What Happens During Turnaround Day on Cruise Ships

A busy turnaround day in New Orleans

At the end of a cruise, after we waved goodbye to our guests, we had just over two hours to finish preparations for the next cruise. That meant two hours to clean and reset all the staterooms and public areas, load hundreds of pieces of luggage, take care of any business awaiting us in our home port, onboard hundreds of passengers, and prepare ourselves — mentally and literally — to do it all over again.

In a way, there were two turnaround day experiences: the shipboard side and the guest-facing side. Nevertheless, they each began in the same way, at 4 o'clock in the morning. In an effort to give ourselves as much time as possible, the turnaround day schedule started an hour earlier than the normal schedule (something that was particularly painful on those itineraries featuring a time zone change).

For the guests, breakfast was pretty much business as usual, albeit with a limited menu to expedite the process. While they were downstairs eating, the housekeepers were upstairs cleaning and resetting the rooms. (Trade secret: On most cruise lines, when you request a king bed, you'll actually get two twin beds connected with a bed bridge. This makes it easy for a room with two beds on one cruise to quickly turn into a room with one bed on the next. Having slept on both, I can assure you the difference is barely noticeable.)

Meanwhile, any officers who weren't actively resetting rooms would be outside coordinating departures. Depending on the guests' taxi request time, this process could also begin as early as 4 o'clock. The bulk of the guests left by motorcoaches bound for the airport, though, which could make for a frenetic few minutes of funneling dozens of people from the ship to luggage claim to the coaches, all of which were on tight schedules. On a good turnaround day, this would be the most hectic part.

By 9 o'clock, all the guests had departed, and the focus turned back to resetting the rooms. At this point, everyone became housekeepers: From the dining room stewards to the officers, we all pitched in to make beds, restock amenities, and set up special treats in the suites. For excursions and cruise directors, the primary focus was putting personalized welcome packets in each room and reorganizing the port information tables, but I've also had to cry over my fair share of duvets. At some point during all of this, I would also close out the last cruise (i.e., send data to the home office and send invoices to the guests) before heading to the hotel.

Remember when I said there were two turnaround day experiences? This is where they start to diverge. While everyone else loaded cargo deliveries and put finishing touches on the ship, the excursions and/or cruise director would go to the hotel to pick up the new guests. This pre-cruise meeting served two purposes. For many guests, we were the first "face" of the company they saw after only communicating online or by phone, so we were there to address their questions and complaints. This was also our first and last chance to alert the shipboard team to any changes they needed to make before guests boarded — things like no-shows or accessibility needs. If there was only one hotel (and one ship!), this was usually a cut-and-dry process; however, we typically had guests in at least two hotels, which meant a lot of coordination and a lot of running back and forth.

As we were arriving at the hotel, the luggage trucks were usually arriving at the ship. While some cruise lines let guests embark early and wait in public areas, our goal was to have every stateroom ready by the time guests got onboard. Placing the luggage was usually the last step, and, after each suitcase had been deposited in its new home, the onboard crew would be able to have lunch and a quick break before the cruise officially started.

Only then was I able to dispatch the motorcoaches ferrying guests from hotel to ship. Once we were all back onboard, we entered something of an "in between" period, during which guests ate lunch or explored the ship while crewmembers were on standby to make last-minute adjustments. These could be anything from delivering extra clothes hangers to tracking down wayward luggage. There also tended to be a final flurry of communication between the ship and the home office, as we reported things like the final guest manifest and confirmed things such as whether the random person who showed up claiming to be the new onboard entertainer was, in fact, the onboard entertainer (true story). We would also get our egress station assignments.

Egress — the guests' safety drill — is another thing that every cruise line does just a little bit differently. Some do it entirely in-person; others do it entirely virtually; we did a little bit of both. The guests would watch the safety video and try on their lifebelts in their staterooms, then report to their assigned muster stations.

And then we could get underway.