Have you ever been on a cruise? I recently went on my first cruise, and it was on one of the biggest ships you’ll find. The Allure of the Seas — the second in Royal Caribbean’s Oasis class and formerly the biggest cruise ship in the world — is effectively a floating town with a capacity for 5,400 passengers and 2,300 crew members.
The experience aside, the cruise also offered an opportunity to learn more about the inner workings of a Royal Caribbean ship. Considering the logistical operation required to ensure smooth sailing, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pas up.
From the galleys that provide thousands of meals in a single sailing to how the ship handles provisions to the engine control room and even a quick trip to the bridge, here’s a behind-the-scenes tour of Allure Of The Seas, captured on the iPhone 16 Pro.
Feeding the 5,000+ passengers
The tour kicked off in Main Dining Room 5, and a lack of clear instructions left Michael Fisher — aka MrMobile — scrambling to join the group before the tour began. It’s worth noting that if you reserve this tour, the operators have pictures and cabin numbers for everyone booked on it.
Below is the smallest of the three dining rooms (it takes over 1,000 staff members to ensure passengers are fed every evening).
After signing a waiver form, it was time to kick things off with a tour of the kitchens, of which there are multiple across several levels. To say this is a commercial operation would be an understatement; the kitchens are essentially the heart of the ship and responsible for all of the food served across the Main Dining Rooms, specialty restaurants, and the various vendors on board.
It’s a mammoth effort involving hundreds of staff and a refined process where everything runs like clockwork. There are different grills for different types of meat to prevent cross-contamination and ensure that it’s cooked to a proper temperature. Meanwhile, the bakery delivers all the bread, rolls, baked goods, and cookies served on board. It’s worth noting, however, that the pizza dough is sourced externally, although the bakery can provide dough when needed.
I’ve been in a few commercial kitchens, but nothing remotely comes close to this scale. Hundreds of assistants, cooks, and executive chefs prepare meals around the clock. There are giant vats containing thousands of liters of French onion soup and tomato sauce, and they have to make several more when it’s on the menu.
Feeding 5,000-plus passengers — let alone the thousands of crew onboard — requires a lot of processes, a specific system, and many provisions. The latter is where our tour took us next.
The infamous I-95 corridor
If you’ve been on a cruise ship, you’ll know that passenger staircases are wide, carpeted, and comfortable. As we traverse the kitchens and make our way to the bottom of the ship, I notice that the crew staircases are the exact opposite. This theme continues throughout the tour: As you might expect, the passenger-facing areas are decorated well, while the crew-only areas are far less glamorous.
Having made our way downstairs, we’re on the I-95. No, not the freeway you’re used to, but something akin to a cruise equivalent. Like its land-based U.S. namesake, the I-95 is the main throughway and how provisions and crew move around the ship. As you can imagine, it’s somewhat chaotic if you’re not used to it, and it was fairly busy in the middle of day three. Considering this was an inadvertent sea day due to 40-plus mph winds preventing us from docking in Nassau and the boat was almost at capacity, it felt far less chaotic than I would have expected.
The I-95 is also where all provisions are stored. There are separate boxes for different types of meat, vegetables, fish, poultry, and other frozen goods. Each is temperature-controlled to ensure that the produce doesn’t go bad. That seems to be a somewhat rare occurrence, as the ship usually only stocks enough produce for a week’s worth of cruising. As delightful as refrigerator boxes are, I quickly lost interest in the details in this section and instead marveled at the sheer size of the operation behind one of the biggest cruise ships in the world.
Into the engine control room
Down the I-95 and to the left, we find ourselves at the Engine Control Room, the mechanical heart of the ship. At sea, there is always at least one engineer in this room, keeping an eye on the six engines that power this 200,000-plus-ton ship through the waters.
As we slowly cruise back to Miami at a speed of 4 knots, we’re only using two of the six engines. An alarm goes off, but while some of us appear concerned, the engineers aren’t and quickly resolve it. There are technical drawings and diagrams across the various walls and on the conference table in the middle of the room, as well as an array of screens that display a variety of essential data metrics.
Any engineer knows the value of accurate data, and the engine control room is set up to provide exactly that. I’m not very nautical, but listening to my fellow tour members, it’s clear that it’s an impressive setup. I love numbers, and the engine control room has many vital ones, like ship speed, depth, and wind velocity.
Up to the bridge
Have you ever wondered where the bridge is on a cruise ship? It’s the place where the officers reside and drive the boat from, so you’d think the bridge would be in a secluded part of the ship. Surprisingly, the opposite is true; it’s behind a crew-only door at one end of a passenger deck. The door looks no different from any other door in a corridor, except that behind this door lies a sacrosanct part of any ship. We had security with us who enabled access to the bridge, and there are likely many precautions to stop unwanted access.
The bridge is beautiful and a key reason that I booked this tour. The captain referred to it as the world’s greatest office, and given the impressive bank of windows that provided a stunning view directly ahead, I can see why someone would love this career. Beneath us in front of the bridge, we can see the helipad, as well as the deck area that’s only accessible by the crew.
The bank of windows makes sense, as it’s crucial for visibility. At 1,181 feet long and weighing 225,000 tons, the Allure of the Seas is an enormous ship, so visibility is key. Turning it around isn’t an easy feat, and at a rate of roughly 3 degrees per minute, it takes around two hours for the ship to perform a complete U-turn.
Bitten by the cruising bug
The bridge mostly made the tour worthwhile overall — although it’s not something I would likely do again. But the icing on the cake was meeting the captain. He’s from Sweden and has been with Royal Caribbean for 20 years. The first and second officers have also been with the company for years.
Beyond this tour, there are so many things to do on the 18-deck cruise ship. From the pools on Deck 15 to the casino on Deck 4 to the boardwalk on Deck 6 to Central Park on Deck 8, three days wasn’t enough to truly experience everything.
I’m already planning my next cruise. The only question is, which ship will it be on, and which phone from our best smartphone list will I take next?
