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I had a question come in about "Ship Life" for crew: Larry asked, "Do you get days off and how many hrs. a day does the crew work?" All positions for crew are different, but there is actually 3 different levels of workers on the ship. Crew, Staff, and Officers. Crew are like cabin stewards, servers, cleaners, and most people you do not see on the ship. Staff includes entertainment, sales and guest service positions, spa workers, and kids department. Officers are always the italian looking guys in formal white outfits. We all had different lifestyles in our little floating island... different places to eat, some places others couldn't go into, and hours/responsibilities aboard the ship. The "crew" definately works the most hours throughout the day, and when you see a cabin steward always working it is important to know that they do work hard, but not as much as you think they do. Most Guests see a steward and think that they are the same person, and always see them through out the day, but the stewards work about 5 - 6 hours a day with no full day off. They have a 12 hour period of time that they work but take time off in-between when the guests are back in their room. They do get time to get off the ship and enjoy many of the ports. Entertainment staff has it pretty easy only working about 5 hours but spread out throughout the day, and usually get a full day off a week. I would probably say some of the hardest workers on the ship are spa, guest services and shore excursions, and the kid watchers. They work about 8 - 10 hours a day everyday with very little breaks. So make sure your extra nice to these workers. Officers, well what can I say, they have it pretty easy... Large cabins, and work about 4 hour shifts a day driving the boat (which is a HUGE task) They can pretty much do what ever they want on the ship and above security in some cases. So as it looks like we are slaves on board ship, we are certainly not. Crew parties, night after night of crew bar until 2 am with $1.25 beer, and the rest of the night out on the front of the ship under the stars. Week after week of crew activities, games, and cheap excursions. Ship life is great in its moderation... working on board a ship for 9 months would be death, but 4 - 6 months is not so bad as long as you have a few months between the next contract. Hope this answered your question. if you have any questions about working on a ship please let me know, and stay tuned to my next blog which tells some nail bitting stories about getting to the ship too late!!! YIKES, I have some good ones.... so until then follow me on facebook www.facebook.com/thedannyblackpage (like the page and send me a message telling me you read this and ill send you some free downloads)

Food keeps crew members from fully integrating, perhaps more than any other single thing on the big ships. Access to ‘food from home’ varies dramatically because ‘home’ varies so dramatically. Some cruise lines have more Indian, or eastern European, or Caribbean dishes, depending on the make-up of the crew. International food for crew is the real deal, unlike, say, the food court at the mall, where you get Mexican (Taco Bell), Italian (Sbaro’s), or Chinese (Panda Express), which are utterly Americanized. Ironically, ships do cater to American tastes below the waterline, despite only a handful of us aboard. Even more ironic is that nearly all are entertainers who won’t eat it. But hot dogs and hamburgers are cheap, so mystery solved. But every day on every ship of every cruise line is Asian day. Massive amounts of steamed white rice are always available, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, bowing to the preponderance of eastern Asian crew. I will never forget my first trip to the crew mess, on Carnival Fantasy. While I heaped a couple strip steaks on my plate (I love you, Carnival!), my colleagues opted for a mound of white rice and a ladleful of fish head soup poured over the top. Perhaps that explained our radical disparity of weight. Fortunately, I found the different foods from different cultures a benefit (I’m a foodie). Many did not. Considering how hard we all worked, the desire for familiar, comforting food was understandable. Further, most crew came from rural environments with limited diversity and limited interest in it. But the real problem isn’t food, but food habits. Food is not allowed in crew cabins, though all crew types sooner or later sneak some in. Many keep a ready supply of dry goods, which are sometimes legal. Asians, for example, hoard entire flats of instant noodles, and who’s going to know about a secreted hot plate, enabling a late night snack? But this maritime discipline regarding food was enacted with good reason. Two, actually, because on some ships there are roaches. Even a ship passing a health inspection with flying colors may have pest problems down in the bowels where the crew live. (don’t freak: we all know rats abandon ship first, right?) But the real reason food is denied in crew cabins is because it invariably ends up in the toilets in a most nonbiological manner. Ship toilets are very, very sensitive. The crew? Not so much. When working on RCI’s Majesty of the Seas, we had to contend with this latter issue to the extreme. Fish bones backed up the sewage system so often that the entire aft crew deck smelled like feces. Literally. What killed me was that disposing evidence was the only time many flushed the toilets at all! I still shudder at the seeing the overworked zombies brushing their teeth beside toilets filled to the brim, lids wide open. Equally confusing to me was why a crew member flushed a shoe. This resulted in backing up the waste systems for the entire ship, and none other than the hotel director himself was forced to search the cabins. He swore a lot that day. Despite all this, some of us do have access to room service. That doesn’t mean the crew is happy to provide it, though. One night my order of several sandwiches resulted in bread so deeply impressed by the thumbs of an enraged chef that I could all but see his fingerprints. By Brian David Bruns, author of national best-seller Cruise Confidential. Pics of the people and places I blog about are on my website and FB pages, join me! www.BrianDavidBruns.com https://www.facebook.com/BrianDavidBruns Details on the NCL Epic Bruns cruise at patsea@cruiseadventures4U.com

Olympic gold medalist Hope Solo has vindicated what I’ve been saying since I wrote Cruise Confidential. Alas, it did not involve meeting the sexy sports legend, but merely her quote. A highly relevant quote. “There’s a lot of sex going on,” she stated to ESPN in July. "With a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you want to build memories, whether it's sexual, partying, or on the field. I've seen people having sex right out in the open. On the grass, between buildings, people are getting down and dirty." She was talking about the Olympic Village, but if you inserted ‘crew cabins’ she would have been right on the money. Swimmer Ryan Lochte—another multiple gold medalist—backed Solo up, stating he believes "70 percent to 75 percent of Olympians” hook up behind the scenes, adding slyly, "Hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do." But these are Olympians, humans who do stuff daily the rest of us would find impossible, right? Enter your cruise ship waiters. They work every day, all day, for up to ten months straight. Sure, the time-clocks say only 80 hours a week, but we all know that doesn’t include time spent guarding your station from roving packs of waiters, hungry for your saucers and side plates. Many of us showed up an hour early before every shift, and most days that’s three shifts. All that’s on top of boat drill: both passenger’s and crew’s. Yet crew still find plenty of time to hook up, and not necessarily in their cabins, either. I’ve seen crew going at it on open decks (a particularly wild crew party on Carnival Fantasy comes to mind...). At sea the reasons for this wild abandon are very much the same as in Olympic Village. Despite coming from every corner of the globe, everybody is there for the same reason. They’re all far from home, working hard at something nobody back home can possibly relate to. All are generally young, generally attractive, and generally can’t get on board unless proven squeaky-clean. And ships provide free condoms for the crew. More than 100,000 condoms were distributed to athletes for the London Olympics, according to Yahoo contributor David C. Cutler. It took only one week for athletes at the Olympic Village at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games to run out of the 70,000 condoms supplied. See? Similarities between Olympians and crew are rising. Funny how cruise lines won’t reveal just how many condoms they distribute. Those of us who lived below the waterline certainly know. Working on a cruise ship is a work-hard, play-hard lifestyle. For most of us, it’s only for a short period in our lives, when we’re young and adventurous. Why not make the most of it? You have a world-wide smorgasbord of bodies to choose from, probably for the only time in your life. That’s worth losing a little sleep over. And for those who still don’t believe that crew can party like Olympians and still function in the morning, I offer Hope’s parting words to ESPN: "When we were done partying, we got out of our nice dresses, got back into our stadium coats and, at 7 a.m. with no sleep, went on the TODAY show drunk." By Brian David Bruns, author of national best-seller Cruise Confidential. Win an autographed paperback of Brian's latest cruise book! http://www.BrianDavidBruns.com/BDB/Books.html