Behind the scenes of working on a cruise ship, Part 1

When people hear that I worked on cruise ships, they immediately think, omg, what a dream job, why would you ever leave that! Well, some people don’t leave, but there are plenty of reasons to both stay and leave this kind of job.

When I got the call that I was hired as a photographer, it was one of my best days! I couldn’t imagine anything better than colliding my two favourite things, photography and travel. My first ship would be sailing the Alaska season. I couldn’t wait.

I packed for what looked like a year or two…lol, (packing light was not my strong suit). My contract was for 6 months, so I would be doing Alaska, the Panama Canal, Mexico and then end up doing a Caribbean run for the remainder of my contract. Since I live in Vancouver I was able to just walk on the ship, no flight required, which helped with what I brought with me. Haha.  I thought this was going to be what I would do for the rest of my life but little did I know about the ups and downs of this industry.

I often tell people that working on cruise ships is very black and white, with no grey areas. There are things you LOVE and things you HATE.  So lets start with the things to LOVE about this industry.

Things to LOVE about working on cruise ships:

The travel

• Having the chance to see a different place each port. Although most runs you go to the same seven or so ports for 4-5 months, you get more familiar to it.
• Having built in travel buddies to tour around new places with

The commute to work

• Just a walk down the ship to your department

The people you work with, directly and indirectly

• Everyone has the same outlook; they work hard, play hard and love to travel
• You make friendships in an instant and most of those friendships are for life
• You have friends from all over the world
• You have a lot of different people to talk to who understand what it is like, during the bad days and the good days.

The crew bar

• The crew parties were the best with a lot of fancy dress theme discos, holiday celebrations, or just a disco because the time change was in our favour
• The drinks were super cheap…under a $1 in my day, but probably still under $2 nowadays.
• Never having to worry about finding a taxi to get you home

Not having to worry about paying for rent or food

• Not having to worry about paying for rent or food

Never having to cook

• Not worrying about what to make for any particular meal makes things so much easier
• Although I love cooking now, back then it was nice to have the pressure off.

Romantic relationships

• Relationships happen in superhuman time. Because you are all living in the same area, you get to know each other quickly and you become a “couple” quickly because there is always a looming timeline of when one of your contracts ends (just one of the reasons). Things just happen fast on ships, friendships, romantic relationships and weight loss. Ha
• A lot of like minded people all in one area

Uniforms

• Not having to worry about what to wear to work each day is a blessing in disguise.

Weight loss

• I always lost a lot of weight when I worked on cruise ships and stayed slim. Because you are working so much, walking so much and not eating all the time, it is easy to just drop the weight (until you go home…lol)

These things truly made signing on for another contract worthwhile. It is so easy to sign up again and again, because when you are at home on leave you remember your time through rose coloured glasses and thinking about living in the “real” world has it’s own challenges.

I look back at my time on ships and I wouldn’t have changed it. I had amazing adventures, and made awesome memories but there were also a lot of tears along the way.  In Part 2 I will be going through all the things that will make you hate working on ships.

Check out the article I wrote about the crazy questions I was asked while working on cruise ships.