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How To Meet The Most Interesting People On A Cruise
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Jan 28, 2025
Who is the most interesting person I have met on a cruise ship? A Celebrity? One of the crew? The captain? Or someone else? I talk about what I think is one of the best, enjoyable, revealing and life-changing part of going on a cruise..and why ABOUT TIPS FOR TRAVELLERS: If you want to get cruising right, Tips For Travellers makes it easy to plan and have the incredible cruise experiences you dream of every time. All my Tips For Travellers advice, tips and tricks tips draw on everything that I have learnt on the 77 cruises I have done to date. BUY MY CRUISE-THEMED T-SHIRTs ————————————————- Check out my T-Shirt range: http://bit.ly/TFTStore SUPPORT TIPS FOR TRAVELLERS ————————————————————— Become a Channel Member and get perks: https://www.tipsfortravellers.com/Join Become a Patron on Patreon and get perks: https://www.patreon.com/tipsfortravellers Make a donation: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=V9STJGYSEMGLJ Buy my book “Cruise Traveler’s Handbook: USA Amazon https://amzn.to/2YVFmG4 and https://amzn.to/3tzIxBn UK Amazon https://amzn.to/3oXbzYc and https://amzn.to/3qawqIQ FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA
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Have you met anyone famous on a cruise? That's a question I'm asked over and over again
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Many, by the way, is the answer, and I'll come to that a little bit later. However, the question I wish more people would ask me and other people who go cruising is
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who is the most interesting person you've met on a cruise? The answer to that is much more
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dare I say, interesting as you'll find out if you stick around. I'm Gary Bembridge
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and join me as we go people spotting on a cruise. I've been on many cruises and travel solo on a lot of them
0:33
And like many people that cruise over the years, I found that meeting people ends up being one of the most enjoyable
0:39
and as you sometimes find out life-changing parts of the cruise experience
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As this comment recently left on my channel says, it got me thinking that cruising is not just about the ship
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it's not just about the destinations, about the dining, about the entertainment
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but it's also as much about meeting people. and actually making friends
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Now, the problem that I have is I'm not a particularly social person, and I'm actually pretty introverted, believe that or not
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And I don't find it that easy to strike up conversations with strangers, which is kind of crazy, because it's actually really easy on a cruise
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People kind of want to talk and get to know people. Now, my desire to meet celebrities and famous people on cruises
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actually drove me to get over that natural reticence. I found it's not that difficult, actually, to meet well-known people on a cruise
1:30
because they're often there for things like naming ceremonies, they're on maiden voyages
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or as I found, a lot of the Shakedown cruises that I've been invited on, either because they've been the godmother or just because the cruise line wants celebrities to be seen on board
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or to be talking about the cruise. Now, on the more regular cruises, there are also lots of celebrities because they're guest speakers
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there's guest entertainers, they have partnerships with the restaurants or other parts of the cruise line
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And I found that they're pretty accessible because they're actually there to be seen
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and they're there to meet people, and probably no doubt it helps feed their ego with all these
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people wanting to meet them. I've been to many, many ship naming ceremonies. I've had the likes
2:08
of Queen Elizabeth II for Pino Britannia, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall for Saga Spirit
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Discovery, Sarah Bricent and Seaborne Encore, Sophia Lorenne for MSC Presiosa and so on. I've got to
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meet quite a lot of them, and I've also got to meet other well-known British and Hollywood actresses
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broadcasters like Celia Imrey celebrity chefs like UK Marco P White writers and journalists like Terry Waite David Frost and so on I even dined with Mickey Arristen Now his father created Carnival Cruise Corporation
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and he still owns much of it. This happened when I was on Siebun Encore and the Maiden Voyage
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in Singapore. I've even met Richard Branson on the preview of the UK Virgin Voyages, Scarlet Lady
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before the whole pandemic thing kicked off. However, I realised often meeting these famous people, these celebrities
3:02
that while it's great, you have bragging rights to have met them. People are impressed
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But you don't really get very much from meeting celebrities and famous people at all
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Other than the bragging rights, I've got so much more from meeting the so-called normal people on a cruise
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One main way I've got around my natural reticence to initiate conversations with people
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is by not doing it at all. And the reason for that is a lot of people
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I've met are people like you, people who watch or listen to my cruise content
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They come up to me on a cruise, say, are you, Gary? We watch your channel. And I've met some really great people this way
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and really, really interesting people. So my natural reservation is completely thrown aside by that
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For example, Jim and Cammy, I met them on Oceania, insignia in the Caribbean
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We spoke about no-flight cruising, smaller ship cruising and we had a great time to get the finding out about our careers and so on
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there was actually another gym who i met on seaborne encore on a Mediterranean cruise where i got
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to learn about his perspective on luxury cruising we compared lines and experiences i met a fantastic
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family on celebrity equinox in the caribbean doing a multi-generational tour and trip and they
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spoke about preparing getting tips and a whole bunch of new ideas about packing and stuff like that
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i also met a fantastic lady on holland america zeda and panama just as we were heading into shutdown
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where we spoke about excursions and tips for ports that were coming up. So absolutely fascinating, fantastic people that watch the channel come up to me and I really
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get to know them. The problem, though, is many of the people who are on cruises with me only come up to me
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at the very end of the cruise, so perhaps at the farewell party or even when we're disembarking
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And that's such a pity because I've met those incredible and interesting people much earlier
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on on the cruise and had a chance to get to know them and spend some time with them. So if you are ever on a cruise with me please come up and say hello very early on because I learned so much more about how I can improve what I do by meeting passionate cruises like you And I learn so much not only about what you want but I learn so much more about cruise lines and tips The other way that I got to meet interesting people is by getting involved and doing things like excursions for example but actually the best
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way that I've met people is at the casino. Playing blackjack is one of the best. That is where I
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met Vera. Now, Vera is in her 80s when I first met her. She had worked as a young girl on Cunard
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Queen Elizabeth. She was a hairstylist, working on ladies in first class right back in the late 50s
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All I found very interesting and inspiring about her is she decided, from that experience
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as she wanted to be one of those ladies traveling in the kind of first class being pampered
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So she got off the ship, she started a hairdressing salon, she eventually built a whole chain of those, sold those
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and now constantly throughout the year, cruises on Kynard in the best cabins
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whining and dining, meeting people, and I found her absolutely fascinating. What I learned from her is the power of ambition and drive
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She saw something, she wanted it, and she got down and made it happen
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And it was just wonderful seeing her, and we've come across her on quite a few cruises on KNOD over the years
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just embracing and enjoying life. I find that very inspirational. Another way that I've actually met a lot of people early on in the cruise is at the mustard drill
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which, of course, this may change moving forwards as the whole mustard drill has been reinvented
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But I've met some phenomenal people who've all come together, put our life jackets on
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and sitting next to people striking up conversations. One of the most interesting people that I met
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was on Silver Sea, Silver Whisp on a Baltic cruise. Sitting next to us were Hal and Meg Smith
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And we started talking and discovered that their daughter Elizabeth was one of the six singers who were on board that particular cruise
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We heard the story over the course of the cruise, how as a little youngster, she had wanted to be an entertainer
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And now here she was, after having studied on board a ship, fine-tuning her expertise and her performance skills
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She even did a one-woman show one night talking about all her life growing up
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And we've actually kept in touch with Howell and Meg and also watched Elizabeth's career grow
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as she's gone for auditions and appeared on television and in films
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And eventually one day we're going to be able to say we knew the famous Elizabeth Smith
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when she was just working on ships. What have I learned from the people
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that I've met at Mustardrills? What I've learned is that everybody has a story, everybody has something interesting about them and getting to know people
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through the course of the crews you are definitely enriched by it Of course what I also realized with the experience of Elizabeth you need to think of the crew as people who have incredible stories So over the years I also made more of an effort to get to know the crew members that I interact with
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and you'll be surprised at just how fascinating and interesting their lives are
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As someone, as I mentioned, like me, that's not that great of striking up conversations, I learned to take advantage of being seated next to people or at a table with people
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because you have to talk to them. And some of our closest friends today we met through sitting next to them on tables dining
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Many of those have actually been on Kuhnard itself. Rebecca and Diane from New Jersey, we see them whenever they're in the UK, the US
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We coordinate our trips ahead of time, we talk a lot. And we have learned so much from that relationship
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Ben and Sarah, we met on a cruise once out of Singapore. We watched them as newlyweds as they were on the cruise growing up
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and we've seen them have two kids and their kids grow and develop. I've learned that some of your closest friends through life, of course, we meet doing things that we all like
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whether it's at school or clubs or work or whatever. So why not out at sea
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There are people there who have the same interests, the same passions, the same desires
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And I've learned that you can actually meet phenomenal friends and really interesting people
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by simply having the potluck of sitting next to them. One of the people that I met on board that many, many people have been most impressed that I met
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reinforce a lot of what I've been talking about so far. I've been on many behind-the-scenes tours and bridge tours
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They're all fairly standard and they're all pretty much the same, except when I met Captain
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Kate McCu. Now, she was the first North American female captain of a big ship, and she's a trailblazer
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She also has her famous cat, Bug Naked, whose Instagram famous. Everybody went crazy on social media, all the people I knew went absolutely just crazy
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when I said that I'd met her and the cat. But as great as that was, I still found she was interesting
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it was very impressive. But the much more interesting people that I have met are the other
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passengers, not necessarily the names. I've been inspired by them. I've been challenged by them
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I've made friends. So I have met a lot of well-known people on board. I've met celebrities on
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board, and that is fantastic. It's bragging rights. Meeting the captain was a bragging right
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However, the most interesting people, the people that really impacted me the most
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are people that are just simply interesting that you stumble across and come across on a cruise
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I'd love to know about the interesting people that you've met on a cruise. And while you think about that
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why not watch these two videos that I've put together here with some other interesting
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feel-provoking things that you may not have thought about when cruising. Enjoy
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