Have you ever been on a cruise filled with polite, smiley crew – but wondered what’s REALLY happening below deck?
Reddit member ‘imDudekid’ was certainly interested, and asked the forum: ‘Cruise Ship workers of Reddit, what was the biggest “oh s**t” moment on the boat, that luckily, passengers didn’t find out about at all?’
But, beware, the answers might put you off cruising for good.
Plenty of current and former staff were quick to tell their stories – with a horrifically high number of floods, fires, and ‘people dropping dead all the time’, says ‘ostiarius’.
‘Pixielix’, even claims their ship has ‘at least 3 deaths onboard a month’ because, with an often elderly customer base, ‘some people go on a cruise to die’, while ‘SchruteFarmsInc’’s ship ‘averaged one death every week or two’, always of natural causes.
They all add that most ships have onboard morgues where the bodies are moved immediately.
But once these morgues run out of space, they’re stored in a shockingly gruesome – but common – place.
‘Rjdac’ says: ‘Every time we had ice cream at the crew restaurant, people would say it was because they had to empty the freezer to put a dead body.’
Horrifyingly, many cruise staff have revealed to Reddit that it’s very common for people to die onboard – and if the ship’s morgues fill up, the freezers are used instead, meaning the crew get ‘ice cream parties’
And ‘OtterProper’ backs them up, recalling a moment they walked into the staff room to see ‘they’re doling out ice cream like it’s going outta style’, before a colleague said to them, ‘Yeah, no more room in the morgue, so the ice cream’s gotta go’.
Former crew member ‘TinSodder’ witnessed an even more dire situation, when the cruise they were on lost seven elderly people over three days.
‘We ran out of room in the freezers to store them,’ they add. ‘The captain offered time and a half pay if we’d board the extra dead bodies in our crew cabin. I took on two and was paid double the entire two-week cruise, they both fit in one bed and kept quiet the entire time.’
FIRES
Horrifyingly, there were countless replies from crew members talking about how regularly they had to put out fires, including ‘mrkowz’, who says it happens ‘almost every day’.
‘Wanderinggal’ adds: ‘People don’t realise how much training the crew members go through to handle these situations. And they will never know that their waiter just helped save the whole goddamn ship.’
A now-deleted account reveals one kitchen blaze that went on for four hours unbeknownst to the guests and resulted in two people getting ‘large’ 3rd-degree burns.
There were countless replies from crew members talking about how regularly they had to put out fires, including ‘mrkowz’, who says it happens ‘almost every day’ – often in the kitchen. (File image)
They add: ‘Fortunately, this was on the last night of the cruise so the kitchen just heated up a bunch of pre-cooked frozen breakfast foods to serve out the next morning before the boat docked.’
Meanwhile, ‘D-TOX_88’, who worked on a cruise for three years, recalls ‘a fire so bad’ that crew were told to put on warm clothes, grab their passports and money, and prepare to muster stations – ‘where you go when the ship is about to sink’.
They continue: ‘It was the difference of fighting the fire by a few minutes but they were able to get control of the situation. That was probably the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. The guests had absolutely no idea.’
FLOODING
Another terrifyingly common occurrence is water leakage and flooding.
‘Myjobisawesome’ recalls a moment when a pipe burst in the store room, on the second day of a 14-day voyage to Antarctica, soaking every single spare loo roll – but the passengers never cottoned on, due to a clever trick.
They say: ‘The cabin stewards had to swap around rolls of paper between “low use” and “high use” guest cabins and it came right down the wire. Now toilet paper is hidden in every cabin instead of a centralised location.’
Cruise performer ‘Lacklusterbeverage’ encountered a similar situation when they had to run offstage mid-show due to a burst sewage pipe backstage.
‘There was s**t everywhere, the show was cancelled and the passengers didn’t find out why,’ the guitarist adds.
‘BigAmen’, among many others, claims holes in cruise ships are ‘more common than people think’.
Onboard hot tubs are a place to avoid, according to a few former crew, including ‘Broswick’ who was shocked at ‘how often kids and adults would s**t in them’
However, they add the ‘boat itself and tools/techniques are able to contain small areas taking water’ and former cruise staff ‘Redicrob2155’ and ‘Nonogadget’ both confirm they’ve witnessed holes on their liners getting urgent ‘maintenance’ while passengers have simply been informed of a schedule change in their journey.
‘Rizzleroc’, who was a passenger on a ship, even recalls discovering ‘new walls’ put into the vessel on the way back to their room from dinner, noticing one with leaking water behind it – which a crew member ‘gdeorsay’ says sound like ‘temporary bulkheads that had been put up to compartmentalise off an area of the ship that had begun taking on water’.
‘Good reason to be frightened…’ they add.
HOT TUB ANTICS
Onboard hot tubs are a place to avoid, according to a few former crew, including ‘Broswick’ who was shocked at ‘how often kids and adults would s**t in them’.
They continue: [The hot tubs] would immediately have to be cleaned, but it took time to get the pH levels correct for each pool, and a few times people had their hair discolored by the chemicals when they tried to lift the rope set up to keep them out just because they wanted in the hot tub right that instant.’
But that’s nothing compared to what could have happened to guests on the cruise ‘DukeboxHiro’ worked on, as he witnessed a new staff member miscalculate the pool treatment, leaving one of the hot tubs ‘with a pH less than 2’.
‘For context,’ they add, ‘lower pH means more acidic. The pH of pure water is seven, and the pH of this pool was less than 2. The pH of stomach acid is about 1.5.
‘It was discovered before the area opened and that one remained netted for the rest of the day while it was balanced.’