{"id":6741,"date":"2025-12-22T03:19:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T03:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/?p=6741"},"modified":"2025-12-22T03:19:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T03:19:29","slug":"life-on-board-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/?p=6741","title":{"rendered":"Life On Board Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We’ve learned some interesting facts whilst living on board the Celebrity Millenium Cruise Ship mainly about the ship and its staff so we’d like to share this with you! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THE SHIP <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cruises are planned and routes booked at least 3 years in advance. Planning includes consideration of weather, currents, marine traffic and marine protected areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Just over 1000 staff, from numerous nationalities, are employed for 7 months on a contract, they have 2 months leave, then are allocated to the same or another ship for another 7 months. If a ship docks in their home town, they are given a few hours shore leave, shifts permitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Captain and First Officers work 3 months on, 3 months off but during their 3 months leave, Captains still train by practising manoeuvres in simulators. Captains still use star locations to assist in determining the ship’s location, primarily using GPS and terrestrial navigation (landmarks on the coast) to ensure the ship location is correct to within 10cm! Hurricane and typhoon forecasts can be navigated around 5 days in advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Sunset Bar crew, Ram, Anorak, Luana, Robinson <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Top Cocktail maker Mr Robinson \ud83d\udc4c <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In their contract period, general staff (waiting staff, bar staff, cleaners, kitchen staff) have no days off unless the ship is empty of guests which happens occasionally as one cruise ends and another starts. Executive staff are allowed to disembark in ports if not on a working shift. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All staff are very smartly dressed, wear name badges and all seem to have perfect manners. Every one smiles at every opportunity, they ask how your day has been, can they get you anything, or wish you an enjoyable evening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This particular ship carries 2600 people and travels back to back on this particular route around Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand but will continue onto China and Japan next year, coming back to Indonesia towards the end of next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENTERTAINMENT <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entertainment is provided from 7am to 1am most days, this takes the form of exercise classes (all charged at extra $$$s), quizzes, team games in the pools, evening shows twice a night in the theatre, art auctions, meet the crew sessions and several live music sessions at various bars. Some nights they hold mass karaoke sessions, “sing along to ABBA, Queen or Rock Music” and silent discos – these nights are very popular!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Other Guys singing group<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Some of the Captains team<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The main dining room<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Our table every night<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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There are speciality bars, martini, vodka or cocktails, as well as the usual shops selling so called duty free items, spirits, cigarettes and clothing, jewellery or handbags, none of which is cheap to us, however it may be to the Americans or Chinese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being “all inclusive” there are many ways that the company help you to increase your spending, most exercise classes are chargeable; bingo is extra; Jack Daniels at the bar is an extra $5, or \u00a33, (so I have Jim Beam instead, which is included); official photographs with the on board photographer; the spa is so stupidly expensive so we’ve steered clear of that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COCKTAILS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These featured highly in the evenings, well, certainly for the ladies! There’s a great selection. We’ve also tried several Baileys concoctions at the end of the nights and slept very well! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We’ve learned some interesting facts whilst living on board the Celebrity Millenium Cruise Ship mainly about the ship and its staff so we’d like to share this with you! THE SHIP Cruises are planned and routes booked at least 3 years in advance. Planning includes consideration of weather, currents, marine traffic and marine protected areas. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,216,2,7],"tags":[222,221,223],"class_list":["post-6741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-indochina","category-travel","category-wine","tag-cocktail","tag-drink","tag-staff","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/20251211_090150-2-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6741"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6888,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6741\/revisions\/6888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}