Icon of the Seas isn't just another Royal Caribbean “world's largest cruise ship.” It's a complete reimagining of what a cruise ship could be.
The cruise line started from scratch, and while the ship offers some features found on Oasis-class ships (notably Central Park), even the areas that remain are different.
Royal Caribbean has not only renovated the passenger areas, but has also put a lot of effort into maintaining the comfort of the crew. That means a lot of innovations and changes in the crew quarters.
Royal Caribbean crew member Chris Wong made a vlog as part of his “Working on a Cruise Ship” series in which he shows off the crew’s neighborhood on the ship. He takes viewers to places that passengers rarely, if ever, visit and reveals some behind-the-scenes secrets.
A brand new crew neighborhood
Transcription:
Oh, what's up guys? Welcome back to Chris Wong Vlogs and welcome to Icon of the Seas, the newest, biggest, and best cruise ship in the world. In today's video I want to show you a full, detailed tour of the crew quarters onboard this cruise ship.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Icon of the Seas is slightly different than all the other ships in our fleet because this ship is divided into eight, nine including the crew area, nine neighborhoods, which is unlike anything on board our other ships.
Now, the crew area is so big that it's a completely different atmosphere compared to any other ship I've worked on throughout my career and I want to show you a full video of the crew area tour onboard Icon of the Seas right now. I'm currently on the helipad or winch platform, I should say. Shout out to the blue boys on Icon of the Seas.
Inside the Windjammer crew buffet
Blue boys, let's go! All right, today is the crew appreciation dinner on the Windjammer, so you have a special meal for us today. Welcome, welcome. Thank you.
First of all, we have an ice sculpture here, check this out. I've never seen the crew so animated. I'm royalty, so on this side I can see steaks, chicken and a bunch of other meats.
Related: Royal Caribbean crew member shares a tour of her cabin
Look at this. There are all kinds of rice and rolls, cold cuts, hot meats, cheese boards. Look at all this.
Can you believe all this is for the crew? There are different cheese sculptures there. Man, this is amazing. All the bread and flour samples.
This is the main section. This is where I eat dinner every day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Another ice sculpture here, but it's a fish. How cool. Here, seafood salad.
And then we have more of the same at every station. Pasta. What else can I see? Yeah, oh, look, we have a whole pig here.
And then the dessert section. Thanks Icon. Ice creams here.
So this is where we all sit on the sides. I see a lot of tables around the Windjammer crew. Chocolate fountain, cakes, cookies. Selection of breads over here. And I have more desserts over here.
This looks pretty good. Obviously, the crew appreciation dinner doesn't happen every day, but every now and then, when it's a special occasion you might expect the cruise line to put something like this together for us. What is this? Check that out.
Huge display of chocolate cakes. I have all these crazy desserts. What is this? And then on the sides, we have our juice and coffee stations.
And as you can see, we have more seating here. There's definitely no shortage of places to sit. So that's the crew sailboat.
Crew members have their own cafeteria.
Now, let me walk over to the crew café, also known as Java Café. As you can see, this is basically a lounge area. This is the main section where we can all sit, relax, and take a break when we are not working.
Here we have a coffee section. We can get cold drinks, bottled drinks and order freshly brewed coffee. Look how nice this is.
You will never get anything like this on another Royal Caribbean class ship. This is only available on the Icon class. It is closed at the moment, but we also have a crew workshop.
It's only open during certain hours of the day, but basically, I'll give you a rundown, it's like a market where we can buy snacks, toiletries, ice cream, basic necessities, everything we need for the cabin. I like to buy instant noodles and potato chips. You can buy laundry detergent and stuff like that.
It's basically a small shop, but let me go into one of the other rooms. We have some board games here.
Monopoly, Uno, screens everywhere, which is really cool. And then we have, I'm not even sure what you'd call this. I guess this is all part of the crew cafe.
Just cool chill out areas, more TV screens. Can you believe all this is for the crew? Well, let me continue, we have a pool, cruise bar here, hello, hello, how are you?, hello guys, how are you, how are you?, this is where we load our SeaPass cards with money, and then on the other side, we have ATMs there, hello, what's up?, hello to my family, hello to the Philippines, hello, how are you?
Alright, crew gaming room, to be honest I’ve spent very little time in here, crew gaming room, Xbox, PlayStation, more TV screens in here, look this is cool, and the lighting environment in here, the atmosphere is very dark, look at that, the PS5 is just chilling in there, oh no way, GTA, NBA 2K, so yeah if you feel like playing video games this is our crew gaming area, oh I forgot to show you the crew barbers, honestly there’s a lot in this crew area, in this crew neighborhood.
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Icon's crew has many special spaces
Sometimes I forget what's in here, let me give you a full tour, sorry buddy, what's up guys, what's up, if you go outside and walk around, right before you head back to the Windjammer crew, to my left we have the crew barber shop, it's probably closed right now, this is the crew barber shop, hey man this is cool, yeah I'm just making a video, so you can see it's actually a nice little space and I've already gotten my hair cut in here which is pretty nice.
Now there are some areas that are still confidential so I can’t show you a full in-depth tour of the crew area so I’ve moved one deck now, so that was deck two where we were before, now we’re on deck three and we have another crew bar here which is called the crew nightclub, so this is not the main one, this is not the main crew bar but it’s a cool area to chill out so we can order drinks here, chill mode, good vibes, not as loud or hectic as the main crew bar, but yeah, this is a nice place that you can go to.
And then if I go out, this is the icon for the siege training room, so this is where us crew members have to do all our training, especially when we check in to the ship, so it's like a conference room. I spent a lot of hours here learning all the things that we need to.
Related: Royal Caribbean crew member shares a tour of her cabin
So before we go up to deck seven in the crew quarters, which is where the crew bar is, I've now gone down to deck one and I'm standing outside the crew gym, or in this case they call it the crew fitness center, and I'm going to give you a little sneak peek of what it looks like inside, how cute is this. Can you believe this is the crew gym? It's so bright and colorful compared to some of the other gyms and the other ships that I've worked on.
I really like the look of this, it's very pleasing to the eye, I look like an icon, obviously I'm dressed in my work uniform, I'm not ready to work out today but this is very nice, a good mix of machines, although the free weights section is very limited but I do have access to the guest gym if I prefer to use that, but if I don't have access to the guest gym I would definitely say the crew gym is very sufficient.
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The crew bar is a popular spot.
Now I’ve gone up to deck seven from deck three, so I just walked up the stairs, again it’s a confidential area so I can’t show you everything, but this is the main crew bar on Icon of the Seas, so normally every night this is where the crew members gather after we’re done working, we’ll have a drink, it’s like a, I don’t know, it’s like some kind of cool bar, similar to the English pub but not quite, but yeah, look, very spacious so we can order drinks here, discounted prices for the crew.
And then through this door here is the smoking area, so let me give you a quick idea, I personally don't smoke but it's fine by me, hello, hello, hello babe, crew patio, this is the smoking area which also gives us access to the helipad, or should I call it winch pad so only helicopters can fly over and lower the winch, they can't actually land here but how nice is the sky today, wow look at that.
And then if I look up here, we have the bridge and the Aquadome, and this is way forward of the ship, so it's a very exclusive area here, just for the crew, they even have chairs here for us to relax, well, how cool is this, and this is where the champagne was broken during the naming ceremony, and then you have a view of the sea or wherever we are docked in the port today.
And for the purpose of this tour video, I might as well walk around the other side just to show you, so here's the other side of the seating area.
I love all the decorations in here, look how busy it is, it's a very rare occasion that I get to see the crew so busy when they bring out all the amazing food, we have a washing station here, this is where we take our dirty dishes and silverware and these ladies and gentlemen are the crew and that pretty much sums up my tour of the Icon of the Seas crew neighborhood.
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What did you think? Is it cool or not? This is by far the best crew quarter I have seen on any cruise ship I have worked on. I enjoy spending a lot of time in the crew quarter and all of us crew members love it too, so in the meantime, if you enjoyed today's video, thank you so much for watching, commenting, liking and subscribing. I'm Chris Wong writing to you from Icon of the Seas. I'll see you next time.
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