undercover cruise

[happy daze john in oz]

That recording is not available here in oz. We get a number of Celebrity cruise ships sailing from Oz, they are owned by the same company thta owns Royal Caribbean and Holland America line. Both of those two companied have excellent crew conditions and Royal Caribbean is considered one of the best two companied for crew conditions. But each line opperates on it's own so who knows how Celebrity conduct their business.

[Tony Morcom]

Its a great shame that our Ex-Pat friends are unable to view many of these videos. Apparently this is due to Inter~Nationality copyright restrictions. Whilst there appear to be numerous ways of tweaking these videos available on the net, for obvious reasons this site cannot incorporate them. Our apologies for any link that is posted on this site which you are unfortunately unable to view in your country. It is quite possible, however, that by searching YouTube in your country you may well be able to find a localised version of any video that has been uploaded for your viewing pleasure.

[Pete Leonard (Bruno)]

Thank you Brian and Ivan for your sensible comments on that programme. I thought the same while watching it, that a lot was exaggerated. These undercover documentaries all seem to zoom in on the negative points and completely ignore the positive side. Some of the people spoken to could hardly speak English so how could you put them in a position to serve passengers?

As for the conditions compared to the 50's there is not much difference. We were accomodated in peaks of 8 or 10, but that did not bother us much as we spent so little time there, we were working most of the time. Overtime did not come in until the mid 50's. There was no such thing as a pool of tips. We did rely on tips to make up our wages but you really had to work for them, not by being subservient, but by providing a bit extra service. Wages were so poor that you had to put yourself out a bit to get a reasonable living. On the positive side, we did get all our board and keep cheap fags and beer and a great bunch of blokes to work with. No body ever complained, we just got on with it and were happy to sign on again for the next voyage.

[happy daze john in oz]

Of course had they found only positive comments no one would have watched it. Good news never sells, make it sound as bad as you can, even to the point of exagerating the truth.