We've only been on a cruise once and my wife still raves about the 24 hour Pirate Pizza joint the Carnival Cruise had that we went on. They were the thinnest, crunchiest flatbread pizzas we ever had.
For some reason, one of my fondest childhood memories was using the ship debit card my parents gave me to buy many of those circle personal pan pizzas on the top deck of a carnival cruise. Cruise pizza is no joke!
I think you do explore - that's the point - the ship docks at various coastal towns and you go ashore for the day, then go back on and sail again. You're only going to be stuck on the ship for 7 days if you're sailing straight across an ocean.
Plus some people like to just relax and for example take the time to read a book on vacation and aren't looking to explore.
I used to think this as well, but my family and I decided to try one out and we explored way more than we normally do on holiday - due to the fact that you're in a different port each day, you end up visiting way more different places than a traditional holiday, where everywhere you explore has to be centred around your hotel. Cruises especially allowed us to explore a lot of cities and towns, which we normally wouldn't have gone to due to the lack of "chill out" time on city break holidays.
Of course, this is my experience of cruises around Europe, where there's a lot of interesting ports clustered closely together. The experience is probably pretty different otherwise.
I was on that ship, and whenever you went into one of the buffet area you had to sanitize every time you went in. There was an employee holding the bottle at the doors
What you rarely hear about is the gross amount of waste.
People are especially wasteful when the food is 'free' and plentiful. If you watch waiters that are removing plates during a typical cruise ship meal many/most contain uneaten portions.
Which is why some all-you-can-eat restaurants have started charging for uneaten food that's ordered but left on the plate i.e. sushi places especially.
> If you watch waiters that are removing plates during a typical cruise ship meal many/most contain uneaten portions.
Lunch and on some lines for dinner perhaps, but the line I've often travelled on you have the executive chef walking round at dinner and inspecting the returned plates to assess the quantities remaining (and whether any dishes perform better than others).
It's the buffet that has the potential for greater waste, but you often see them rotate leftovers for a couple of days.
They're certainly not great, but I've seen greater per-person waste in hotel breakfasts (or basically any free buffet scenario as you say).
The bigger amount of waste is from food prepared in excess to demand. That's why food is repurposed as much as possible - leftover meat into stews, leftover vegetables into hash etc.
Yup. Kitchen makes a few hundred sheet pans of stuff according to a menu that's set well in advance (so that the ship can take on the proper supplies) and then because of the way things just happen to turn out certain dishes will get mostly eaten and others mostly trashed.
You simply can't optimize beyond a certain level because you need room to absorb changes in customer demand. You can't not serve soup on Thursday because the customers ate all your beef Wednesday and you have no stock.
Most seafood you eat that you didn't catch yourself was frozen. Properly prepared and frozen seafood can taste better than unfrozen. And yes, their unfrozen foods that are going bad get turned into soup, but that is a normal restaurant thing.
I just don't get it. Who can respond positively to the continuous 1/2 second fast-cut edits and obnoxious "hard rock" music of videos like this? It's like everybody involved wants to advance from producing cruise ship documentaries to working for early 1990s MTV or something.
Of course it's not the most in-depth rigorous study of on-board ship operations, but what do you want / where else are you going to get a glimpse inside the ship for a popular audience? It has enough info to be useful I think.
Consumers can buy seafood at the grocery on, say, any given Thursday because they know the delivery truck makes periodic visits. And if they learn that schedule on a Tuesday they can wait it out two days until the phase wraps back around with fresh(ish) lobsters.
The phase reset on a cruise has the intended effect of re-supplying the fresh(ish) lobsters but with the unfortunate side-effect of dropping you off at the shore.
Lobsters are a weird example because they're usually alive in the tank (at grocery stores around here they're the only live animals sold) so I wouldn't think "fresh" would matter much?
It is a mix. Resupply depends on many factors. Remember ships are stopping at different ports - and often different countries every day (except for cross ocean cruises which of course which don't stop). Thus they look into local taxes, availability, and such. Meals are planned which means they know what they need - but also means they can look at what will be available. They have the ability to load at any port. If they can get X cheap at some port they will buy it there. Thus if they can contract a local farmer to supply something cheap in one port they will. If shipping means some non-local food is cheaper in one port than another they will buy at the cheaper one. If labor is cheaper in one port they will try to use more of that labor.
Supply management is important to a cruise line. They are very good at getting the best prices. They take advantage of the ship moving to get the best prices.
They only talk about the 6600 guests as part of that purchase. The video talks about having 1085 employees in the different kitchens. They need to eat as well, so does their meals come from this same stock of food? There's also the rest of the staff like engineering, bridge crew, cleaning, etc. I'm guessing there's a couple hundred more employees at least. I'm pretty sure I'm thinking way more about this than the producer's target audience though.
The top ships there - Crystal, SeaDream, SilverSea, SeaBourn - are all small ultra-luxury vessels. C̵a̵r̵i̵b̵b̵e̵a̵n̵ ̵P̵r̵i̵n̵c̵e̵s̵s̵,̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵o̵n̵l̵y̵ ̵R̵o̵y̵a̵l̵ ̵C̵a̵r̵i̵b̵b̵e̵a̵n̵ ̵v̵e̵s̵s̵e̵l̵ ̵o̵n̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵l̵i̵s̵t̵ ̵[̵0̵]̵ ̵h̵a̵s̵ ̵a̵ ̵p̵a̵s̵s̵e̵n̵g̵e̵r̵:̵c̵r̵e̵w̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵0̵.̵3̵7̵ ̵-̵ ̵a̵n̵d̵ ̵h̵a̵l̵f̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵p̵a̵s̵s̵e̵n̵g̵e̵r̵ ̵c̵a̵p̵a̵c̵i̵t̵y̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵s̵h̵i̵p̵ ̵i̵n̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵v̵i̵d̵e̵o̵.̵ ̵S̵o̵ ̵I̵'̵d̵ ̵i̵m̵a̵g̵i̵n̵e̵ ̵0̵.̵3̵ ̵w̵o̵u̵l̵d̵ ̵b̵e̵ ̵a̵ ̵g̵o̵o̵d̵ ̵e̵s̵t̵i̵m̵a̵t̵e̵ ̵f̵o̵r̵ ̵a̵ ̵s̵h̵i̵p̵ ̵t̵w̵i̵c̵e̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵s̵i̵z̵e̵ ̵-̵ ̵r̵i̵g̵h̵t̵ ̵a̵r̵o̵u̵n̵d̵ ̵2̵0̵0̵0̵ ̵c̵r̵e̵w̵.̵ EDIT2: Caribbean Princess is not a Royal Caribbean ship, and Royal Caribbean's naming scheme is "* of the Seas" not "Caribbean *". Really not sure how I messed that one up.
EDIT: But we can do better than that! The Oasis-class of ships are the only ones with a ~6600 passenger capacity, and they of course all have wikipedia pages [1]. And that lists the crew at 2200, for a ratio of 0.33.
Thank you for quickly acknowledging and fixing it--a simple error anyone could make. It also appears you are right that my claim of >.4 is too high. Browsing the listings, it looks like .3 is probably closer.
I think I got things mixed up with Carnival, which does have a naming convention of "Carnival *". Either way, finding the actual ship on wikipedia and calculating from there is going to be better than extrapolating from other ships on the list. (And the post now does that)
Interesting to compare with the valley. Google food and drink cost per employee per day was around $16 when I last heard. Dropbox was the highest around $60, although this was a few years ago.
Cruises are generally feeding each passenger 3+ meals per day though. And people tend to overeat on vacation as well.
How many meals does the average tech employee eat at work per day? My initial guess would be around 1.5, with the biggest meal of the day, dinner, usually being eaten outside of work. That would mean google spends more than twice as much per meal than cruises do.
I have been on a Royal Caribbean cruise and I did a tour of the galley (kitchens). I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the food, I cook a lot and get pretty fancy with my dishes and the food on the R.C. cruise was above my expectations.
Which cruise line did you go on? I've stopped going on Carnival because the food is worse than it was 10 years ago. This video was Royal Caribbean, which I think is still great!
One of the things I've always wondered about, but probably falls into the category of military secrets, is exactly what the manifest looks like for food on a patrol of a Ohio class submarine.
There must be spreadsheets somewhere with all of the ingredients broken down, costs, quantities, and probably cubic volume occupied (since freezer space and food storage space is somewhat at a premium).
Submariners are generally reputed to have the best food in the navy for any navy that has a submarine fleet. Presumably because everything else about being on a submarine is so shitty, it's the least they can do to boost moral.
Apparently this isn't restricted to the modern era either, I've read that the german u-boat fleets of the world wars had the best food in their military too.
US submarines also got AC when fire control computers were installed in WW2. (The space for the computer room was subtracted from the bunk area.)
German uboat staff were treated like heroes in Germany, but that was partly their success in nearly amputating Britain from her colonies, and partly from boosterism by Admiral Karl Donitz.
Morale is a huge issue on boomers and subs, which patrol for months at a stretch, generally submerged the entire time (the whole idea being for your adversary to not know where you are). Crap food on top of the isolation and lack of outdoor exposure fares poorly (so to speak).
Fresh produce is limited to the first week or so of cruise AFAIU, but preserved/frozen and dry goods are available for the duration. I don't know if there's any fresh-grow possible, though there've been experiments.
Microgreens seem like they'd be great for submarines: cheap power and water are all thats needed to 'unzip' compact seeds into nutritional food. As a happy byproduct, photosynthesis would scrub a little bit of CO2.
Sprouts and the like occurred to me, and have been used by some sailors / rowers on long voyages.
For submarine crew, the balance between "eating home food" vs. "nutritional sufficiency" may swing the balance, though I'd argue that something (sprouts) is better than nothing (frozen / canned vegetables).
Crops which could be grown in conditions in which power is abundant (nukes!) as is water, and atmosphere could be controlled (high CO2 via redirected scrubbers), but space is highly constrained, becomes an interesting question. Probably not trellis or tree crops, though lettuce/greens, carrots, possibly cruciferous vegetables and onions, possibly.
How much use of fermented vegetables is made would be another interesting question.
From the latimes article: "“We had three things going for us: The quality of food and the amount that was served. The music on board. And the reading materials."
I can't tell if "reading materials" is a euphemism for pornography or not but I'm guessing probably.
That's an interesting article though, I never thought about it before.
Yes, and they're ancient; commissioned closer to WW2 than to today. They're basic use is to head to a port, and provide services to submarines in the area. I don't believe they have any capability to provide re-supply at sea, especially munitions like torpedoes and missiles which are large, heavy, and difficult to transfer in anything less than a perfectly smooth sea state.
Cruise ships can also avoid having to report or even really investigate cruise ship deaths or disappearances. Ken Carver is one of the only people on the planet currently pushing to investigate and hold cruise companies accountable for deaths and missing persons.
Malnutrition and famine have nothing to do with food supply and everything to do with distribution, governmental insecurity, and violence. If there were no wars or corrupt governments then we would successfully feed the world and eliminate famine. It would not require people on cruise ships to tighten their belts, either.
If all of those cruises stopped being, there would still be widespread (third-world) malnutrition because of wars, corruption, etc. We produce enough food worldwide to feed everyone. The problem is not middle-class and affluent people taking cruises.
It's still kind of gross when you see all the piles of food all at once. I don't have a solution.
EDIT> Also, it's not like we're just bystanders. The whole economic system that allows people like us to go on cruises has been built on centuries of violence, propping up of corrupt but useful allies, and at best turning a blind eye to human rights abuses. Sure, that's the past and things are getting better, but we are complicit at some level, not entirely bystanders.
A few hundred years ago people came to America with nothing. They were starving, diseased, and absolutely poor. They busted ass and eked out a better existence every generation. These cities didn't just magically pop into existence it's the product of hard work and being a good person and citizen. Don't throw trash on the ground, don't cheat people in business, look out for others and your family. From my travels I have seen most places have horrible corruption where it's hard to make it as a honest person. A huge part of the overall prosperity of the US is from the fact that nobody is a king, with hard work you can make it. Instead of putting people down try and help lift everyone up.
There is a lot of hardship on Earth that I would give anything to fix. I can only do my best to be a good person and treat others well and hopefully if we all do the same our grandchildren will be that much closer to paradise.
"These cities didn't just magically pop into existence it's the product of hard work and being a good person and citizen."
Oklahoma City did "pop into existence". Within 12 hours of noon, April 22, 1889, it had a population of 10,000 people.
But you're right, it wasn't "magic" - it was the product of kicking Native Americans off the land and giving it to white people in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.
That highlights how your narrative omits a couple of other sources of prosperity in the American experience:
- living in areas that the Native American population had already settled
Your comment seems almost unrelated to the topic, so could you explain your point further?
300 years ago, Boston and Newport were important slave ports, and "In Rhode Island colony, as much as two-thirds of the merchant fleet and a similar fraction of sailors were engaged in slave traffic." - http://slavenorth.com/profits.htm
"Slavery was very substantial in early Manhattan. Very early on, the populations of enslaved people began to grow. By 1740, enslaved people were one-fifth of the population of the early city, and enslaved black men were one-third of the work force." - from an interview with Anne Farrow, co-author of the book "Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery" at https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=504237... .
Northerners profited from supplying the Caribbean sugar plantations, all run on slave labor.
Even after slavery was abolished in the North, the US economy was integrated. Northern textile mills processed Southern cotton. Northern shipwrights made ships to carry Southern cotton. Southern cotton picked by slaves.
I don't think you can deny that slavery was an important part of the success of the American colonies during the time ("a few hundred years ago") that solotronics mentioned.
Have a look at the book Doing Good Better for concrete and efficient ways to help with extreme poverty, if you're interested. As residents of the developed world, we have incredible leverage to help, if we allocate funds effectively.
So, like a "surgical team"? Fred Brooks proposed that 45 years ago, and I still don't see any evidence that anyone is moving in that direction.
Everyone I know says that all programmers and managers need to read TMMM, but any time I've brought up any part of that book other than Brooks's Law, I've been immediately shot down. According to every coworker and manager I've had, this book is a classic of the field -- yet apparently has all of one useful sentence between its covers.
Well we have pair programming now, but unfortunately that has all the problems of two surgeons with none of the benefits of complimentary skills.
For a while I was paring with someone where we did take on more of a surgical team model that worked quite well. The other guy was the c++ and domain expert cranking out code and I was the unix, git, etc expert and acting as the toolmaker and "magic spell" provider.
That said, in a real surgical team some of members make considerably more money than the others so I doubt we'll see it take off in our industry.
Outside of unusual scenarios the pay ratio between the best paid member of a software team and the worst paid member probably caps out at around 4x, whereas on a surgery team it's probably more like 10x.
My ex colleagues who landed at Pivotal when we parted ways years ago described it as a sweatshop with rigid 9-5 hours and pair programming, that it was very much aggressively pushing in the blue-collar meets software development direction.
That’s essentially the “meta-programming” methodology Charles Simonyi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Simonyi) promulgated at Xerox PARC and Microsoft back in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
