Going on a cruise means letting our hair down, have a cocktail or two, or just lounge in the pool the whole day. Some of us think it's the ultimate party destination where you party and sleep at one place. What many of us don't know is that the real party is where the crew at. Cruise ship crew share on Yahoo Travel where the real partying is at.
'It's just an orgy down below the water line,' Brian David 'B.D.' Bruns, a former cruise ship waiter and author of Cruise Confidential, a series of books based on his life at sea, said. 'The best thing about working on cruise ships - they're like wild parties. I live in Vegas and I would have to go to a private party to find this kind of behaviour.'
Just to be clear, not all cruise ship crew members are a bunch of randy, drunken party animals. They are dedicated and hard-working bunch who take their work seriously. We are talking about people that are trained sailors who know to assist you in case of an emergency on top of being bartenders, servers, house cleaners, cruise directors, sales and the like.
Working in a cruise ship is no easy feat. They work long hours where some of them spend up to 100 hours at work every week on top of demanding passengers. To combat the stress, many cruise ship crew members -- especially the younger, unmarried service staff -- blow off steam the way typical fresh graduates away from home do: by partying and hooking up with each other like there's no tomorrow.
'Think about when you went to college for the first time,' Bruns added.
'I generally describe living onboard as like being in a college dorm but no one has any homework,' Lisa Niver, another cruise ship vet and founder of the travel site We Said Go Travel, said.
Bruns and Niver are both happily retired from the crew life but they shared the side of cruise ships you probably will never see.
Party at sea
We're all aware of the bars but you may never know the ones just exclusive for the crew.
The biggest partiers at sea
The shipboard entertainers (dancers, singers, musicians, comedians) often aren't official crew members.
Passenger and crew flings?
Before you start daydreaming, forget about it already. It's against the rules.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
