Travel

Cruise ship officer reveals horrible truth about ship cabins – could you put up with this?


Cruise ship cabins for passengers are expected to be of a certain standard. But a senior officer has revealed what is like on one cabin he stayed in on board a ship. Jay Herring explained in his book The Truth About Cruise Ships that it was so unpleasant in the cabin it made the previous occupant ill and they quit. The cruise ship worker recalled a time when the woman in the cabin before said that the vibrations from the engine were so bad in the bedroom that she was made unwell.

“It’s awful. It gives me headaches and I couldn’t sleep,” Herring quotes her as saying.

“Then my tongue went numb, and that’s when I decided that I couldn’t stay here.”

She added: “I asked a guy in the cabin next to me why the thrusters were on when we were at sea.

“He said the thrusters weren’t on. Then I asked why the cabin was shaking so much. He said it always shake that much when the engines were running.”

When Herring moved into the cabin he bought extra pieces of bed foam in a bid to mitigate the effects of the vibration on the cabin.

However, it was still unpleasant. “Everything rattled in my cabin and I started stuffing socks in between the problem areas… I kept my desk clear of noisemaking pencils and pens and coins.

“Along with the vibration, there was a loud grumbling noise. It was like a bad rap song with deep bass tones that I could feel in my chest. It gave me headaches.

He added: “The volume in my cabin was too loud to be white noise and I couldn’t ignore it until I came up with the idea of sleeping with earplugs.

“I slept with them every night on the ship and now I never leave home without them.”

Passengers looking to avoid being bothered by cruise ship engine noises should steer clear of cabins on the lower deck, CruiseCritic recommended.

However, it can be a mistake to complain too much if you’re looking for an upgrade.

Herring recalled an episode when two women asked to be upgraded when checking in at the embarkation terminal

He wrote: “‘I’m sorry but the ship is fully booked,’ the embarkation woman said. ‘You can check with the purser’s desk after the ship sails to see if there are any cabins available.’

“Any time the ship was fully booked, the only way to get an upgrade was if there were no shows,” he said, “as in passengers that paid for the cruise but didn’t show up to take it, and the pursers didn’t know if there were any no-shows until the ship sailed.

“This wasn’t good enough for these two women. So before they even boarded the ship, they made a scene until the embarkation manager was called over.

“They were rude and argued for fifteen minutes before giving up and boarding. I stood there as the embarkation told the chief purser about it. ‘Those passengers in cabin E96 were total b*****s,’ the embarkation manager said.

“’Do not give them a cabin upgrade even if you can.’ ‘You got it,’ the chief purser said without hesitation.’”



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