Cruise crew members have traditionally lived in very small cabins that they share with other crew members.
Cabin mates are generally assigned by department, but just because two people work in the bar or the restaurant department does not mean they keep the same hours.
Traditional crew cabins generally had bunk beds. That meant that the crew member on top might have to climb up (or down) when the other person was sleeping.
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One cabin mate might be assigned to close a bar at 1 or 2 a.m. while another might be getting the pool bar or the Windjammer buffet bar ready for an early opening.
That’s a situation that Royal Caribbean has been trying to eliminate on its newer ships.
Crew cabins on its new Icon-Class ship, the aptly named Icon of the Seas, do not have bunk beds. That gives crew members a better chance of not waking up their cabin mates.
In some cases, the cruise line has also given crew members small solo cabins with a shared “Jack and Jill” bathroom. These are very small rooms, but they do give more crew members a room to call their own.
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Icon of the Seas has small solo cabins
Chris Wong, a popular vlogger who works for Royal Caribbean, recently showed off his cabin on Icon of the Seas in a YouTube video.
He started the video by acknowledging that he was aware he has a small cabin.
“Yes, this is probably the smallest cabin I’ve ever, you know, had for the duration of a contract,” he said. “Throughout my entire career, I’ve never lived in a crew cabin quite literally this small. But at the same time, this is also one of the most modern and almost nicest cabins that I’ve actually stayed in.”
Wong noted that the cabin was really well designed.
“I don’t even know where to start off,” he said. “It’s so small I feel like I can almost reach all four walls by standing in the middle if I stretch my arms and legs out.
“Now, the reason why I say it’s very modern is because there is so much more storage in here than I would normally have if I had my regular, you know, shared cabin. In fact, there’s so much storage space that I’m not even utilizing completely everything. Here’s the wardrobe. Again, a lot of you are probably thinking it looks quite small.”
Some features are very clever.
‘We have a desk that slides out. So you can see my MacBook, iPad, my work phone. I’ve got my AirPods just chilling there and it slides in very nicely,” he said.
The room also has a minifridge. That has storage space below it, where he keeps more clothes.
“This at the bottom is your minifridge,” he said. “Also, storage space, which, yeah, socks and underwear. Not sure why I just showed you that, but, you know, I think I’m very honest at this point in my channel.”
Icon of the Seas crew cabins have a new design
“So underneath my bed, you have these sliding doors, which is actually a really neat feature. So for me, I’ve actually put my more clothes in one section because, yeah, obviously the wardrobe here wasn’t really sufficient enough to hold everything.
“So a nice storage space for more clothes. Underneath the bed, and then on this side, I actually keep things like my dirty laundry and just other spare things,” Wong said.
The bed, which is raised off the floor, is a bit of a challenge.
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“All right, let’s move over to the bed. So this is a very — it’s hard to tell on camera … the size of the bed. Let me see if I can put the camera down. So what I would do is essentially you kind of just have to hop on the bed every single night,” he said.
There’s also a small flat-screen TV near the bed and a reading light. Wong has his own sink but shares the shower area.
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“This is the shower situation. Now if you’re wondering what’s on this side, it’s my cabin mate. So we call it single shares because technically you are sharing the bathroom but this is where we get showered every day,” he said.
“Obviously toilet, very standard. And we do have, again, all this storage space, so much storage space that even the two of us were not even really utilizing all of this space.”
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