Cruise ship crew members generally have roommate.
That can be a major challenge as even if the roommates work in the same department, they may have different hours. One person could need to get ready while the other is sleeping or one might want to have friends visit when the other wants peace and quiet.
Related: Royal Caribbean crew member shares how much money he makes
Sharing cabins, however, has generally been a part of the cruise ship worker life. Unless you're an officer or a solo musician, pretty much every person has to share.
That's actually something Royal Caribbean addresses on its newest class of ships. the Icon class. Icon of the Seas, the first ship in that class, has more solo crew cabins with a Jack-and-Jill shared bathroom.
These cabins are small. but they give more crew members a tiny slice of the ship to call their own. It's certainly better than a privacy curtain or not having any privacy at all.
Chris Wong, a casino host working on Icon of the Seas, recently showed off a very small cruise crew cabin.
An inside look at a tiny Royal Caribbean crew cabin
Transcript:
Ah, what's up guys, welcome back to Chris Wong Vlogs and welcome to my crew cabin here on board the Icon of the Seas. This is where I live for the duration of my six-month contract whilst I work on board as a crew member. Now, why am I wearing sunglasses in the video? Well, I don't really have a good answer for you.
I just thought why the hell not? But first of all, before I get into this tour video of the highly anticipated single share crew cabin, what do you think of your boy's new hair? I got a bit of a sick fade action going on. It's a little sunburn at the sides. I was out in Cozumel the other day and didn't put any suncream on, you know, on the sides of my head.
I'm not used to having my head this short and it got a little sunburn at the side. I'm not sure if you can notice on camera, but anyway, enough waffling on. This is my home away from home.
What do you guys think? I already know what you guys are going to say in the comments section. Oh my god, it's so small. Yes, this is probably the smallest cabin I've ever, you know, had for the duration of a contract.
Throughout my entire career, I've never lived in a crew cabin quite literally this small. But at the same time, this is also one of the most modern and almost nicest cabins that I've actually stayed in. So let's start off.
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Yes, it's a very small cabin
I don't even know where to start off. It's so small, I feel like I can almost reach all four walls by standing in the middle if I stretch my arms and legs out. Now, the reason why I say it's very modern is because there is so much more storage in here than I would normally have if I had my regular, you know, shared cabin.
In fact, there's so much storage space that I'm not even utilizing completely everything. Here's the wardrobe. Again, a lot of you are probably thinking it looks quite small.
I guess it kind of is. I mean, for me, being a very minimalistic guy, I don't really have too much personal belongings. I think it's probably a bit more of a struggle if you are a female and you have a lot of, you know, you naturally just have a lot of things.
But for me, this wardrobe is very nice and I love the slide out feature of the clothes. It definitely helps a lot. I have another wardrobe over here.
Okay, I would say I've utilized, I've got random toilet rolls here, just, you know, spare ones. I have utilized, I think, a lot of the storage in this section. This is my snacks, for example, very important.
I've got chips, instant noodles in the back, not sure if you can see that. And of course, being a YouTuber, I have a lot of just stuff, you know, all these wires, headphones, hard drives, and all sorts of, you know, uninteresting things. So that's the wardrobe situation.
Then we have a desk that slides out. So you can see my MacBook, iPad, my work phone. I've got my AirPods just chilling there and it slides in very nicely.
This at the bottom is your mini fridge. Also, storage space, which, yeah, socks and underwear. Not sure why I just showed you that, but, you know, I think I'm very honest at this point in my channel.
I'm very comfortable just showing you everything. Underneath, I've stashed my suitcase and all of my shoes, or at least some of my shoes. And you can see there's still quite a bit of space in the back that I haven't even utilized.
So there is a lot of storage space. Now let's give you this feature. So underneath my bed, you have these sliding doors, which is actually a really neat feature.
So for me, I've actually put my more clothes in one section because yeah, obviously the wardrobe here wasn't really sufficient enough to hold everything. So a nice storage space for more clothes. Underneath the bed, and then on this side, I actually keep things like my dirty laundry and just other spare things.
A lot of plastic bags, garbage bags, and things that I don't really need to show you. It's very uninteresting again. All right, let's move over to the bed.
So this is a very, it's hard to tell on camera how the size of the bed. Let me see if I can put the camera down. So what I would do is essentially you kind of just have to hop on the bed every single night.
Let me just lower that for a little bit so I can jump on here. And then this is my situation. You can see here for me being 5 foot 10, very, very comfortable length.
And let me just give you a close-up shot. Oh, easy Chris. So yeah, this is how how it is for me every single night when I finish a hard day's work.
Nice, huge, pretty big flat screen TV. This I believe is, it looks bigger than what I had on Symphony, but yeah, it's hard to tell actually, but it's very nice. Obviously the Cruise Line has the cruise TV channels and a lot of movies installed for us to watch on demand.
Nice little reading light feature here as well. This kind of spins around so I can, you know, adjust it to how I like. It's a very nice feature.
This is the light, the main light that's lighting up the cabin. But look again, more storage space, kind of a random one next to my air conditioning unit. I have nothing in here, but if you have a PlayStation or something, I guess it'd be kind of cool to fit in here.
This is how I control the air conditioning. So there's cool and hot air pumping out of this whenever I like. I don't ever use the hot air to be honest.
But in Alaska, I did pretty much utilize the hot air because it was, as you can imagine, much more cooler. This is the view from the top of my bed. All right, now let's look at more storage space.
Again, storage space which I haven't even utilized properly, but I do have the phone in the cabin, which is the same phone in your guest rooms. Right, I'm just going to jump down real quick. I apologize if the camera becomes a bit shaky.
See, all this storage space, which I just have a random bottle of water here that I don't even really know where else to put. And if that wasn't enough, look at this. I just put, oh, that's my wash bag.
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Crew cabin has everything you need
So when I say there is not a shortage of storage space here, you know, it's actually really nice to have all of this. Oh, I didn't show the plug socket situation. I'm not sure how it is in your crew cabins, but sorry, in your guest cabins, but in the crew cabins I have one European socket, one US socket.
This is strange because I thought this was a UK plug, but I tried to put my plug in and it did not fit in. And this is a cool light as well. So whenever I am here editing vlogs on the old MacBook, the light underneath the wardrobe is a very, very nice touch indeed.
Now let's move over to my sink wash area. Nice medicine cabinet with a mirror. This opens up and here is where I store a whole bunch of my stuff.
And I'm not that type of guy that likes to have this whole thing crammed. To be honest, it's very minimal, the space in here. It kind of looks like there's a lot, but you can't fit too many things inside the medicine cabinet, I would say, which is why I like to keep a lot of my personal belongings that I need in the old wash bag.
Here's where I wake up in the morning and then start getting ready for the day, making sure, you know, the new hair is on point. This is a sink. Very convenient to brush my teeth and I keep a bunch of like cleaning products and that is garbage.
Underneath, more random storage again. I'll just put a box here. This is a chair, fold-out chair, which I bring out whenever I sit down.
Now the reason why I hang it up is because, let me just show you, let me just move my backpack. That's a towel by the way. Yeah, when I bring out the fold-out chair and I set it up in the middle of the cabin here, it takes up, as you can imagine, a lot of the space.
So whenever I'm not using it, it gets hung up at the side, above the coat racks.
Tiny cabin shares a bathroom
Now let's give you the bathroom tour because a lot of you seem to get angry at me whenever I don't show the bathroom. When I did my single share cabin on Symphony last year, a lot of you were like, why doesn't Chris ever show the bathroom? To be honest, I didn't think it was that interesting but here we are.
This is the shower situation. Now if you're wondering what's on this side, it's my cabin mate. So we call it single shares because technically you are sharing the bathroom but this is where we get showered every day.
Obviously toilet, very standard. And we do have, again, all this storage space, so much storage space that even the two of us were not even really utilizing all of this space. Again, I personally just like to keep things in my wash bag.
Not really sure how this is looking on camera but yes, shower situation. I guess you would say, I mean a lot of you may think this is small but you know if you're going to have a shower on an Emirates plane, this is certainly probably bigger than that I imagine or very similar size. Yes, here is the situation.
As you can see again, me being 5 foot 10, very very sufficient space in the bathroom. And that, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much concludes my crew cabin tour on board the Icon of the Seas. What do you think? Could you see yourself living in here? Again, I will say this is definitely the smallest crew cabin I have ever stayed in throughout my entire career but also at the same time, one of the nicest crew cabins I've ever stayed in because of more than sufficient storage space.
I can, you know, very much relax here at the end of every day. I do feel at home. After a while, you know, you kind of just get used to the size but this is where I live on board the current largest and best cruise ship in the world.
So if you enjoyed today's video, thank you so much for watching. I've been Chris Wong. Comment below now what do you think of my new hair and I'll see you in the next one.
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