I can vouch for that. I worked as a musician on a Royal Carribean ship and we worked maybe 10-15 hours a week. Of course, the pay and the rooms were lousy, but the benefits of traveling through the Mediterranean were amazing.
So how much did the American employees make? Was it a better living than can be hand on the mainland or similar, just on a giant loveboat?
We just returned from a trip on the Jade. Nice ship, nice crew. They still haven’t removed the Hawaiian decor from the ship. Somewhat bizarre to be sailing the Med with all the Hawaiian flowers and paintings.
Crew was mostly international. Lots of Filipinos and lots of Ukrainians. Some of the female Ukrainian waitstaff were quite hot.
Great trip.
So what did you think? If you’re an experienced cruiser, how did the service compare to the non-American-crewed foreign ships, in your opinion? Because we got pretty mixed reviews on that. And you’re probably thinking of a Stateroom Steward. What was the guy’s name? I was friendly with quite a lot of those people, so there’s a good chance I know him.
And the Na Pali coast is breathtaking. I was usually working up on the pool deck when we sailed by every Sunday. I almost couldn’t take my eyes off it long enough to do any work. Never made it to Molokini, but someday I’ll go back and do all the stuff I was too busy for back then.
Regarding the four people in one tiny stateroom- did they at least assign you guys to different shifts, so all four of you weren’t there at once?
And I can’t imagine how a bathroom could be any smaller than the one in my inside stateroom on Royal Caribbean!
Starting wage was between six and seven dollars an hour, plus whatever tips you could manage to get. But you got plenty of hours and you didn’t have to pay for rent or food, so you ended up saving a lot of money.
No. Although when I switched unions I got a two-man cabin, and had opposite shifts with my roommate (twelve on, twelve off). But the opposite shifts thing was just luck.
Neither could I until I experienced it. Believe me, they’re smaller.
We don’t do a lot of cruises, just the Inside Passage, Aegean and Hawaii so far, but I had no problem whatsoever with the staterooms w/ a balcony, service, excursions, whatever. All the staff was friendly and helpful, the onboard Doc was accessable, the anti-sways worked reasonably well, the restaurants were adequate with the free fare and there were plenty of additional ones that weren’t too pricey.
We were chatting with a guest who apparently cruises all the time and she mentioned another line that she felt was a step up in quality but that apparently was quite a bit more expensive too. As there were 13 of us, PoH suited our needs just fine.
Sorry, don’t remember the Stateroom Steward’s name… tall, dark hair, South American I think. Hella nice fella.
I think next time we go we’ll just pick an island with the golf, scenery and diving that we enjoy and stay there but for the first trip, what with NCL hitting I think 5 differnt islands, it was a really enjoyable trip and gave us a good overview and sense of what each had to offer.
What do you do with the trash though? That from all the ships would really add up after awhile.
Does the name Ron from McEnerny Transportation ring any bells?..
So what WAS the food situation? Were you allowed to just show up and graze the buffet? Did they give you boxed lunches in the recycling center? Did you have to beg stuff off the chefs?
We baled it, bagged it, put it on palettes, stuffed it into barrels, different procedures for different materials. We offloaded three times a week, in Honolulu, Kahului, and Nawiliwili. The recyclables we sold to recyclers on the islands, and the rest, believe it or not, was shipped to a landfill in Washington State. For obvious reasons, really. Hawaii isn’t very big, they barely have enough room for their own trash.
No, sorry.
All crew meals were confined to the crew mess (cafeteria). It was a buffet, and the food wasn’t horrible, but not nearly as good as what the passengers were eating. Sometimes they would send down leftovers from the fancy restaurants upstairs, like lamb shanks or real crab salad, but it would go really fast, so you had to be there at just the right time.
Is cruise ship food all that good? I have never been on one, butmy impression is they go for quantity, instead of quality.
Yes and no. The buffet on the pool deck was basically a trough. But it was open almost all the time, so if you’re a passenger and you’re hungry late at night, it’ll do. We also had “premium restaurants,” as lieu mentioned, where you paid a smallish cover charge and got a sit-down meal with a waiter and better food. These were more the equivalent of a four or five-star restaurant.
I should note that this arrangement is particular to Norwegian Cruise Lines. It’s called “Freestyle Dining” and you won’t find it on any other company’s ships. Usually they’ll have one big dining room, you’ll be assigned to a table and either first or second seating, and you eat what they give you. It’s usually very good. But they also have a buffet open most of the time somewhere on the ship.
So with the buffets, it is mostly about quantity, and quality suffers a little. But “fine dining” on cruise ships is actually pretty fine indeed.
Did you see or have many dealings with ship’s officers? Just how hierarchical/stratified are cruise ship crews?
Do those lifeboat drills really do any good, or is it just a hollow ritual? What were your responsibilities if the ship went down?
So Australians are bad tippers. What other mostly-true stereotypes can you share with us? 
Would you ever consider working on an inland cruise ship? We took a cruise on the Majestic America Line’s Queen of the West along the Columbia and Williamette Rivers this summer (in Wash. and Oregon, mostly), and had a blast.
Any good cruise ship jokes?
Is it true that cruise ships always carry a couple of coffins for passengers who snuff it at sea?
What would surprise most passengers to learn is really going on behind the scenes?
There were two main divisions of employees on the ship. The “Hotel” staff was made up of the bar, restaurant, and stateroom departments plus a few others. If you got promoted a few times in one of these departments, they made you an “officer”. You got a crisp, military-style dress uniform with stripes and epaulets to wear while you were hanging out in passenger areas, which you were now allowed to do. There was a good deal of mixing socially between regular hotel crew members and “officers” (I put “officer” in quotes because they weren’t real officers, with merchant marine rank. They were management. They were head waiters, housekeeping supervisors, or people who worked in the accounting department. But the “officer” thing really went to some of their heads, it was actually kind of funny.)
The other division was the Deck and Engine departments. The labor/management separation was a lot more pronounced there. The officers there were real officers, graduates of actual maritime academies. And the union guys didn’t mix with them too much.
Let’s hope we never find out. The drill was taken very seriously. Every single member of the crew had a job to do, and you could get in big trouble for slacking. My second contract I was on the lifeboat team, where you had to get into those boats hanging off the side of the ship and lower it into the water. That was sort of fun.
I’m done with sea life, but my ex-girlfriend actually worked for Majestic America on the Inside Passage for a while after leaving NCL. She said the money was a lot better. But she left after her boat was involved in two accidents. She was on board when the Empress of the North ran aground in 2007 and had to evacuate everyone to a Coast Guard cutter. At least they didn’t have to use the lifeboats.
Fun? As a 3rd class midshipman I got lowered over side once in a life boat. In the middle of the ocean. In order to give the deckies experience pick up life boats the sea painter was cast off and the ship kept going. They did a willimson turn and came back to pick us up. Sitting in that little life boat knowing the ship was just over the waves but not being able to see it made me never want to get in a life boat aqgain. Fun?
Did the cruise passengers tip well as compared to a regular bar? I heard cruise passengers are traditionally older and tend to be among the more ::ahem:: frugal age groups. If they can take their tips and don’t have to pay for food or housing, yeah, I’d imagine the shore leave is pretty rowdy.
As yet unanswered - thanks.
Yeah, we didn’t do that. We conducted our lifeboat drills in port, anything else would’ve been a disaster. Think of work on a cruise ship as the Junior Merchant Marine. What you’re describing is way more hardcore than anything we would’ve tried.
You heard right. Oh, so right. I think the mindset of most of the passengers was that they paid their money already for the ticket and didn’t feel like they should have to spend any more.
Well, I didn’t really keep track of the stereotypes, and some people find a lot of the stuff I’ve already said pretty surprising. But regarding passengers dying at sea, we didn’t just keep a few coffins lying around. There was a fully equipped morgue on the ship. I never saw it, and I didn’t want to. But it only makes sense that it should be there. If somebody does die, they’re prepared for it. Luckily, it doesn’t happen very often.