically work four to six months at sea, then take two months off. Magyar is a Texan who grew up on Carnival cruises. She started a decade ago on the bingo-and-karaoke team. Now she runs the Jubilee's 13-member Fun Squad. A former boss named her Fire after seeing how fast she found backup plans when bad weather hit. On one recent sailing, most passengers were Texans, so she pushed back the sail-away party for the Cowboys and Texans games. At night she hosts licensed versions of Deal or No Deal and Family Feud, racing between decks to swap gowns for custom jerseys.
The job has a cost the photos don't show. Magyar goes months without seeing friends and family. That includes her husband, Joey Boyes, who is also a Carnival cruise director. When they do talk on the phone, they sometimes keep it short. Both need to save their voices for work.
Our read
Our read, Career and Cash Flow (M5). This is a dream job, and it's also a rotation job. Four to six months on, two months off, and a spouse in the same line of work. Nobody prints her pay, so we won't guess at it. The real price here is time, and the Journal shows it. Months away from home. A marriage run on short phone calls. Oil rigs, long-haul trucking, the military and travel nursing work the same way. The money can be good. The time is the thing you have to budget just as carefully, because the off months arrive whether or not you've funded them.
Here's the line in your plan this touches. If your work, or your spouse's, runs on rotations or long stretches away, look at your cash flow by the month, not by the year. Check this week that the slow months are covered by the busy ones, with a buffer for the gap between contracts. And check that the person at home can reach every account and document without you. You may be an ocean away when they need to. You don't wait until the ship's out of port to find out who has the spare key. We'd rather set that up with you while you're both on dry land.