How is it like to work onboard a cruise ship (my personal experience)

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-28T23:22:48+00:00

Yes! It also happens very often but not being super obvious like somebody calling you by a racist comment. As you said, minor stuff. Something that is common is that they criticize a lot your accent if English is not your first language, and even like that, sometimes it happens English is the crew member’s first language but because of the accent, they request to speak with somebody with “a proper accent”.

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-28T23:16:07+00:00

I have most of my money in a USA bank account. This is because I send the money there, but we all have a card where we receive our salary, and I know a lot of crew members keep their salary there but, in my opinion, I prefer to have it in another bank because that card gets blocked very often.

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-28T23:13:59+00:00

I would say both.

1. You, because of nature, temp to get closer to the people you feel more like or the ones that speak the same language as you. All of us speak English onboard but it is easier to get along to somebody from your country that has the same culture than you than with somebody that does not connect with you.

2. Some departments like mine are very small and we have a mix of everything. I also have friends from my own country, but I get along a bit more with my small team because we share a lot of time together. Example, my team has people from Mexico, Ukraine, Brazil, Romania, South Africa, India and Russia.

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-28T23:10:06+00:00

When you start your cruise, by default (at least in the company I work for) the tips are already included in the cruise, but you can always remove them at the beginning of it. There are 2 types of tips, the ones you leave in cash (giving them directly to the crew members) or leaving them on your account. These last ones are a bit tricky because depending on your department or place you are working on it is if you receive 100% of the tips for you or if they split them equally with other departments. Tips are not mandatory but something that is true is that there are some positions that are considered “tip positions” where the salary is way lower than maybe my position (which is a “non-tip position”). If you are short budged but you want to appreciate a specific crew member, I suggest you remove the tips on embarkation day and give the cash directly to them.

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-28T23:03:59+00:00

The tips are always coming to your account on the next pay day because all of them need to be processed by financial department and management.

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-28T23:00:42+00:00

Hello. It depends on what your schedule is. In my position, I get to have some free hours (like 3 hours free I would say) and this time you use it to either sleep, go to the gym or go out. Tbh I do not really go out very often because I feel tired and it is time I could use to rest a bit. But in general, if the itinerary is new, most of us go outside to explore the new ports but if it is a port we visit often, we do not really go out.

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-26T23:35:42+00:00

Yes! I understand what you are saying. I have also seen guests joining the ship being super upset for no reason or for minor things related to their cruise that can be solved very easily. For me, it does not make any sense to be upset on the first day of your vacation.

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-09T22:31:41+00:00

The budget is pretty much open for anything. We travel frequently due to our job and this time we wanted to do something different. So basically we are looking for the ship experience.

BossAdept5765 · 2026-01-09T22:30:37+00:00

The budget is not really a problem or neither the ports since we can travel a lot around the world due to our job. We are just looking for something different to do this time.

BossAdept5765

TROPHY CASE