Senior Manager of Entertainment Technical Operations at Celebrity Cruises, Tania Ordoñez Prieto presented the Women In Tech Keynote - Project Managing the Impossible: How We Upgrade Entertainment Systems Without Stopping the Show – at LDI 2025 in Las Vegas on Tuesday, December 9 at 10am, followed by the Women In Tech panel at 11am, in which she will also participated.
From planning to pivoting on production for multiple shows on multiple ships, Prieto focuses on moving forward and getting the job done. Her mantra: It doesn't have to make sense. Which for her translates to let go of the stress, Her projects range from creating new shows, retrofitting 20-year-old ships, enhancing the gear with a new rig – "all done during the day, working around rehearsals and other shows. You have to be resilient."
I. Planning: "We try to impact the passenger experience as little as possible," Prieto notes, adding that you have to stick to your plan, even if things can't get shipped to you in time, and you can't make noise early in the morning to avoid messing up anyone's vacation. This past year, her team worked on 50 projects across the Celebrity fleet, including new shows on new ships: "You have to stay flexible," she says, "and know how to pivot." Sometimes things can't be avoided, like the time an LED screen had to be sent on a scenic train to Vancouver to get loaded onto a ship.
When replacing a lighting rig on an active ship, the technical team replaces one batten at a time, while they complete the entire upgrade in micro windows of time. "This means using old lights and new ones on the same show until the upgrade is complete," Prieto explains.
II. People: "The crew is the secret sauce," says this director of technical operations, who manages a team of 300 technicians, and an 18-person management team. They generally create four new shows per year; more when there is a new ship being built. And cabins aboard each ship need to be made available for the crew. For Pietro, LDI is a place for networking and connecting with people.
III. Partners: For Prieto, having the right partners is essential to getting the job done, just like in dancing, teamwork is important. It can take up to a year to create a new show, with lots of pre-planning and a two-month install; some of the vendors becoming part of the team.
One of her first shows for the cruise line was in 2000 aboard the Celebrity Apex, with new LED screens, performer flying, and challenging automation.
In conclusion, she noted that to be successful "you need to be flexible, empower your team and your people, and remember it doesn't always have to make sense!"