Ah, the ‘secrets’ of cruise ships, something plenty of us are a little oddly obsessed with.
From learning what sneaky different signs mean on doors, to finding out why you should never pay for one particular luxury on board, there could be a whole bible on cruise trivia.
And as you dream about going on one for your next load of travels, a woman has shared the ‘dark secrets’ about the pools on cruise ships that might make you think twice about using one.
University professor Melissa describes herself as having a passion for cruising and often shares YouTube videos of all kinds of cruise content.
She spoke to one of the people who looks after the pools. (Getty Stock)
In one clip, she decided to share the ‘scoop’ on cruise ship pools after chatting the aquatic technician onboard the Carnival Cruise Line ship, Carnival Freedom.
Apparently, he spilled ‘all the details’.
Melissa explained that the pools get emptied out once or sometimes twice a day ‘depending of it’s a sea or a port day’.
“Now, of course, if there’s a code brown or a code green, you know what that is, the water gets changed out when that happens,” she added.
And in case you don’t know what that means, it’s just as it sounds, you know, when the pool has had a foreign object contaminating it shall we say.
But Melissa explained the pool water can only be changed when the boat is out to sea, not when it’s in port.
The pool can only be emptied at certain times. (Getty Stock)
“So if someone releases themselves in a cruise ship pool, and you’re at port, they have to basically just clean the stuff out of the pool, shut it down, and they can’t actually change off the water until they’re out to sea,” she said.
“It is pretty much exactly what you think it is – old pool water just gets dumped right there, directly in the ocean, and then the new water is literally ocean water just sucked up directly from the ocean.”
The YouTuber adds that the new water of course goes through a filtration water and the aquatic technicians make sure it’s balanced ‘with chemicals’. And yep, this means the realisation that the pool water really is salt water to begin with, in case you hadn’t clocked that.
Users say this was actually ‘way better than I expected to hear’ and that it ‘sounds 10 times better than a public pool’.
“This is awesome tbh, she made it sound like it was a bad thing. I love that they keep it clean af,” another echoed.
With one adding: “So basically it’s the cleanest public pool you’ll ever be in.”
A Royal Caribbean cruise ship passenger has been left furious after being billed more than £1,000 while at sea.
And despite taking the issue to the cruise line, the business has washed its hands of any responsibility, claiming the fault lies with the individual.
One of the largest cruise lines in the world, Royal Caribbean takes holiday-goers on trips across the world on a daily basis.
With millions taking to the company’s ships, it is always a busy time for those running the business from headquarters in Miami or directly on the vessels themselves.
And with passengers taken to some of the world’s best and luxurious locations, including a $250 million (£200 million) private island, it is no secret that cruising is an expensive pastime.
But one passenger’s time on the open seas with Royal Caribbean got significantly worse for their bank account after making a huge faux pas that left them an extra $1,300 (£1,058) out of pocket.
A £1,000 mistake
The passenger, whose identity remains undisclosed, had bought in to Royal Caribbean’s Wi-Fi package.
This gives customers access to the internet while at sea, connecting to the ship’s roaming internet network.
But upon coming back to dry land, their bill had been increased by a whopping £1,000 plus change.
Bringing the issue to light, YouTube personality Jayson Judson revealed that the passenger had taken the issue to Royal Caribbean who refused to help after he admitted one crucial detail.
Utopia of the Seas is one of Royal Caribbean’s vessels (Royal Caribbean)
Avoiding the same mistake
According to Judson, the Royal Caribbean passenger admitted they hadn’t put their phone in airplane mode, something you can have switched on while also accessing a Wi-Fi network.
As a result, the individual’s phone had been continuing with automatic updates to apps on the phone as well as incurring huge roaming charges outside of the person’s data plan.
To make matters worse, it was reported that their child had also been streaming on-demand videos during the trip when not connected to the Wi-Fi network, eating up a tonne of roaming data and increasing charges.
An unexpected bill (Getty Stock Images)
A roaming reality
As reported by Confused.com, it is really easy to easy to eat up data when you’ve not got a Wi-Fi connection turned on.
The website reports that 200 megabites of data would last you an hour of watching videos, listen to 62 songs on Spotify, and browse web pages for 10 hours (not including embedded content on sites that takes up more data).
The reality is that unless you switch off roaming, you will be charged as your phone switches to satellites around the world, and in particular those over international waters that won’t be in your phone contract.
A cruise ship worker of 10 years has revealed the one luxury purchase you should never pay for while on your cruise ship holiday.
Millions of us head on to the open seas every year for a holiday on a cruise, with many treating it as a once in a lifetime experience, while others will go on no other kind of vacation.
With thousands of people on a ship at any one time, there has to be lots to do to keep people entertained. After all, you’re paying customers who have likely spent thousands and thousands for your cabin, drinks packages, and other luxury add-ons.
But according to Lucy Southerton, who has worked for the likes of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Voyages cruise line as well as Royal Caribbean and P&O Cruises, there is one luxury additional purchase you should avoid if you want to avoid some potentially awful side effects. And after spending a decade of her life on the open seas, the Birmingham native knows a thing or two about what you should and should not do.
‘Avoid this cruise ship purchase’
Speaking in a recent video to her Cruising as Crew YouTube channel, Lucy explained why you shouldn’t spend your hard earned money on this purchase ‘at all costs’.
For Lucy, who spent two years working in spas on cruise ships, the big red flag came down to specific treatments in the spa facilities offered across many cruise lines.
In particular, she has said it is a massive no when it comes to getting Botox and filler at sea.
“There’s probably going to be a lot of you watching who didn’t even know that getting Botox and filler on a cruise ship was even an option,” Lucy says.
Lucy has said Botox is a no no (Instagram / @cruisingascrew)
Why you should avoid Botox and filler on a cruise ship?
“There’s a few reasons for this,” Lucy explains.
“The first reason. Although Botox and filler is actually a routine procedure for some people there is still a lot that can go wrong. And I’m not talking about just a botched lip job or a botched Botox job.
“I’m talking about things like necrosis and you do not want to have something like that when you are at sea.”
Necrosis is a very real and rare side effect of having a Botox injection. This is where the cells in your body prematurely die due to a lack of blood flow; it cannot be reversed.
As well as the above terrifying outcome, Lucy highlighted what actually happens after you get a Botox procedure. She said: “When you have a Botox and filler treatment, usually two weeks after you’ll go back and have a review where they will make sure that the Botox is sitting the way it’s supposed to sit or the filler is sitting the way it’s supposed to sit. Because again, if you have these treatments you’ll know that it does take a few days for it to get into place.
Lucy Sotherton worked on cruise ships for almost 10 years (Instagram/@cruisingascrew)
“Now this is fine if you’re on a month long cruise but if you’re going on a four or five-day cruise that means your review isn’t going to happen now. The therapist will book you in for a review before you leave the cruise ship but if you’re on a four day cruise and you have Botox done or filler done on the second day, you have to have your review a few days later which means that the filler or Botox might not be like in place yet.
“And once you’re off the ship it’s very difficult to get hold of the person who administered your Botox and filler which means if there is a problem with it sucks to be you.”
It’s a no for waxing and haircuts too (Instagram / @cruisingascrew)
Others to avoid
As well as Botox and filler, Lucy said you should not get your hair cut on a cruise ship.
“While I have worked with some truly fantastic hairdressers in my time I have also seen people walk out of the salon with orange hair and they didn’t want orange hair,” she said.
“I have seen bowl cuts, I’ve seen incredibly awful layering. I’ve seen some true disasters when it comes to haircuts.”
On top of this, waxing is another red flag for Lucy.
She said: “Usually people get this treatment done before they go on their cruise so it isn’t a very popular treatment. So although there might be a girl who is qualified to wax that works in the spa that can do your waxing treatment she might not have waxed anyone for six months.
“It’s not that I’m saying don’t get waxed on board if you really want it or need it, I’m just saying don’t have high expectations. She probably hasn’t done a waxing treatment in a few months so it might be a little bit more painful than usual, and she might not get every single hair.”
A woman has left a lot of people reconsidering their cruising plans after sharing the brutal reality of what it is really like when a storm hits and you are out sailing the seven seas.
Popular travel vlogger Emma Cruises often shares details of her lengthy voyages along rivers and oceans online to educate people on what they are getting themselves in for.
But footage from her 12-night Christmas cruise, which she embarked on with her family in December last year, has managed to frighten the life out of her YouTube subscribers.
She explained that she ‘knew she was taking a risk’ when she climbed onboard P&O Cruises Ventura ship knowing she had multiple consecutive days at sea, while also heading through the notoriously choppy Bay of Biscay.
Emma said that although she has plenty of experience, she ‘was not prepared’ for how bad the journey would be – and for how long it would take.
YouTube/Emma Cruises
Despite holding out hope that it would be smooth sailing all the way to Gran Canaria after the first couple days were ‘relatively calm’, the social media star couldn’t have been more wrong.
Emma explained that things took a third for the worst on her third day of cruising, prompting the captain to make an early morning announcement warning passengers they would be encountering a patch of bad weather.
She said that herself, her mum and brother had dosed themselves up with some ‘magical’ travel sickness pills, but her dad was really suffering from the seasickness, which had been brought on by the rough waters.
YouTube/Emma Cruises
“My dad’s been on plenty of cruises and he said this is the first cruise where he has ever been repeatedly physically sick,” Emma continued, explaining that it also became ‘difficult’ to simply walk around the ship.
The cruise content creator explained that Christmas decorations were rocking back and forth, doors were swinging open and shut, water was gushing out of the pools and the higher decks were closed off as a safety precaution.
She couldn’t even take refuge in her cabin because all of her clothes ‘were clinking around’ the wardrobe and ‘the curtains were swaying’, which she said made the room ‘look haunted’.
YouTube/Emma Cruises
The rough weather also managed to disrupt the entertainment on the P&O ship, as a theatre show was forced to be cancelled because they physically couldn’t prance around on stage due to the vessel rocking back and forth.
Emma continued: “You can deal with one day of seasickness on a cruise, but we would say to each other, ‘Oh well at least we’ll be on dry land tomorrow’. How wrong we were.”
She explained that two of her family members were ‘bed bound‘ due to their seasickness, even though they didn’t get much relief from lying down and feeling themselves ‘rolling side to side’.
YouTube/Emma Cruises
But arguably the most horrifying part of her trip across the ocean was when lighting woke her up in the early hours of the morning.
She recalled: “I pulled back the curtains and sat and watched it for a while. There is something amazing – but very, very terrifying – about storms at sea. Storms at sea in the middle of the night are unlike anything else.”
Even though she thought it couldn’t get any worse, she had a rude awakening when she woke up the next morning and found out the ship was physically unable to dock in Madeira due to safety concerns.
And we all know what that means – another sailing day for Emma.
God help her father at that point.
Wrapping up her travel diary, the cruise connoisseur said that it was ‘by far the worst weather’ she had ever encountered.
A cruise ship worker has been incredibly candid and revealed his monthly earnings to viewers.
The outcome is slightly different to this performer, who revealed how much she much she gets taxed despite working on a cruise ship as well:
Chris Wong is a British content creator with over 80k subscribers on his YouTube channel, Chris Wong Vlogs.
On the social media platform, he posts videos sharing his life experiences while working on a cruise ship – which are mostly vlogs or answering viewers’ burning questions.
And with this video, which has over 376k views, he has gone into detail over just how much he earns in a month while working in a casino on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship.
Chris introduces the video by saying that one of the most asked questions from viewers is to do with how much he earns, and he knows that by answering he will get a lot of views.
Smart move.
YouTube/Chris Wong Vlogs
He firstly shows his Royal Caribbean cruise ship payslip with all of his personal information scribbled out.
Chris then explains that he gets paid bi-weekly, and shows viewers exactly what they want to see, his net earnings of $1395.50 (£1100), which multiplied by two works out to $2791 a month (£2200).
But he also says that it can fluctuate as tips effect how much money he gets, though this figure is a good average.
But that’s not all, as Chris pulls up his YouTube earnings page, being completely transparent with viewers about how much his channel makes him.
YouTube/Chris Wong Vlogs
Picking the month of June in 2021, he reveals that he made $3788.81 (£3000), though this fluctuates on a bigger scale than that of his day job.
He says it could be anywhere between $1000 – $3000 (£785 – £2350) ‘comfortably from YouTube ad revenue’.
When calculating the grand total, he takes the lower end of the scale though, adding $1500 to his monthly earnings of $2790 from the cruise ship to reveal that he earns $4290 (£3370) per month from his job and his YouTube channel.
Viewers have been left shocked by Chris’ monthly earnings, and shared their thoughts in the comments.
One user commented: “Note to self: quit my job as a teacher and work in a cruise ship while making you tube videos.”
Another said: “Thanks for showing the info from the YouTube income. I never imagined you could make that much!”
Others shared their appreciation of his transparency with his earnings, as one put: “I think u are the only true person who is not afraid to tell the world what u make. And u didn’t lie about it, Much Respect!!!!”
A fourth also said: “Great video Chris! Not having the expense of food and shelter while on the cruise ship makes that money go even further.”
