Life on the Ship: Crew Bar

We're all sober. Honestly. Okay mostly.

A player on my table recently asked me about the social life on board the ship. He seemed bewildered by the prospect. He didn't know how we managed to be social when the majority of the crew is prohibited from entering the public ship areas. I think he thought we live in a warren with doors that only lead in or out. I told him that living here is like living in a dorm at college. People leave their doors open so you can wander along the corridors and find people to pop in on and say hi to, play video games with, or watch a movie with. There are also top areas like 7 Forward and 6 Aft that I'll get into later. But the highlight for most of us is the crew bar, open from 10pm to 2am, which you will now receive a tour of, courtesy of moi.

Melanie and I happen to live directly above the crew bar. Perhaps if we worked in a department which required us to be up early in the mornings this would be a problem, for the music is fairly loud coming up through the floor. But since the casino doesn't close until 2am and we're awake at least an hour after that in the natural course of winding down from our day it's not a problem. I suspect this was taken into consideration when the decision was made to place all the dealer cabins in 5 Forward, above the bar.

Here are some photos of the crew bar, taken from different angles.

This is connected to the crew bar, and is a place for winding down, playing video poker or video games, checking out books.

Where you order.

At night this area is darkened and has blacklights.

Through that white door you'll head to the main corridor of the ship, crew mess, laundry, etc.

I walk through the bar nearly every day on my way to other areas of the ship such as laundry and crew mess. During the day it's empty like this, but sometimes people are down here reading or using the computer or machines. In the mornings when we're not in port there is a coffee and tea self-service set-up which is nice.

Different departments sponsor parties here. Housekeeping recently held a vampire party to celebrate a new season of the Vampire Diaries. While I'm not into the show or vampires in general, it was maybe the best ship party I've been to yet since everyone was dressed in black and there were laser lights and fog on the dance floor. The dealers held a casino night in which we set up blackjack and poker tables for the crew to learn how to play and potentially win money. Last night was Martini Night which I was super excited for, but it turned out to be poorly attended and the only martinis on offer were Cosmos and Apple Martinis. Not an olive in sight, unfortunately.

On national holidays, various countries will celebrate with theme nights. We've had Canada Day and the Fourth of July. The latter was underwhelming because Americans are the minority on the ship and apparently aren't well-liked (because of monetary and ship privilege reasons) so it wasn't attended by many people and the only freebies allowed us were beer and wine (in contrast to other group parties which will have specialty cocktails available).

Mixed drinks on regular nights are $1.50 with a small gratuity -- I'm thinking .30 -- automatically added but the dealers always tip a buck a drink. If you tip, you get a stronger drink, something I finally figured out after several nights of 'whoa, how many have I drank?' when the answer was only 2, haha. Sometimes when I'm standing at the bar and I see the orders being turned in, I'm shocked at how few include a tip. This is consistent with other areas of the ship such as the bistro where the crew can buy specialty coffees. Typically only the dealers tip, probably because we're in a gratuity-based profession and because we earn more than most departments onboard.

Since the crew bar closes at 2am and the casino also closes at 2am you're probably wondering how we manage to spend any time at the bar. But it's somewhat rare for the casino to go the distance. We usually close around 1-1:30, depending on the habits of the guests on that particular cruise. And of course there's always the EO, or Early Out, which dealers can sign up for which usually allows you to get out of work 1-4 hours early, again depending upon how busy it is. My favorite day, which occurs once a cruise on the Alaska run, is when we enter a new time zone and must turn the clocks back an hour. Then the casino crew can party it up without the casino closing early or anyone needing to take an EO.

After the crew bar closes there are cabin parties, which I'm not fond of. 5-13 people crammed into a living space meant for 2 is not my idea of fun. Everyone is standing, pressed close. In fact, it's really awkward, like sardines in a can except there's music. Very weird.

We'll explore other crew areas in a future post.