A cruise ship photographer has opened up about what working at sea is really like, saying it’s “nothing like what you see on travel ads”.
For many, the thought of living on a cruise liner sounds like the ultimate escape — and some people have even traded traditional housing costs for life on the water.
Ryan Gutlidge, for instance, said he spent most of the year on a cruise ship (as of 2024) because it worked out cheaper than renting on land.
Elsewhere, Sharon Lane has chosen to spend her retirement living at Odyssey Villa Vie Residences.
But alongside holidaymakers and long-term residents, there’s an entire workforce that also calls these ships home. Recently, a cruise ship photographer posted on Reddit to describe what the job and onboard life are actually like.
They began by listing the drawbacks: long shifts that can run 10 to 12 hours, no days off “for months,” low wages, and cramped cabins that are often shared with others.
“Guests can be shockingly rude, entitled, and clueless,”
After laying out the negatives, they invited questions — and someone asked what makes it worthwhile.
“You travel around the world and it is not like guests that go to a port for one day,” the cruise ship worker replied. “When you’re making a route you go every week or every 15 days so you start making friends with locals, you have your favorite stores and of course when you have the time you can go to amazing places and see beautiful things like whales, northern lights, swimming with stingrays and sharks you know the main cities.”
“Depending of the route you can go to great places like my last contract I visited Hobbiton on NW after crossing from Alaska and passing for Hawaii.”
They also pointed out that, while customer-facing work can be rough, not every interaction is unpleasant.
“You see the best and the worst of everyone,” they shared. “One day you’re having a nice conversation with a sweet granny telling about her grandsons and the other you are trying to calm down an obese guy with a stinky breath who thinks you’re his slave.”
It’s an extreme example, but it captures the reality of dealing with the public — especially in an environment where staff and guests are living in close quarters for days at a time.