Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry Read Online Free PDF Page A

people keep going on cruises if these types of occurrences are so common? In most cases, the problems are not even acknowledged or else they are ignored. This is illustrated by a comment a fellow passenger on the ultraluxury Seabourn Goddess I made in response to dismal service at lunch. Although he and his wife were visibly upset and dissatisfied, when I attempted to commiserate, he excused the major lapses in service by simply saying, “They are doing the best that they can.” He fully intended to take a future cruise with the same cruise line.
    I Booked This Cabin and This Is the Cabin I Want
    Cruise ship accommodations are quite different from the pictures in advertisements and brochures. The contrast was made abundantly clear to me on Royal Caribbean Cruise Line in 1993. I was walking by the purser’s desk and overheard a fellow passenger pointing to the picture in a brochure and saying quite loudly, “I booked this cabin and this is the cabin I want.” The picture in the brochure, taken with a wide-angle lens, made the man’s 140-square-foot room look roomy and spacious — at least two or three times larger than it actually was. I was envious. His room was almost 20 percent larger than mine.
    Actual room size is confronted by almost everyone taking his or her first cruise. Brochures display images and descriptions that give the impression of a decent-sized hotel room. Very few brochures indicate the actual square footage of the room.
    You quickly learn that rooms may be as small as 120 square feet, in standard categories are often between 140 and 160 square feet, and are rarely — unless a mini-suite or a suite — larger than 190 to 200 square feet, including the bathroom and the closets.
    To put this into perspective, a typical queen-size bed is about 40 square feet — it occupies 20 to 33 percent of the room. When you add a dresser, a desk and chair, and perhaps a couch and bookshelf, there is little room to maneuver. Passengers on Royal Caribbean International, known to have some of the smallest standard rooms, often comment that the bathroom is so small that it can accommodate only one person at a time. Full-sized individuals complain that using the toilet or the shower is a challenge.
    At the other extreme are the suites found on many ships. Although still smaller than a suite in a hotel — often equivalent in size to a standard hotel room — they can be comfortable. Many suites are 500 square feet; a penthouse suite may be two or three times that size. Some can be ostentatious, such as the villas on Norwegian Cruise Lines’ new ship, the Norwegian Star. Standard cabins on this ship range in size from 160 to 172 square feet; the villa provides an astounding 5,300 square feet.
    I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS IN STEERAGE CLASS
    Cruise lines advertise that classes on cruise ships are something of the past. Oceangoing vessels used to have two or three classes (first class, steerage, and so on) and based on their class of service, passengers were restricted in where they were permitted to go on the ship. Although today’s ships are represented as being class-
    BIGGEST SUITES
    The Norwegian Star offers the most incredible suites you will ever find on a cruise ship. At 5,300 square feet each, the Garden Villas are the cruise industry's largest accommodations.
    Each three-bedroom villa has a contemporary living/dining room with a grand piano, flat-screen TV/VCR, and a desk equipped with a laptop computer, printer/fax, and a modem. Each bedroom, decorated in rich colors with Asian paintings and Japanese prints, has its own dressing room and walk-in closets as well as an en suite bathroom with floor-to-ceiling windows, a whirlpool tub, separate shower, double sinks, and a television. One bedroom opens onto a Japanese garden with decorative pools, a small bridge, sunny and shaded seating areas, and a Jacuzzi. A staircase leads up to a large expanse of open deck overlooking the ship's pool area.
    The suite even comes with