Eyes down and concentrate, for a few paragraphs. It can only get better.

A modern cruise ship is basically a large floatel that employs highly trained staff to look after its guests as they sail around the world, or part of it.

Aside from everything else, such as the destinations/stopover ports – which from this point on shall be known as harbras, one of the most important things that cruise line floatels offer is a high level of personal service.

Passengers are travellers who need people

That’s why many of the industry’s latest mega-floatels employ thousands of people to take care of the needs of the passengers.

Cruise ship crew to passenger ratio is usually high and can be from one crew member to every 1.8 passengers (Cunard’s MS Queen Victoria) to one member of crew for every 2.7 passengers (Carnival Dream, the largest Carnival ship, to date).

On some ships, the crew outnumbers the guests.

Good service is important when a ship is at sea for what a cruise line doesn’t want is a boat-load of frustrated unhappy passengers driving each other, and the crew, up the wall and over the side.

Which is why one of the most important things that a cruise ship’s crew has to consider is anticipating the actual and potential whims of the guests.

Most crew members are very good at this which is partly why the world’s cruise industry is now huge and said to be unrivalled by any other for the speed and scale of its growth, especially during the last decade.

OK. Boring introductory bit over. You can unclench your eyelids.

On deck with the diva

This is where cruise ship passengers who are Barbra Streisand fans can start swanning round the decks like a Diva on a mission, while they sing along to the tune of ‘People’.

I’ve included the original here from youTube in case you need help remembering the melody.

Passengers,
Are travellers who need people,
They’re the luckiest travellers, in the world.
Adults, playing just like children
While all that food that they’ve crammed inside
Is making them so high and wide
Now they’re more like balloons
Than people.


Comfort,
Passengers love comfort,
They’re some of the comfiest travellers, in the world.
For crew people,
Are people who serve people,
They love to spoil them out and inside
As they see the world on the tide.,
They can lie back and snooze
And drink lots of booze
For they are people
Travellers who are people
They’re the luckiest people in the world.

Yeah, well. It’s Friday. I think it’s time I went on another cruise…

I promise not to sing.

James Leavey

Posted in Humour