All Access Ship Tour – Royal Caribbean Cruise – Worth it?
On my recent Royal Caribbean Anthem of the Seas cruise, I signed up for the All Access Ship Tour. I love seeing how things are done behind the scenes…. how the heck do they handle feeding that many people? Doing all the laundry? What does the Bridge actually look like?! I got answers to all of these questions and more!
The tour lasted about 2 hours and 20 minutes, though it was supposed to last 2 hours. Other similar tours were going on at the same time, so sometimes we overlapped with them and had to wait to enter an area. It cost $140 per person, and there were about 15 people on the tour.
We wore earpices to better hear the tour guide(s), and they worked pretty well except for when the tour guide was walking ahead and forgot to speak into the microphone!
The Kitchen
The tour guide brought us to the kitchen where the head sous chef gave us a tour. It was interesting seeing the huge quantities of food being prepared, especially the gigantic vats of soup being stirred with what looked like paddles!
He talked a lot about the regulations they follow to keep the food safe and to avoid cross-contamination (for nut allergies, keeping kosher, etc).
A couple of interesting things I learned were that the glassware is washed at an extremely high temperature to ensure all lipstick, etc, is removed. They can no longer wipe the glassware with a towel by hand, so the dishwasher must do it.
The other thing was that all food waste goes into a garbage disposal in which it’s compacted, then is dropped in the ocean for the fish to eat! This happens some certain numbers of miles away from shore.
Food Storage
Down in the food storage area the crew member in charge told us how they order and load the pallets of food for each voyage. Again, it was just wild to see the huge quantities and sizes of the food on hand! It was a little off-putting it some ways to be honest. It’s kind of nice having the illusion of my meal being specially and artfully prepared with love, but once you see the mass quantities of food and systems in place, that illusion is totally gone! 😀
For one thing, seeing the boxes of chocolate ice cream “mix” really put a damper on thinking about grabbing a nice ice cream that afternoon! All part of the danger of “looking how the sausage is made” so to speak.
Laundry
The most amazing thing to me about the Laundry room was that they hand fold all of the towels! That seems crazy! There is a machine that presses and folds the table clothes, napkins and sheets.
I asked how they keep their towels and sheets so white and learned that they use “Oxy Brite”. I looked for it online but can only find huge containers of it for businesses. Let me know if you know where consumers can buy it because I want some!
Below Deck Areas
This ship has about 1500 crew members (half of whom work in food service). Though we didn’t see crew-specific rooms, we did walk down the crew corridor that runs the entire length of the ship and see the various office doors of different departments and sections. They have their own little city down there. They have bikes onboard for crew members to use when they have time off in port.
Engine Control Room
It was impressive to see the Engine control room, just like a scene from a movie with the countless video monitors tracking everything you could think of. The tour guide presented lots of technical information to us with laminated photos and charts on a table for the tours.
The Bridge
The grand finale of the tour was visiting the Bridge. This had the highest security of all, which I was glad to see. It’s a lot bigger than I expected. I think I was picturing the little glassed in room with a wooden steering wheel. But it was spacious, air-conditioned, and peaceful, with easy chairs and a great view :D. The Bridge expands out to either side as sort of wings over the sides of the ship. Those “wings” have floor windows, so when they are pulling into the dock, they can look and see what is directly below.
In Summary
Should you take this tour? I think you should only if you have a very strong interest in seeing how things work. It’s a pretty long, detailed tour and I could see how it might not be the cup of tea for most people. I enjoyed it, but I think it could be “tightened up” more, with one highly trained tour guide giving the entire tour instead of the department leads (for whom public speaking is probably not a strong suit).
Please let me know if you’ve done this tour and what your thoughts are. Thanks for reading!
I have sailed on the Anthem but didn’t do this behind the scenes but have on other ships. I love learning about these kind of details.
I love seeing the behind the scenes of things too! This isn’t something I realized was even offered on cruises but is pretty cool to get an inside look at stuff!
Such an interesting take on cruises – Thank you for all the insight! I‘ve never been but it seems sooo interesting
This would be so interesting to learn about a whole other side to cruising. Especially seeing the massive amounts of food that’s required to feed everyone E
Thank you for a look behind the scenes. I never thought to even ask if they did tours like this. I think you covered everything nicely and to the point. It would have been cool to see at least one staff room though, like the tour guides perhaps! Question is would you do the tour again on a different ship for a comparison?
Thank you! I love learning about how things work, but for the cost, I don’t think I would do another tour like this if I were on another cruise. Though if it was free or if I won the lottery, I would 😀