Most cruise ship crew members don’t have access to passenger restaurants, bars and coffee shops.
Even those who have those privileges, like officers, musicians and entertainers, prefer crew-only areas because the prices are lower.
Crew bars, for example, sell drinks at a fraction of what passengers pay. That’s important because most crew members make relatively small salaries compared with what Americans make, so paying $14 for a cocktail would add up very quickly.
Related: Royal Caribbean makes its new beverage policy very clear
Some ships, however, have crew areas that go beyond bars. Generally, the newer the ship, the more it offers crew members.
Those amenities can include barber shops, spas and hair salons, a crew-only gym, and special crew-only outdoor spaces. Utopia of the Seas, where Bryan James has been working as a musician, offers something different for the crew.
James shared a tour of the secret spot on his popular YouTube page.
Royal Caribbean ships have crew-only coffee shops
Transcript:
There’s a coffee shop that’s only for crew members on Deck 2. That’s one of the lowest decks on the ship, and there’s a lot more going on in this coffee shop than you might think, so let me show you.
So at night, it doubles as a bar, and that’s on top of the already three crew bars that we have on the ship on Decks 3, Deck 5, Deck 6.
The coffee shop makes fresh juices every day, and I’m guessing it’s probably the freshest juice in the fleet because we’re at our home port all the time. We restock every three days.
Here’s the board game section of the room. People pretty regularly do puzzles here. I’ve seen this puzzle get put together probably like 15 times.
If there’s a big game on, this is the spot crew members, like, hunker down and watch. They can get really full in here depending on who’s playing, but most crew members are super busy, so they can only come in for like 5 or 10 minutes at a time.
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In the back of the coffee shop there’s a crew shop, and the right side is for necessities.
The middle is for snacks and chips and stuff like that. On the left, ramen. Lots of ramen.
This is a really important shop on ships because so many crew members can’t get off when we’re in Florida because they’re busy getting the ship ready for us.
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