Cruise ship crew responds to customers who plan to hide to re-embark: “It happens more often than you think”

Many times when you go on vacation, you simply don’t want to go home and back to the grind. We’ve all been there. But if you’ve ever thought a cruise ship might be an easy target for an extended break, it’s probably best to think again.

As an enormous floating city of sorts, surely there must be some hidden spots where you could hide once your fellow passengers have said their farewells? There’s a general consensus about how likely you are to get away with it, although there is also the odd exception.

A Huffpost article compiled messages from Reddit users on this particular subject, with some providing eye-catching tales.

The cruise passengers that got extended vacations

Perhaps the one that most stands out is from one cruise worker who claims it happens more often than you’d think, “about once a month/every other month”. Still, considering how many people spend time on such ships during that period, that’s a minuscule amount.

There is a variety of colorful stories from workers and travellers alike.

They include staying on the ship longer than permitted by accident (so one user says…), drunkenly getting stuck in a supply closet, unsuccessfully hiding under a bed after being sent to the Brig, an on-board jail cell, for ripping a table off the wall, and hiding from family members after getting high on acid. The list goes on.

But those shenanigans all appear to have one thing in common: any attempts to stay on the cruise ship were unsuccessful.

How cruise ships track you on board

Other cruise ship workers revealed that not disembarking when you’re supposed to is an almost impossible task due to the way passengers are closely tracked.

“We will find you. We know you’re on the ship. And we all want you to get off so we can take a short nap before we have to do it all over again in a few hours.

“You physically can’t get away with it. We know who is onboard and who is not.”

But some cruise ships can have several thousand passengers on them, surely one could easily slip through the net? Apparently not.

“We give you a card upon check-in and that card is scanned the minute you step on board. Additionally, it is scanned when you leave the ship for either complete debarkation or excursions,” explains another cruise worker Reddit user.

“At the end of your cruise, debarkation starts around 7:00am. Come 10:00am, we receive a list of people who have not yet had their card scanned. (It’s impossible to get off the boat without getting your card scanned, unless you jump into the water).

“Then a manhunt begins to get you guys off the ship so we can put a new 2,200-2,600 people on it.

“We do not start boarding new passengers until every card from the previous voyage has been scanned.”

So there you go. You can run, you can hide, but eventually they’ll get you. Almost always, anyway.

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