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The Street
Come Cruise With Me Staff

Carnival Cruise Line's John Heald shares crew cabin secrets

John Heald serves as the public face of Carnival Corporation's namesake cruise brand.

He spends most of his days answering hundreds of questions from passengers. Heald has hundreds of thousands of people who love and praise him, but he also spends a lot of time being abused.

When something goes wrong on a Carnival ship, or even before a Carnival cruise, and the passenger does not like what has happened, they often seek help from Heald. Some are polite, but many are not.

Related: Royal Caribbean crew member shows off tiny crew cabin

Heald, for the most part, always maintains his composure even though some passengers are very mean. He bears the brunt of people angry at port changes, a poorly mixed drink, not getting their money back after a missed flight caused them to miss their cruise, and so many other things.

From time to time, however, Heald does get to visit Carnival's ships. In many cases, he hosts events on those sailings, but every time he does what he calls "walkies." These are videos where he walks around a cruise ship to show his followers areas they may not normally visit.

Sometimes, this takes him into areas that are off-limits for passengers. In this video below, Heald visited Carnival Mardia at Meyer Turku shipyard before it had been finished to take a peek inside the crew cabins.

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Visit a Carnival Mardi Gras crew cabin

Heald opened the video by explaining that he could not show a passenger cabin because a professional video crew was working in those areas. 

"I do want to show you and the brilliant crew members on board the Mardi Gras who are going to be there what a standard crew cabin is going to look like and thanks to Christine and everybody in the office all the beards who've done such a great job in designing this new cabin standard for the crew," he said.

Christine is Carnival President Christine Duffy and "The Beards" is Heald's overall term for the company's top management.

"So you come on in here you've got behind the door you've got lots of places to hang your clothes, a coat rack and there's a ladder there," he said. 

Heald also pointed out that the opening area has a sort of closet with a few different things inside.  

"The crew's got a safe, they've got the storage units over here and then they've got their phone and then they've got one two USB ports and one, two, three power units per 110 power. We're going to give every all the crew members a television and they've got their refrigerator mini bar whatever I think it's called," he added. 

Related: Carnival Cruise Line passengers push back on dining question

There is also a small desk with a chair. Across from that is a larger closet. The room also has bunk beds with each bed offering a privacy curtain. 

"Every crew cabin has the private bath facilities with the shower and the toilet and everything in there, their own air conditioning there with three different speeds of the fan and you can have it automatic or on manual, so you can just adjust it yourself now," he added. 

Heald noted that the crew does not have a lot of off time.

"Now remember they come in here, they change, they shower, they sleep, they watch their videos or whatever they want to do. Then they go back to work to serve and entertain you and I think the crew on the Mardi Gras are going to be working very hard," Heald said. "Still, I think they've got a beautiful cabin to come back to, and wow how far we've come my first cabin I shared with 14 people. 14 and that's not a joke there's no punch line to that 14 people and we had two showers between us. 

ALSO READ: Top travel agents share how to get the best price on your cruise

The cruise line, he shared, has come a long way.

"And now look where they've gone fantastic this is a standard crew cabin on board the Mardi Gras and the crew members will be really excited to welcome you aboard very soon I hope," he closed.

Are you taking a cruise or thinking about taking one? Visit our Come Cruise With Me website to have all your questions answered.

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