Icon of the Seas isn't just another "biggest cruise ship in the world from Royal Caribbean. It's a complete reimagining of what a cruise ship could be.
The cruise line started from a blank page. And while the ship does offer some features found on Oasis-class ships — most notably Central Park — even the areas that carryover are different.
Related: Royal Caribbean says yes to a popular passenger request
Royal Caribbean did not just redo the passenger areas. It also put a lot of thought into keeping the crew comfortable. That means many innovations and changes to the Crew Neighborhood.
Chris Wong, a Royal Caribbean crew member made a video blog as part of his "I work on a cruise ship" series showing off the ship's crew neighborhood. He takes viewers to places that passengers rarely, if ever, get to visit and gives away some behind-the-scenes secrets.
A whole new crew neighborhood
Transcript:
Ah, what's up guys? Welcome back to Chris Wong Vlogs and welcome to Icon of the Seas, the newest, the biggest and best cruise ship in the world. Now in today's video I want to show you a full in-depth tour of the crew neighborhood on board this cruise ship.
Now for those of you who don't know Icon of the Seas is slightly different to all of our other ships in our fleet because this ship is broken up into eight, nine including the crew area, nine neighborhoods which is unlike anything on board our other ships.
Now the crew neighborhood is so big it's just completely a different vibe compared to any other ship I've worked on in my entire career and I want to show you a full crew area tour video on board Icon of the Seas right now. I'm currently on the helipad or winch pad I should say. Yo, shout out to the blue boys on Icon of the Seas.
Inside the crew Windjammer buffet
The blue boys, let's go! All right, so today is crew appreciation dinner in the crew Windjammer so they have a special spread of food for us today. Welcome, welcome. Thank you.
First of all we have an ice sculpture here, look at this. I've never seen the crew mess looking so live. I am royal so on this side I can see steak, chicken, a whole bunch of other meats.
Related: Royal Caribbean crew member shares a tour of her cabin
Look at this. See all sorts of rice and bread rolls, cold meats, hot meats, cheese platters. Look at all this.
Can you believe this is all for the crew? Different sculptures of cheese there. Man, this is awesome. All the bread and the flour displays.
This is the main section over here. So this is where I have dinner every single day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
Another ice sculpture here but this is a fish. So cool. Over here, seafood salad.
And then we have more of the same in each station. Pasta. What else can I see? Yeah, oh look, we've got a whole pig over here.
And then the dessert section. Thank you Icon. Ice cream over here.
So this is where we all sit at the sides. I see plenty of tables surrounding the crew Windjammer. Chocolate fountain, cakes, cookies. Selections of breads over here. And I've got more dessert over here.
This looks so good. So obviously crew appreciation dinner doesn't happen every day but every so often when it's a special occasion where you can expect the cruise line to put on something like this for us. What is this? Look at that.
Huge chocolate display of cake. I've got all these mad desserts. Like what is this? And then at the sides we have our juice stations and coffees.
And as you can get over here, we have more seating over here. There is definitely not a shortage of where we can sit. So that is the crew windjammer.
Crew members get their own cafe
Now let me walk through to the crew cafe also known as Java Cafe. So you can see here now this is basically a chill out area. So this is the main section where we can all sit, relax, chill when we're not working.
We have a coffee section here. We can get cold drinks, bottled drinks, order coffee fresh. Look how nice this is.
You will never get anything like this on another Royal Caribbean class of ship. This is only on Icon class. It's closed right now but we have a crew shop as well.
Only open during certain hours of the day but this is basically, I'll give you a sneak peek, it's like a market where we can buy snacks, toiletries, ice cream, essentials, anything that we need for the cabin. I do like buying instant noodles and chips. You can buy laundry detergent, kind of things like that.
Basically a small shop. But let me walk over to one of the other lounges. We have some board games here.
Monopoly, Uno, Screens everywhere which is really nice. And then we have, I'm not even really sure what you would call this. I guess this is all part of the crew cafe.
Just cool chill-out areas, more tv screens. Can you believe this is all for the crew? So, let me continue, so we have pool, cruise bar over here, hey what's up, hey what's up, how you doing, hey guys, what's up, what's up, over here, this is where we charge our SeaPass cards with money, and then on the other side we have ATM machines over there, hey what's going on, shout out to my family, shout out to the Philippines, hey what's up?
Alright crew gaming lounge, to be honest, I have spent very little time in here, crew gaming lounge, Xbox, PlayStation, more TV screens over here, see this is cool, and the lighting mood in here, the atmosphere is very dark, look at that, PS5's just chilling there, oh no way, GTA, NBA 2K, so yeah if you fancy playing video games, this is our crew gaming area, oh I forgot to show you the crew barbers, honestly there's so much in this crew area, in this crew neighborhood.
Sign up for the Come Cruise With Me newsletter to save money on your next (or your first) cruise.
Icon's crew has lots of special spaces
I forget what's here sometimes, let me give you the full tour, sorry dude, what's up guys, what's up, if you exit and walk your way, just before you get back into the crew Windjammer, on my left we have the crew barber shop, it's probably closed now, this is the crew barbers, hey man, this is cool, yeah just making a video, so you see it's actually a nice little space and I've had one haircut here already which is pretty nice.
Now there are some areas that are still confidential so I can't show you like a full in-depth crew area tour, so I have moved up 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, this is not the main crew bar but this is a cool, another chill-out area, so we can order drinks here, chill out mode, nice vibes, not as not as loud or hectic as the main crew bar but yeah this is actually somewhere nice you can go.
And then if I make my way out, this is the icon of the siege training room, so this is where us crew members have to do all of our trainings, especially when we sign on to the ship, so it's kind of like a conference room setup. I had many many hours spent in here learning all the things that we need.
Related: Royal Caribbean crew member shares a tour of her cabin
So before I go up to deck seven in the crew neighborhood which is where the crew bar is, I've now come down to deck one and I'm stood outside the crew gym, or in this case they call it the crew fitness center, and I'll give you a little sneak peek as to what it looks like inside, how nice 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 I've worked on,
I very much like the look of this, it's very visually pleasing, I look like an icon, obviously, I'm dressed in my work uniform, I'm not ready to work out today, but this is so nice, nice combination of machines although the free weight section is very limited, but I do have access to the guest gym if I rather use that, but if I don't have access to the guest gym I would definitely say the crew gym is very very sufficient.
Want the latest cruise news and deals? Sign up for the Come Cruise With Me newsletter.
The crew bar is a popular spot
I've now come up to deck seven from deck three, so I just took the stairs up, again confidential area so I couldn't show you everything, but this is the main crew bar on Icon of the Seas, so normally every evening this is where crew members will get together after we finish work, grab ourselves a drink, it's kind of like a, I don't know, it's kind of like a cool bar sort of setup, similar to the English pub but not quite, but yeah look, very spacious so we can order drinks here, crew discount prices.
And then through this door here is the smoking area so let me just give you a quick shot I do not personally smoke, but it's okay for me to, hello, hello, hi babe, crew patio this is the smoking area which also gives us access to the helipad, or shall I call it a winch pad so only helicopters can hover over and lower the winch, they can't actually land on 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 very forward of the ship so this is a very exclusive area here, crew only, they even have chairs here for us to relax, well how cool is this, and this is where champagne smashed during the naming ceremony, and then you have a view of either the sea or wherever we're docked in port today.
And for the purpose of this tour video I might as well just walk through the other side as well just to show you so here is the other side of the seating area
I love all the decorations here look how packed it is, it's a very rare occasion I get to see the crew mess this busy when they pull out all the amazing food we have a wash station over here, this is where we take our dirty plates and cutlery and this ladies and gentlemen is the crew and that pretty much sums up my Icon of the Seas crew neighborhood tour.
ALSO READ: Top travel agents share how to get the best price on your cruise
What did you think? is this pretty cool or not? this is by far the best crew areas I have seen on any cruise ship I've worked on, I enjoy spending a lot of time in the crew neighborhood 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 comment like and subscribe, I've been Chris Wong coming to you from Icon of the Seas, see you in the next one
Are you taking a cruise or thinking about taking one? Visit our Come Cruise With Me website to have all your questions answered.
