The Secret Cruise Line Code Words

Have you ever been happily sipping a cocktail or tucking in to your perfectly cooked prime cut of beef when an announcement comes across the ships speakers in code and you haven’t the foggiest of clue what it meant? The cruise lines deliberately use code words in order to alert the crew members on board but so as not to alarm other passengers, which makes sense of course but over the years it has had me guessing for ages (or atleast until i can get on Google!).

Bright Star is probably one of the code words that no one wants to hear on board a cruise. Quite simply it means a passenger has passed away. Extremely sad for an incident such as this to occur whilst on holiday but it certainly isn’t rare. Especially on longer voyages where many of the passengers are elderly.

Oscar or Mr MOB means man overboard. Whilst fairly uncommon it is thought that around 300 passengers have entered the sea from their vessel since 2000. It isnt easy to just fall from a ship, it is reported that the 3 main reasons for falling overboard are suicide, intoxication and foul play.

Bravo, Bravo, Bravo is to alert the crew to a fire or other serious incident on board.

PVI quite simply is Public Vomiting Incident.

30-30 is an instruction for maintenance to clean up a mess of some sort located somewhere on the vessel.

Alpha, Star Code or Code Blue is used for a medical emergency.

Echo is an indication of a malfunction on board , it simply means the ship is starting to drift. Echo Echo Echo however is much more serious and is an alert the crew of a possible collision.

Zulu is the code for a fight on board.

And lastly, Foxtrot. I can’t be sure of the authenticity of this one…so take it with a pinch of salt but I hear this is the code name for a food shortage in the buffet!!

The codes used to alert crew members does vary between cruise lines as each have adapted to their own phrases but many of the above are used widely throughout. Do you have any codes to add to the list?

Id love to hear about your experiences, have you heard any of these codes being used on your cruises?

 


About Me

Hi there, My name is Isabelle, I'm 31 years old and I live in a small village in a lovely part of rural Lincolnshire with my husband Carl who I married on the beautiful island of Rhodes in 2012, our daughter Lexi who is 6 and our son Oliver who is 3. Oh…

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