Feeding thousands of crew members from various cultures around the world presents a unique challenge for cruise lines.
When it comes to passengers, the cruise line can tailor its menu to the port from which it is sailing. A ship that leaves from Florida, for example, would cater to mostly American tastes, but there are usually also British, Indian, and Canadian passengers onboard.
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A Royal Caribbean ship sailing out of Europe will still offer a lot of American favorites because, in most cases, more than half of the passengers will still be American.
When it comes to crew, however, you truly have a global group, and the cruise line needs to accommodate their working hours. Some crew members, for example, work during dinner, while others don't finish their shifts until late in the night.
That means the crew mess, or crew Windjammer (both names used for the main crew dining area), have to cater to a lot of different palettes over a very long day. It's easy to see why that would be challenging, and Royal Caribbean entertainer Krista Jocelyn shared what those meals look like (and why they're not always what he's looking for).
In a recent YouTube video, she shared what she eata in a week and pulled back the curtain on what the crew-only dining areas are like. It's also worth noting that as an entertainer, Jocelyn does have access to passenger dining areas, which many crew members do not.
What is the food like for Royal Caribbean crew members?
Transcript:
I've been working on cruise ships for the past five years, and one very common question I get is what crew members eat on board? A few weeks ago I asked some of my castmates their least favorite part about working on ships and quite a few of them said the food.
"My least favorite? The food."
There are definitely times that I go to the crew mess, and I'm like, there's nothing that I want to eat here. Living and working on a cruise ship comes with a lot of pros and cons, and occasionally, one of the cons is the food on board. And it's not because it tastes bad. It's because there's just often not the option that you want that day.
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You're not able to go to a grocery store or go to a restaurant and just eat what you feel like eating that day. Whatever is in the mess is kind of your only option and you have to make it work. And so sometimes those options can get a little bit redundant.
Overall, though, I would say here on this ship, Freedom of the Seas, we have a pretty good selection in the mess most days, and I can definitely make something work if I get a little bit creative. Every day, you will at least find a salad bar with a lot of different toppings and dressing options. There's always some sort of pasta and sauce if you're not feeling anything else that day.
They'll always have a protein, rice, some sort of vegetable. And then there's a lot of bread options so you can make sandwiches or just have a roll if that's what you want. There is always fruit though it is mostly melon so if you ever see berries in the crew mess you better run because they're gonna be gone in the next five minutes.
And like I said, we don't have a kitchen on board, so the extent of your cooking would be either a microwave or a toaster. So, the majority of my meals are in the crew mess, but I am able to go up to the guest restaurants, and of course, I eat off of the ship a lot of the time. So, in this video, I'm going to take you guys along for a full week of what I eat while working on a cruise ship.
Crew members sometimes eat off the ship
Let's get into it. Good morning from Fort Lauderdale. We just saw a Cybertruck.
We just had a breakfast sandwich. We come to this place like almost every week and get the same breakfast sandwich because it's so good. It's like a really soft croissant with egg, bacon, arugula.
What's this? It's like a jam or like a chive cream cheese. It's so good. So we get it every week and a coffee and we get some WiFi and get some work done and then we pop over to Publix and we're gonna get some stuff for the week.
This is going to be my first holiday drink of the season. Do I need this sparkly whale with a Santa hat? So yeah? Maybe? It's kind of giving me the ick. What about it? Is it the color? What do you mean? You look like the guy from the Grinch.
Okay we are back on board after running all of our errands for the next cruise. We're about to start an eight-day cruise, so we won't be back in Fort Lauderdale for eight days. Today is a pretty busy day.
I have to work the WiFi desk at 2 until 3 30 and I have rehearsal at 5 and we have our welcome aboard show after that so I'm gonna get dressed and head up to WiFi here in a few minutes.
Okay, I just got done with an hour and a half of WiFI. It was crazy.
(Not every entertainer works secondary jobs, but Jocelyn opts to work the WiFi desk in exchange for free hours of internet access.
It was very busy, um, but now I'm starving, so I'm having a beef stick and some Cheeto puffs as a little snack. Super healthy. And now I have an hour and 15 minutes before I have rehearsal.
Okay, I just finished rehearsal for Jazz Set, and now we have 30 minutes before call time. 20 minutes before we do our welcome aboard show. I'm definitely getting quite hungry.
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I just had that snack earlier, and it wasn't really enough. We'll probably go to the Windjammer tonight for dinner, which is like the guest buffet because we'll go in between shows. The first show is at 7 and then we'll go eat at 8. That's like the time that we're allowed to go, and then the second show is at 9. 30? 9? I actually don't know.
I'll find out, but anyway, we'll go eat in between.
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What she eats on a show day
Good morning. It is day two of the cruise, and it is a show day.
I start every single morning with a coffee. I usually make it in my room, or I'll get it from the crew bar or out in the port, but I'm not gonna show it every day. you can assume that I probably had a coffee at some point every day this week. And then also in the morning, I'll just take my vitamins, and then I've been doing the Amra Colostrum for a while now, which I really like, and so I'll do that in the morning on an empty stomach.
I usually don't have breakfast. I think the mess closes around 9 for breakfast, and then it reopens at 11 30 for lunch, so I'll usually just wait until lunchtime. Today they are doing a sandwich-making station in the mess, which they've never done, so we're gonna go check that out and have a sandwich for lunch before we head to Tech Run for the show tonight.
Each week, there is some sort of specialty option in the mess. This week, it was sandwiches, but in the past, we've had things like pasta, omelets, and stir fry, and oftentimes, it's the officers who are cooking the food fresh for you. I'm not gonna lie the sandwich station wasn't as exciting as I thought it was gonna be.
This is pretty much stuff that we usually have anyway but more bread I just woke up from a short little like 30 minute nap. It's been a few hours since Tech Run. It is four o'clock now.
We don't have to be at the theater until 5:45 for a soundcheck. I'm not gonna eat dinner before the show. We usually eat after just because I don't know when you're like dancing and moving around a lot you don't want to feel like heavy after eating a big meal so I am just gonna have a couple of snacks that I have in my cabin.
I'm gonna have an apple and peanut butter and then I might also we have like some pretzels down here in between shows I might have some pretzels we'll see but this should be good for now. Don't mind my nails right now.
So it's show time so like I mentioned earlier a lot of us don't like to eat too much before the show and depending on show times we might be called to the theater before the mess even opens which gives us no chance to eat anyway so after the show we have show food.
The options vary weekly but we'll usually get burgers, sandwiches, pizzas, salmon, rice, veggies, and fruit. All right I will see you tomorrow for day three.
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Crew members sometimes eat in port
So we're in Grand Cayman and the water is so blue.
We haven't eaten anything yet today we're gonna try to find somewhere. Grand Cayman is quite expensive, so we'll see what we find. So our first stop of the day was this virgin pina colada, which is so good it's really good, and then we just got some fries to tide us over.
Grand Cayman is so expensive, so we knew that we probably wouldn't eat a full meal out here because she's pricey. I don't even know if I want to eat these two things. Fries and a virgin pina colada was like 28 dollars.
Happy day starts here again. How is it? I haven't tried it yet. It's good.
Okay, we are walking back to grab a taxi now, but we just got Smoothie King again. It was very expensive for both of our smoothies. It was 18 dollars. But I got a large one on exit, I'm sorry medium one but it's huge.
This is the small but anyway so we're getting back to the ship now and we do have dinner plans. We're going to Izumi tonight so we'll have a real meal for dinner because we really haven't eaten like anything today. Yeah we've been snacking just snacking yeah save the room for the for all the food tonight.
That feels good. Okay it is about 7:10 and we have dinner reservations at Izumi at 7:15. We're ready to eat so let's go to Izumi.
As a cast member, we're able to go up to the specialty dining restaurants here on board. usually, this comes with a 20% discount, and oftentimes, they'll do discounts of up to 50%. Robert and I usually go to a specialty restaurant once a week depending. Here on Freedom, we have Izumi, Chops, Giovanni's, Johnny Rockets, and Playmakers, but Izumi is probably our favorite.
Okay we are already on to day four of what I eat in a week. We're gonna have some Jamaican beef patties today which I am excited for this is kind of what we do every time we're in Jamaica so excited for that. Also wanted to mention last night when we were at Izumi it was crazy because we obviously were talking and realized that we went to the same high school.
They had graduated like six years before me so we didn't cross paths ever but they live in the same city that I live in Denver. They went to the same high school and it was just like so crazy like such a small world. So anyway, I talked to some people from my high school last night.
Izumi is our favorite restaurant here on board. I had leftovers because it's just so much food but it was so yummy. I got the steak and the chicken.
Everything is coated in butter and garlic so how could it not be amazing but I am getting a little hungry so we are gonna go and get the beef patties. These are, I don't know if they're famous in Jamaica but the first time we got here everyone was like you have to try the beef patties so we got off the ship and right in the port there's a place that has them, but lately they've been bringing them on to the ship so we don't even have to get off to go get them. Today Robert and I have a very long to-do list and so we want to just go grab those really quickly and then probably get all of our stuff done.
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Yeah, let's go. Okay Robert just had to run back to our room really quickly but he's gonna meet me up here on the helipad. We thought it'd be a cute little spot to eat our beef patties.
I usually get two chicken ones because I like the chicken the best. They have chicken, beef, and beef and cheese but today I was feeling some beef and cheese so I got chicken and a beef and cheese and basically they're just like those really crispy pastry things filled with beef and cheese and chicken. The chicken is like a curry kind of chicken.
It's so good. They're so good. Yum! Robert ordered two chicken, and he got two beef and cheese.
Yeah. Woo! Okay we came to Windjammer for dinner and it was a pretty good spread today. I got some things that I've never tried before and yeah.
This is gnocchi, which I've never had before, and I had to try it, and then I got some zucchini, some sweet potato, chicken tenders, fries, and some kung pao chicken. Robert was healthier than me and got grilled chicken. We got some fries but it looks pretty good.
Checking in from Labadee, Haiti
Windy! We're at Labadee which is Royal's like private, I don't think it's an island, it's like a peninsula. Peninsula? Peninsula? Is it a peninsula? We just had a tech run. I haven't eaten anything today but I'm going to eat my leftovers from Izumi from two nights ago because I haven't eaten them yet.
We were going to get off the ship but decided not to in the end. Anyway, I'm going to go to the mess now and heat up my leftovers. I'm doing what I eat in a week.
This is what Kyle eats, bread. And this is what Emma eats. This is a good one.
Okay you got some stuff over there. You know a little mission. I did just not include chicken.
I know, you just called me out. Chicken carbonara. Oh wow, yum.
But I had four chicken parms. Oh and just needed some bread too. Yeah, because I wanted olive oil and balsamic vinegar, but we ran out of balsamic vinegar.
Welcome to the mess. Welcome to the mess. You need either leftovers, bread, or dry cereal. Hello from the theater.
I have not eaten anything since my leftovers for lunch. I just was not hungry to eat before the show. I did bring some pretzels, which I'll probably have either before the first show or maybe in between shows.
But we're doing "Once Upon a Time Tonight," my favorite of the two shows that we do and I'm excited. Last week and the week before I was kind of under the weather and so I feel like I'm finally feeling back to myself and so I'm excited to do these shows fully better because it's been a minute. So yeah let's get ready.
I'm so hungry. I already got hungry.
Okay I just had probably the saddest lunch ever in the mess. My plate was very brown. There was no veggies really today except for it was like cabbage or something.
So that is one thing about the mess is that sometimes they just don't have a basic selection of like the things you want like chicken breast or plain veggies. A lot of times the meats also will have bone in them and then they're kind of just sitting in some sort of like sauce but they don't tell you what sauce it is so you don't really know what you're gonna get. If they could just have grilled chicken breast at every meal I could make that work and I would be happy.
But anyway today's very chill. I just got back from a Christmas rehearsal. I'm gonna be singing Santa Baby for our Christmas show that we're doing.
Usually, every year, the cast will put together some sort of show, and it's kind of up to the cast to choreograph it, choose the songs, and put something together. So our dance captain kind of already had a show that he had done in the past and so he's just teaching it to us. And so it's gonna be very cute.
I'm dancing with two of the boys but now I just have a few hours. I'm gonna hang out and then start getting ready for our farewell show tonight. For dinner, we decided to go to Playmakers, which is the sports bar here on board.
We hadn't been in a few months so it was a nice change. Got a spicy chicken sandwich. It's a little bit messy.
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Here's some fries. How is it? Truly every week looks so different when it comes to what I eat. Some ports I'm more inclined to get off and eat and others I would rather just eat on board or if I'm not feeling like getting ready to go into guest area I'll just eat in the mess rather than the windjammer.
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It just really depends. But at the end of the day I am so grateful to the chefs here on board who work countless hours to make meals for thousands of people each week and having a warm meal every day is such a luxury that is not lost on me. This job has taken me places where I've been able to expand my palate and try new foods I'd never considered before and for that I am forever grateful.
Thank you so much for watching. Please like and subscribe. It really helps me and the channel and I will see you in the next one.
Bye!
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