Restocking a Cruise Ship

During an interesting peek inside Royal Caribbean International’s Oasis of the Seas cruise ship, the media got an in-depth look at what it takes to restock the entire ship between sailings.

According to Scott Mayerowitz of the Associated Press, the crew of the Oasis of the Seas had roughly 10 hours between two sailings to turn over 2,700 staterooms, unload and load suitcases, remove trash and load the vessel with a week’s worth of food for the 6,000-plus passengers and employees traveling on the vessel.

Royal Caribbean Associate Vice President Raimund Gschaider said the work that goes into making the ship the luxury experience people pay to enjoy, “I'm amazed every single time you do it. It's an orchestration of all different operations. Everything needs to be fine-tuned down to the last minute.”

When one of the Royal Caribbean ships leaves for a voyage, it takes everything it will need for the entire journey and more, as the destinations the vessel visits will not have the quality or quantity of supplies needed.

To make sure the ship has everything, officials study past trends and adjust the totals each week to take into consideration the age and nationalities of the passengers onboard and the events taking place during the trip. If a big sporting event is scheduled, as an example, the ship’s crew stocks more beer and hot dogs.

Check out a list of some of the items brought onboard for one sailing.

• Lobster tails: 5,400

• Ice cream cones: 21,000

• Tomatoes: 8,800 pounds

• Lettuce: 9,000 pounds

• Potatoes: 14,800 pounds

• Apples: 2,600 pounds

• Bananas: 5,400 pounds

• Eggs: 46,800

• Milk: 2,622 gallons

• Chicken: 19,723 pounds

• Beef: 18,314 pounds

• Fish: 7,070 pounds

• Hot dogs: 10,680

• Beer: 31,900 bottles and 900 cans

• Soda: 16,900 cans

• Vodka: 820 bottles

• Whiskey: 179 bottles

• Scotch: 293 bottles

• Rum: 765 bottles

• White wine: 3,360 bottles

• Red wine: 2,776 bottles

The vessel also stock non-food items as well, such us 10,272 rolls of toilet paper, 1,000 new light bulbs, 30 replacement televisions, 1,899 pounds of coffee and 23 gallons of hand sanitizer.

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