Today is our second sea day and I had booked a “Behind the Scenes” tour. I find the logistics of everything on these cruise ships hard to comprehend and I was really looking forward to seeing how things work.
We met in one of the lounges at 9AM and were give a little rundown on the stats of the ship; when it was built (2022), length (962 ft), draught (I have no idea what that means, but it’s 28.5 feet) amount of staterooms (1606), amount of crew (1389, 65+ nationalities) and so forth.
We started out by going into the lower decks where the kitchens are. I say “kitchens” plural because each restaurant has their own massive kitchen, which makes sense, considering there are 8 specialty restaurants, as well as 6 or 7 others. I mean, you can’t really have a sushi chef (in Nama Sushi) trying to work alongside the staff in Cagney’s Steakhouse or Los Lobos (Mexican food) That had never occured to me before. This ship has 17 galleys! 17!!
The kitchens are absolutely spotless, which is something I always wondered about. I know cleanliness is huge on these ships, for fear of food poisoning, norovirus etc, but I’ve worked in kitchens before (albeit nothing like these) but I know that staff can get tired, understaffed, and let’s be honest, just plain lazy. But when these staff are done for the day, the leave and a specialized sanitation team comes in and does all the cleaning, so each new day starts out with an immaculate work place.
We went into the meat freezer for one restaurant and the size and amount of meat was just unbelievable. They usually have enough meat for the entire cruise, but veggies, fruit and other fresh items are sometimes restocked at various ports.
And you know how the dessert cakes are cut in fancy shapes? I imagined a giant cookie cutter sort of thing that slammed down, making the wavy lines, but they actually use a specialized waterjet cutting machine. I don’t know what they’re called, but some are strong enough to cut metal. We (sadly) didn’t get to see it in action, likely because sooner or later someone would surely stick a finger beneath the stream of water.
So all the food is prepared down here, and goes up in an crew elevator to the different restaurants where the staff grab trays and trays of it and organize it in the smaller kitchens attached to each individual restaurant.
The desserts and breads are all made on board in a designated dessert kitchen by professional pastry chefs (who all take a course on how to use the waterjet machine)
And, this has nothing to do with the kitchen tour, but I have to talk about how they clear the tables in the restaurants. We timed them, and a complete “turnover” takes between 30 seconds to maybe a minute. It was like watching a film in 4X fast-forward! One guy grabs the dirty plates, and right behind him another one grabs glasses and cups while a third one folds all the corners of the tablecloth and bundles it together and off the three of them go. Standing there a fourth person shakes out the new tablecloth, quickly sets down S & P shakers, a wine list and a candle, while a fifth person tosses plates out like he is dealing cards and before his dishes hardly hit the table, the silverware person drops the (pre-bundled) silverware wrapped in the napkin. A table for 2 might have taken 30 seconds, and table for 6 maybe a minute. It was really amazing to watch professionals do their job.
Anyhow, back to the kitchens tour. I had wondered about the left over food, (the food waste was pretty discouraging, I don’t know why people think waste is ok when it’s “free” for them) but the ship has a massive “garbage food disposal” where all the leftovers are ground up into a slurry, mixed with algae (or some type of healthy bacteria) and then is disposed of in a designated area in the ocean where it can be consumed safely by sea life.
Here’s an example of the amount of food brought in for a 7 day cruise.
40,000 pounds of meat, not including poultry and seafood.
3,500 pounds of bacon
10,000 pounds of fish and seafood
35,000 pounds of poultry
65,000 eggs
53,000 pounds of fresh vegetables
45,000 pounds of fresh fruit
9,000 bottles of beer (try singing that one backwards!)
4,000 litres of wine.
Boggles the mind.
At one point they put these chefs hats on us, tossed us a utensil and snapped a picture. Nothing like being unprepared for a picture.
From the kitchens we went to The Interstate which is the main corridor that runs from one end of the ship to the other, branching off into various crew workplaces, as well as their quarters. This way they can get to wherever they need to be without having to go up and down and throughout the passenger areas. It’s their home-away-from-home. Or, home-away-from-passengers I guess. The Interstate also has crew-only elevators that we took to the laundry.
The laundry is huge and covers 2 decks. The bottom is for dirty linens, sheets, towels, tablecloths etc and the top deck is for the clean. They have larger industrial washers and dryers, as well as a tunnel wash system, which is exactly what it sound like. Dirty items go into this tunnel-looking place, and come out the other end, clean. Then a conveyer system takes it to the above deck, where machines dry and fold everything.
3,500 pool towels alone are washed and folded every day. The main laundry operates 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. They have a smaller laundry for passengers. Well, not for passengers of course, but for their clothes that they can send out to be washed.
They had one machine that was fed a wet sheet, dried it, ironed it, folded it into a nice square that popped out of the other end, all in a minute or two.
Luckily it was super noisy in there because I had a coughing fit, but I don’t think anyone could hear me.
After that we saw the crew bar, non-denominational chapel,recreation area, and mess hall. They have their own dining area that seats 400, and their own chefs and servers.
Their bar is not an open bar, but there is no limit to how much they can drink, as long as no issues occur. It’s basically a “3 strikes, you’re out” thing, but a serious infraction can mean instant firing, and being put off the ship at the next port. Find your own way home. There is a jail onboard, which does get used. Not often, but more than you would think (we were told) There is also a morgue, which also gets used more than you would think. Our tour guide said that his last job was a 7 day Alaskan cruise and three passengers passed away of totally non-related causes. Geez.
The crew quarters were obviously off limits for us, both because it’s their private area a well as lots of shift workers were sleeping. New crew share a room with 6 people and one bathroom. It takes a lot of being considerate and respectful and understanding, especially with so many different religions and beliefs and political views. You can work your way up to sharing with 4 others, then with 2, and eventually you might get your own room! Our guide has been with NCL for 12 years and had his own room. His wife was also on this cruise, and has been with NCL for 14 years and has her own room too, so he said they actually bunked together and he “joked”, “wink-wink” that he could rent his empty room out, like a hotel, to crew that needed a good nights sleep alone. Or with someone. Not that he ever would. 😉
Each crew member signs a contract, renewable after each cruise. They are here for 8 months, 7 days a week. No days off. If you’re married your spouse may or may not be on the same ship as you. If they are, you don’t get to share a room, woman and men have separate quarters.
He also told us that a lot of the crew have jobs at home during their 4 months off, many of them are masseuses, barbers, hairdressers, nail technicians, make-up artists, seamstresses and such, and they open tiny shops outside their staterooms and do a thriving business on the side. I thought that was brilliant, and very cool that the powers-that-be let them do this. As long as it doesn’t interfere with their ship jobs, no one minds. I had wondered why all the staff were always so immaculately groomed.
The medical clinic was also down here, but was off limits too. They can’t do major surgery of course, but they can do a surprising amount of other things, from stitching up wounds, to X-rays and setting broken bones, to “small” emergencies such as an appendectomy if needed.
I found the whole place fascinating.
After that we went to the control room, which was sort of interesting, but not really. It was computers and technical things and huge screens of data. Many red buttons that reminded me of the torpedo controls in submarine movies. My fingers itched to push one, but I didn’t want to see the inside of the jail. Or the morgue. No pictures allowed here. They had no windows, it seemed like a stressful job.
Then we went behind the stage in the theatre, into the dressing rooms, costume area, rehearsal area, lighting controls and more. No pictures allowed here either, which I thought was odd. It’s not like there were any high-tech secrets.
Then, up to the actual bridge, which was sort of like you imagine, even with a wheel, albeit not big and wooden like I had hoped. No hollering “Hard to port captain!” What a disappointment. Lots of the controls were like Nintendo controls. It was really bright, windows all around (obviously the captain has to see what’s going on out there) a small table with a tablecloth and a vase of flowers, a bookshelf with what seemed to be regular novels, a tray of goodies (not for us, damn) and a Keurig coffee maker Aha! So that’s where the good coffee is. And no pictures allowed.
I think part of the reason that we found the control room and the bridge a little boring was because there were two people (there always is) who wanted to be the centre of attention and/or admired. One was a guy who informed us at every moment that he was an engineer himself and he kept asking really technical questions, which meant nothing to anyone but him. The other was a woman, maybe 70’s, quite unhealthy looking and very pushy and she said umpteen times: “well, I used to be in the military” and “I’m retired form the military” and “Well when I was in the service” and “Before I retired from the military”….I think she wanted someone to say “Thank you for your service”, but no one did.
And that was that for Behind the Scenes. I really, really enjoyed it, worth the outrageous price, no wonder there were only a few of us, but it was a great way to spend a sea day.
We went up to The Vibe after that, where our lonely bartender was joyful as there was actually 3 other people there! He celebrated by giving all 5 of us free shots.
It was interesting to look out at the ocean as this is the part of the North Sea where there are a lot of oil rigs and platforms. I love those things, and on my bucket list is to visit one. I don’t think that is possible, and this is likely as close as I’ll ever get, although…..although…..there is one that I know of that has been decommissioned and is now a hotel, reachable only by helicopter. I would so stay there. Oooh, it would be like every bad adventure movie, especially if there was an ugly weather system that blew in. To even visit one as a professional, offshore companies require a twic card, thuret, or bosiet, and I don’t even know what those are. Plus a good medical check and I probably would fail that. Oh well, I can dream.
Dinner tonight in the buffet was Asian themed, so we decided to go there. I was looking at a bun of some type, it looked like it had sugar, cheddar cheese and maybe icing or cream cheese on it. I was thinking that it seemed not very appealing and an older lady beside me told me, in broken English, that it was a Filipino dessert bun called an ensaymada and that I had to try it, and she used the tongs and put one on my plate. Well. I tell you, it was the most delicious kind of bun that I have ever had. Sugar and cheese and yeast and icing and more cheese and it all worked together to be amazing. I was sad to not see them again. Only on Asian night I guess.
The jewelry shop on board had given us a coupon for a free bracelet on Day One, and a free charm every day for the next 5 or 6 days. Whenever we saw the shop I didn’t have the coupon, and whenever I remembered the coupon, we were nowhere near the shop. Its hours were very sporadic. I don’t wear jewelry anyway, so it was no bid deal. Tonight though, I had the coupon stuck in my jeans pocket, and when we walked by, the place was open. I redeemed my coupon and got the bracelet and all the charms. I’ll likely never wear it, but it’s a cute souvenir. And of a reasonably decent quality. Not great of course, but free is free.
The entertainment that night was called “Rumours” and it was a musical set to the Fleetwood Mac album, Rumours. It was so good. It harkened back to when the group first got together, went through their trials and tribulations, their fights, divorces, affairs, and subsequent breakups. The actors who played the parts were really talented, especially the girl who played Stevie Nicks, you’d think you were back in the 70’s, watching the actual band. It was truly impressive and as good as any Broadway performance I’ve ever seen. Maybe that’s why the other entertainment was so mediocre, NCL had to use all their entertainment funds for these guys. It was pretty phenomenal.
And that was the end of Day 8. For a sea day, it was filled with all sorts of interesting things. Good Night!
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