Jesse Gottlieb ’11 lived and worked on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship for over 6 months! In his first post, he talked about landing the gig. In this post he’ll discuss life on the boat and what life was like once the ship had docked!
Working and living on board a cruise ship is a lot like attending college on a closed campus. The rooms are exactly like college dorms, except they are much smaller and don’t have windows (portholes.) Your boss lives down the hall from you and doesn’t hesitate to come a-knockin’ when your playing wasn’t rockin’. That being said, your friends also live down the hall from you and almost every night is a party either in someone’s cabin or at the back deck/crew bar.
I’m assuming if anyone who is reading this ever gets a job on a cruise ship it will be that of a musician, so I’ll go ahead and explain what an average day at “work” was like for me as a trumpet player.