“She’s a magnificent ship, just incredible,” says Jay Primavera, General Manager of the Queen Mary. “You instantly recognize the Splendor for her size and shape. It’s a distinctive looking ship.”

To welcome the Splendor, the Long Beach Cruise Terminal received an $8 million upgrade. Now, every Sunday, the terminal courtyard is filled with music, balloon animals, and thousands of excited passengers, queuing in anticipation of week-long vacations to the Mexican Riviera.

While the Splendor is based in Long Beach, its turnaround time in the City is less than 12 hours. The ship returns early on Sunday mornings, then leaves on its next cruise later that day. But before you take your sea cruise, the 952-foot Splendor is cleaned and prepped, from top to bottom. The ship bustles with energy – switching its well-managed infrastructure into high gear – as it prepares to set sail as one of the world’s leading resorts at sea.

So, let’s meet our new neighbor and find out what happens behind the scenes as the Splendor gets itself ship shape while docked in Long Beach.

Our guides for the day manage the Splendor’s two largest departments – Francis Mekkattukulam, the ship’s Food & Beverage Manager, and Marvin Contreras, its Housekeeping Manager. As we learn about the ship, with its 13 passenger decks and 1,503 staterooms, it becomes clear that the Splendor is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

“It’s a class of ship in itself,” says Mekkattukulam, who sailed with the Splendor from its origins in Genoa to the east coast, then around Cape Horn to California. Originally from Mumbai, Mekkattukulam is a 17-year Carnival veteran who oversees the ship’s largest department – 553 employees whose duties range from the culinary arts, singing maître d’s, and dining room staff to managing the mess rooms for 1,150 crew members and officers.

Contreras leads its 220-member housekeeping force. His team maintains the ship’s impeccable cleanliness in its standard guest cabins and new luxurious Spa Cabins, three pools including one with a retractable stadium roof, all public areas, and 800 double-occupancy crew cabins located below sea level.

At its capacity, the Splendor can accommodate 4,700 passengers and crew, a small city that requires around-the-clock maintenance. Contreras organizes his team into two 10-hour shifts so the ship is continuously kept clean.

“There’s a lot of scheduling,” explains Contreras, of how the crew accomplishes everything so efficiently through multi-tasking. “The crew who unloads the luggage in the morning becomes room stewards later on. And the people who work in the cabins in the morning, work in the lobbies in the afternoons.”

The ship’s turnaround schedule springs to life as soon as the Splendor docks. In the passenger cabins, 180 room stewards and their assistants clean and replace thousands of sheets and towels, then sanitize each cabin.

The ship’s main laundry facility is housed on the crew-only Deck 0, located at sea level, three floors below the ship’s lobby. “Today is our busiest day,” says Contreras, who, like most of the crew, lives six months on the ship, followed by a two-month vacation when he returns home to Honduras. “Since disembarkation, everything will come down here. We’ll see thousands and thousands of bed sheets and towels.”

It’s an industrial-sized laundry that runs 24 hours a day. There are six 100 lb to 300 lb washers and nine 175 lb dryers. Two additional machines, each about the size of a family van, have one purpose – to clean thousands of bed sheets, which are fed sideways onto a roller and then steamed, pressed, and folded into neat stacks of ten.

While the passenger areas are cleaned above, it’s out with the old and in with the new below. After the Splendor docks, a side door opens at sea level, where forklifts and trucks begin to populate the docks.

First, the ship’s garbage area is emptied, as trash from the disembarking cruise is taken from the ship. The Splendor has an excellent recycling program that includes sorting aluminum, cardboard, and batteries. Once the refuse is off-loaded, vendors arrive with fresh provisions for the next cruise through a process that includes a canine inspection to ensure nothing illegal stows away.

The Splendor will carry food and provisions for its entire seven day cruise. While the quantity of food varies with the number of passengers, the quality and variety of food remains the same. Aside from its two main dining rooms and supper club, the Splendor serves up a number of cafeteria-style eateries that feature Indian food, a rotisserie, Mongolian barbecue, and a 24-hour pizza station, along with the ship’s main buffet line.

Not surprisingly, eating is one of the activities that hasn’t lost its appeal from the time when the Queen Mary ruled the sea. “People are always interested in food,” Primavera laughs. “Dining continues to be an experience and a celebration on cruises every day.”

On a recent Sunday, the Splendor received a parade of 23 twenty-foot by forty-foot containers of fresh provisions. Palettes are unloaded while meat and produce is dispersed into large walk-in cold rooms, also located three decks below the ship’s lobby. Non-perishable material, such as paper, plastics, and engine parts are stored away.

Back on the passenger levels, Contreras completes a lengthy walk-through that takes him through the entire ship, including the crew’s quarters. Below sea level, one floor below the cold rooms on Deck 0, is Deck Alpha – the submarine-like home to the Splendor’s crew. The tightness of the quarters seems confining and you can see how it helps to have a close-knit crew.

“The team that we have, all of us from the Captain down, it’s a great team,” says Contreras. When not living on board, the Splendor’s crew lives around the world, from across Latin America, the Philippines, and throughout Europe. They come together on every cruise to make sure everyone has a great vacation.

“The importance of safeguarding passengers and making vacations as spectacular as they can be hasn’t changed,” says Primavera on what still connects today’s cruises to those when the Queen Mary sailed. “The level of service hasn’t changed – making passengers comfortable and providing pleasant memories of their vacation.”

It’s a standard echoed by the Splendor’s crew nearly seventy years later. “We want passengers to take away beautiful memories and experiences from their cruise,” says Mekkattukulam. Contreras continues the sentiment. “We all want guests to leave with the peace of mind they really enjoyed themselves and had a good time, free of stress.”

It’s a commitment that reflects well on the neighborhood. We’re pretty happy the Splendor has moved in to stay.



Photos courtesy of Carnival Cruise Lines.