hey there, thanks for giving your time to reply to these posts!
I'm just interested at the moment, intrigued at the possibility of doing it in the FUTURE, cos obviously I'm too young right now.
I have a few questions though, some of which I can't think of right now so I'll write another time!
First of all, obviously you'll get a lot of questions about how much time you can spend it ports. Specifically, did you have time to act almost as a tourist in some ports? Where you able to properly explore the areas you were in, or is it really almost impossible to actually see much of the places that you go?
The second question is about job competition. Clearly a job on a cruise liner is a dream job for many people, so is there a lot of competition for jobs? How would cruise liners pick who to employ out of a list of non-skilled applicants? Would it be better to train say as a bartender before applying, and therefore have a better chance of entry?
The third question is about the holiday time. You said that you get a couple of weeks of unpaid vacation for a 6 month contract. Would this vacation have to be on the ship? Or could it be taken while at a port, hence using the vacation time to explore the area? (Kind of linking into first question there) Would you be able to fly home and back for that vacation?
My next question is about personal space; I have this vision that on this huge cruise ship I'd be able to find a special personal place that most people wouldn't know about, and therefore be able to spend some personal time there. Would you think that things like that would occur?
My final question is surrounding computer and internet access on-board. Would workers be permitted to bring laptops with them? And would the internet on the ships generally be available while sailing?

I realise quite a lot of the answers to these questions depends on which cruise-liner you apply for, but I'm just asking in a general sense what the answer would be.

Thank you SO much for your help!
Michael