Top 5 Cruise Ship Facts

When you think cruise ship, you probably think vacation, romance, and all sorts of summer fun under the sun. This video is about none of that. Welcome to WatchMojo’s Top 5 Facts.

In this installment, we’re counting down the five strangest, most fascinatingfacts we could find about cruise ships. Fair warning, if you have no desire to tarnish those pleasant images we just spoke of, hit the back space button on your browser, and cruise on along.

That’s right folks, Captain Phillips ain’t the only one who’s gotta be on the lookout for pirates, especially around the Somali coast. Onboard the average cruise ship are thousands of tourists, what does that mean? [soundbite: “tourists carry lots of cash”] And while there’s absolute guarantees of that, there’s definitely bound to be an abundance of other valuable treasures. For all you married or engaged lovebirds out there, they’re probably gonna start with that precious diamond around your ring finger. Oh, and that fancy device with numbers around your wrist should reel in a few pretty pennies. Not to worry, though– it’s precisely for this reason that most cruise ships are equipped with well-furnished security armories, high-pressure hoses, and sonic weapons that can permanently damage uninvited parties outside the ship. Yes, apparently, that’s a thing.

When it comes to the problem of pollution, cruise ships contribute significantly on multiple fronts. In fact, some release the same amount of sulfur dioxide that over 10 million cars can produce from just one day of operation. If that doesn’t make you gag, get a load of this. On a standard weeklong cruise, a single ship takes in an average of 150,000- 200,000 gallons of sewage. So how do they deal with all this of this crap? The word “dump” comes to mind - by that, we mean they literally dump all that…dump…straight into the waters they so innocently they tread upon. Also, yes, this is all perfectly legal, provided that theships have surpassed a certain distance from shore. So if you’re on the ocean and things start to smell a little less fishy and a little more shitty, now you know why.

Whoa! A multi-billion dollar industry is treating their employees poorly? Did not see that coming! So what is it? Unfair wages? Little to no benefits? No break times? Nope! Far worse than any of the above. Hidden behind those welcoming smiles of crew members are poor souls, recruited mostly from third-world countries. For many ships, crew members may have paid as much as $1500 for a mere interview. Some even charge an additional $1000- $2000 for airfare and uniforms. In essence, prospective workers actually owe money to the cruiselines and their recruiters before they’re even guaranteed a job. Sickening as it sounds, it gets even worse, as new hires are often met with unrealistic workloads and deducted wages for unmet quotas. And you thought your job sucked.

Cruise vacations are not always for college spring breakers and honeymooners. Typically, the average guest is more likely to be a grandparent than a young bachelor or bachelorette, with longer trips said to have more elderly passengers. In fact, several studies have even indicated that retiring on a cruiseship can be more cost-effective than retiring in a home or community. That said, when you’re carrying that many aged and wise souls onboard a vessel, sadly, the unavoidable happens, hence why many cruise ships come equipped with their own morgues. While many liners try to keep the number of deaths that occur on their cruises under wraps, most ship morgues will typically have the capacity to hold between 1 and 3 bodies. Suddenly, haunted ships like the Queen Mary are beginning to make sense now, aren’t they?

And you thought that last one was creepy. Evidently, the number of missing people last seen or heard from aboard a cruise ship is so high, that they’ve come to be accepted as a regular occurrence. While many of these cases have been resolved, the majority of these vanishings remain an eerie mystery. With close to 200 disappearances recorded since 2000, this statistically translates to at least one missing passenger per month. What’s even more unfortunate is that since many cruise ships are hardly regulated, full-investigations from their end are mostly discretionary. All that said, you may just want stick to theme parks for your next family vacation; you’d probably have a better chance at finding someone if they get lost.

So what do you guys think? Still planning to go on that cruise in the summer? For more breezy Top 10s and W-T-F Top 5s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.