When sickness strikes on a cruise ship, it can be absolutely devastating. This is because it has the tendency to travel super quickly, and passengers can’t do much to avoid getting sick, because they’re basically trapped in a small space with the virus. This is what happened when 100 passengers on a Carnival Cruise ship developed Norovirus – a foodborne illness that causes flu-like symptoms.
The passengers just happened to get sick on their very first day of a ten-day cruise. Norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships are actually fairly common, and happened four times on four different ships over a single year alone!
Work Relations
Okay, so you can’t hook up with the guests, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hook up at all! Crew member relationships are extremely common aboard cruise ships. Just imagine being around the same people in tight quarters for most of the year – hookups are inevitable!
And romance between crew members is unlike any typical relationship that would happen on land. Why? Well, considering that the crew lives together, works together, eats together, and plays together, it’s pretty hard to get away from your significant other if things get sour. And you can forget about keeping your relationship a secret, as everyone knows everything that is happening on board!
Sewage Situation
Emergencies do happen, and when something goes wrong on a ship and you’re in the middle of the ocean – things can get pretty bad.
Just ask Carnival Cruise, who, in 2013, lost power after there was a fire within the engine room. Passengers aboard the ship got stuck in the Gulf of Mexico, and the sewage started to get backed up. The nasty liquid got so full that it started overflowing all around the ship, and smelled so bad that some areas were labeled as toxic, and passengers camped out in tents in an effort to escape the hideous stench. Yuck!
Hiring Americans Is Not Common Practice
A lot of the time, cruise lines try to avoid hiring Americans. But, why? Well, Americans are spoiled in the sense that we are used to 40-hour workweeks, which is not the case with much of the rest of the world. Americans are also used to working the standard Monday through Friday schedule and taking their weekends off.
Hours can very much exceed 40 hours on a cruise ship, and you can forget about taking an entire weekend off. Most of the time, you would be lucky to get a single day off for your entire contract. And therefore, most people who hired on cruise ships are not American.
Cruise Ships Wreak Havoc on the Environment
We know the last thing anyone wants to think about when they are packing up to go on a tropical cruise vacation is their decision’s effect on the environment. But cruise ships can do some serious damage, as far as air pollution is concerned. And the devil is in the details.
One cruise ship alone can produce an equal amount of air pollution in a single day to one million cars! Even though cruise companies are fully aware of the damage the ships do to the air, they have not done much to address the problems they cause and to control the pollution.