NCL Sun – Day 13 – Behind the scenes

Like many other cruise lines, NCL offers a free behind the scenes tour at & above certain loyalty levels. The tour doesn’t include engines or bridge. Most lines include the bridge but none normally want anyone around the heavy machinery.  In this case our stops were:

The Performance area

We started in the main theater with two members of the performance staff – a US woman who is responsible for all things tech -including the control booth –

from where everything is run. Production show come preprogrammed. Guests artists bring their “stuff” and her staff, if they are lucky, get a few hours to load into the system and program lights, sound, & videos for the backdrop and side screens if required. To get to the backstage area, we wound up going onside on a small portion of the aft walkway not accessible normally to the public. It is where the performance staff can warm up as well as enter the dressing area. The domain of a lovely young man, the costumes are hung in precise order, 

but, as this area is too far from backstage, most of the costumes for a particular show are taken to the back stage area with each performer having their own basket, carefully layered for the proper order. and just in case you were wondering, a long change time is 30 seconds… velcro my friends.

The Laundry –

After seeing a bit more of the backstage area and props – we headed off to the Laundry, walking down the crew stairs to Deck 1.  There are obviously industrial size washing machines –

there are fancy commercial specialty machines which iron and fold –

and the tailoring/repair room is well equipped with commercial sewing machines and sergers.

The Galley

was our final stop on the tour. The head chef has been with NCL for 26 years. He did the opening on this ship 22 years ago. Since it is both a “smaller ship” and older, there is one main galley which prepares food for both main dining rooms. Since it is positioned on Deck 5 between the two – this easily explains why you can’t, as a passenger, easily go from one to another.

we didn’t get to see the bakery which is on Deck 3, nor all the food storage areas.

There was still almost an hour left of the morning to join the knitters and stitchers before heading back to my cabin for quiet time.