Cruise lines have to balance the needs and wants of their passengers and the limits of their crew. Crew members work incredibly hard doing things that passengers see and behind-the-scenes things people may not ever fully appreciate.
There are, of course, limits as to how many crew members a ship can hold. Crew needs cabin space, places to eat, and their own entertainment space. Passengers never see those areas, but, even on massive cruise ships, only so many people can be housed,
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In addition, cruise lines have budgets so they can’t simply throw more people at every problem. That means that a lot of choices have to be made each day.
For example, on a sea day, there may be more bartenders and servers allocated to the pool deck. That may mean other venues aren’t opened or operate with limitations.
Brand Ambassador John Heald of Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) recently addressed a question about why his cruise line does not keep certain popular dining venues open for longer hours. He gently explained how the cruise line makes those choices.
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Every Carnival ship has a Guy”s Burgers restaurant.
Image source: Ethan Miller/Getty Images for Caesars Entertainment
Why Carnival closes some dining venues early
“Anyway, can I mention something that was asked of me a few times in the last few days? I am talking about requests to have areas like Guy’s Burgers and Blue Iguana open through the night. My answer as to why we can’t seemed to upset a few people so perhaps my explanation was not well written (shocker) so please let me try again,” he posted on his popular Facebook page.
Guy’s Burgers is a casual hamburger restaurant created by television cooking personality Guy Fieri. Blue Iguana is a casual Mexican restaurant that offers breakfast and lunch. Both generally close by 6:30 p.m.
Heald gave a long explanation as to why that is.
“One of the reasons is that the crew have to work to very strict hours. Now back in the day when I was first a Cruise Director on the Carnival Pinta there were no recorded or set hours. These days every crew member has to ‘clock in’ and ‘clock out’ of a special computer program called Fun Time. Those hours are recorded, documented and shared with outside agencies as well as our own internal beards at the Mothership,” he added.
Cruise lines, it should be noted, are not bound by American labor laws, and workers are not paid overtime. Any limits on their workdays are set by the cruise line based on its own standards, and crew members generally work shifts longer than 8 hours and rarely, if ever, get a day off.
“So, take the crew who work at Guy’s Burgers. They start the day in the morning preparing the food, getting everything ready to serve anywhere from 1.000 plus of the best burgers at sea. They open a couple of hours later and between noon and 6:30 p.m. they smile and slap another brilliant dollop of meat on the grill. They have breaks but it is hard work for sure. Then once they close at 6:30 p.m., they have to clean and sanitize the grills and preparation areas to the highest of standards,” Heald posted.
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Being open longer hours would require more workers.
“Now the chap that I explained this to said ‘bring in more crew to keep the place open.’ Fair point, but, well, we can’t. There is no ‘more crew.’ You see every department has a budget. Every department wants more people, every department will tell the Beards that but here’s the thing. We can only put the number of crew on each ship to the number of beds we have on board. And on every ship, every single week for the very most part, every crew bed is taken,” he explained.
So, because of these limitations, the cruise line has to make choices.
“So yes, we would love to keep areas open longer but often the reasons I have written here are the reason we do not and it is not as some silly billy said on a Cruise Blog News Page said ‘just a way to save money.’” he added.
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