I'm currently binge watching The Love Boat - how realisticly did it portray cruising?

For those of you that cruised in the 70s and 80s:

Gopher was offered a tip and he says he can't accept a tip per company policy. Was this ever true?

The rooms are huge. Were these suites or just sound stage fiction?

Did everyone really dress this fancy for dinner?

Lit candles on the table for dinner?

What else strikes you as very realistic or just made up from the show vs reality?

The rooms were incredibly small on the first Fair Princess.

People did dress very nicely. I can remember changing clothes three or four times a day.

I don't remember lit candles, but we did have some delicious flambe items in the dining room.

We always laugh at how short and tight the officers shorts are! And how the officers are constantly hitting on women.

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On the TV show, I always laughed when they went into a cabin. It would be a huge sitting room and a separate bedroom with big furniture. My, I didn't realize the old Pacific Princess was so biiiig. lol

Another thing was one night at dinner, our table mate was saying that when you look at the back ground scenes when they're around the pool, it's almost soft porn the way the rub lotion on each other and get in those provacative poses. So naturally, I rush down to the cabin to tune into "The Love Boat". ;p She wasn't wrong.

I watched Love Boat as a kid and couldn't wait for the sail away party where everyone on deck tosses stuff to the people at port. Imagine my 14 year old surprise when they didn't do it. I was rather disappointed. Over the years, I've seen formal night go down in dress. Maybe it depends on the line?

For those of you that cruised in the 70s and 80s:

 

Gopher was offered a tip and he says he can't accept a tip per company policy. Was this ever true?

 

The rooms are huge. Were these suites or just sound stage fiction?

 

Did everyone really dress this fancy for dinner?

 

Lit candles on the table for dinner?

 

What else strikes you as very realistic or just made up from the show vs reality?

The dressing fancy and lit candles, were probably fairly accurate at that time. Normal Rooms were not that big in 1977 when I first cruised. What I think is funny, is the bartender seemed to work in every bar on the ship. I suppose unless he had a day off, he was the only bartender! 🤪

Oh yeah the show was totally realistic.

Especially the part where the Captain puts his barely pubescent daughter in a uniform and Princess name badge to mingle with the passengers. All of whom were exclusively good looking and horny.

I remember my parents going on a cruise in the 60’s. I went with some relatives to drop them off. I remember the passengers throwing the streamers when sailing off. My mother brought cocktail dresses and gowns.

While it wasn't 50 years ago, on my first cruise the dining room was a lot more fancy than today and the cruise line served complimentary wine at dinner. No candles on the table, but there were flambe desserts.

Yes, we all were a lot more dressed up than today...but that was before airline luggage charges and limitations. Formal night was really fancy.

Cabins....were miniscule. It seems that on the Love Boat, everyone has the biggest suite on the ship.

I've never seen the bit where they drop streamers over the side of the ship, but I've seen environmentally friendly streamers used at sail away on another line as recently as a couple years ago. These are handed out and people shake/wave them during the sail away party.

The captain's daughter seems to never go to school. She's cruising in almost every episode. And the crew spends more time being involved in the personal lives of guests than they do working. When was the last time the ship's doctor was aware of a passenger's medical situation prior to cruising? Especially one where the family wasn't aware? On TV, everyone is beautiful and the demographic is significantly younger than on most real ships.

But you have to give them credit--the show revitalized the entire industry.

I remember my parents going on a cruise in the 60’s. I went with some relatives to drop them off. I remember the passengers throwing the streamers when sailing off. My mother brought cocktail dresses and gowns.

I remember throwing the streamers on our first cruise ...our honeymoon

No one wore jeans on the LOVE Boat......

If you even believe half of what there show, you'll be in for a big surprise.

Aside from things like cabin size and the crew knowing all the guests names , there were true things like formality entertainment and visiting (then exotic ) Ports that got the tiny Cruise Industry noticed by millions. Looked like Fun ?

My parents sailed out of NYC in the 1960’s on an American Export Lines ship headed to the Caribbean (I was very very young).

There was a bon-voyage party in their very small cabin with champagne, drinks, snacks and flowers for everyone invited to the party.

After a couple of hours there was an “all ashore who’s going ashore” announcement, and reluctantly we all departed the ship onto the pier.

While we waited on the pier for sail away there was a very big steel band on the pier which played island tunes until sail away. At sail away, the

passengers sent multi colored streamers down to the unlucky ones on the pier not sailing to exotic places in the Caribbean!

Memories, and a different time.....

Our first cruise was in 1976--our honeymoon--on NCL. Our second cruise was in the mid-1980--on Costa. Both were Western Caribbean itineraries.

For those of you that cruised in the 70s and 80s:

 

Gopher was offered a tip and he says he can't accept a tip per company policy. Was this ever true?

It may have been, but, since we were, very much, budget constrained, the only people we tipped were the dining room waiter, the Maitre d' and the room steward. This was done on the last evening of the cruise and tips were delivered in envelopes. On the penultimate afternoon of the cruise, when the Cruise Director gave a disembarkation presentation, a discussion of the tip protocol and recommendations on amounts was included. I can't say that I ever saw cash offered to any crewman, but I'm sure that barmen took them.

 

The rooms are huge. Were these suites or just sound stage fiction?

 

Totally fictitious. The other thing I've noticed in the show is how wide the hallways are--and there are never steward carts parked in them.

 

Did everyone really dress this fancy for dinner?

 

I'd say that "Smart Casual" is an excellent description of the way people dressed for non-formal nights. Definitely, no sneakers, no T-shirts, no jeans, no shorts. On formal nights I always wore a suit and did no feel uncomfortable, at all. Tuxedos were easy to find, but suits--and ties--were almost as common.

 

Lit candles on the table for dinner?

 

Nope. However, a previous poster reminded me that on the last evening as dessert was coming out, they would dim the lights in the dining room and flame the Baked Alaska,

 

What else strikes you as very realistic or just made up from the show vs reality?

I don't remember having a telephone in the cabin--or a TV and I really don't recall seeing a TV in a "Love Boat" cabin.

I do remember a fair amount of fraternizing between officers and passenger in the public rooms. I very rarely see that anymore.

The rooms were incredibly small on the first Fair Princess.

 

People did dress very nicely. I can remember changing clothes three or four times a day.

 

I don't remember lit candles, but we did have some delicious flambe items in the dining room.

And to answer the post below, yes the officers did hit on all of the female passengers. Way back then they were allowed to socialize and in the evenings they would ask for a dance and sit down and have a drink! Ahhh, for the good old days!

I was a big fan of the “Love Boat”and when my late husband and I took our first cruise on the NCL Starward in 1982, I was shocked at the size of our inside cabin. It was SO small. LOL! The cabins on the Love Boat were huge. It was a big disappointed, but we got over it. We had a lot of fun, in spite of that cabin.

OMGosh, the Love Boat was one of my favs back then. So was Fantasy Island. I think I was about 8 or so when I watched them. lol The Love Boat is what made me want to go on a cruise when I became an adult. My dad never went on one and my mom had been on 2 with me before she passed last year. As a very naive child, I thought that the show was spot on! lol As I grew up and got more savy, I realized it was mostly movie magic. But, this show is the reason why I wanted to cruise in the first place. Thanks for taking me down memory lane for a minute. lol

While the TV show is a work of fantasy, Does anyone remember people would dress up to catch a plane trip.

Oh yes....flying used to be an "event." Now it is more equivalent to torture.

But in those days of dressing up to fly, you didn't have to undress at security. Plane seats were people-sized, even in economy. I remember when my father traveled on business and would bring home world maps and other actually worthwhile stuff from the flight. On my first flight (at the end of grad school!), there was stationery available on boars, little kits of lotions, etc, real food...all on the cheapest ticket I could find.

Princess handed out streamers to be thrown at sail away

I remember crew knowing our names

You were escorted to your cabin by a white-gloved staff member

If cabins weren’t quite ready, carry-ons were held in the show lounge and you were given claim checks

There were some buffets on deck but special occasion only

Midnight buffet...nightly

You did dress up to get onboard; but you also dressed up to fly back then

Champagne waterfall used real champagne; I got to pour an entire bottle onto the tower

There were little galleys on the passenger hallways as your room steward took care of room service breakfast (pastries, fruit, cereal, beverages)

Don’t remember ever seeing carts in hallways for making up rooms

As no anytime dining, there was the little “bing, bing, bong” dinner chime over the speaker system letting you know it was time for dinner

They had a big dance in what would now be the atrium but then a smaller area; it was for both passengers and crew so you would be asked to dance by anyone present, not just my DH; this included dining room waiters too (I remember ours asking me to dance)

When watching the Love Boat show, I’d note the cabin numbers they’d occasionally show and compare them to the actual ship diagram...the tv show cabin numbers were totally bogus as they were not similar at all

I start sailing Princess in the 1980s on the original Sky, Star, Crown, and Regal; all pre-Carnival Corp

Yes I remember that! I used to bring 3 suitcases and a garment bag. One suitcase was for shoes, purses and extra coat hangers! On a ten day cruise there was 3 formal nights, 3 informal nights ( which were pretty close to formal ) and the rest casual.

 

And to answer the post below, yes the officers did hit on all of the female passengers. Way back then they were allowed to socialize and in the evenings they would ask for a dance and sit down and have a drink! Ahhh, for the good old days!

Oh my, I can vouch for the Officers! At ages 19 and 20, 5 of my friends and I went on our first cruises (Cunard line). There was no shortage of attention from not only the Officers, but many of the crew. Our travel agent sat three of us at the Captains Table for dinner every night. I managed to seriously embarass myself attempting to crack a lobster. The Captain sat to my left, I used a "cracker" on the claw and it landed in his lap. With a smile and his proper British accent he said "I believe this belongs to you." I was speechless the rest of the evening. So young and innocent. Haha

Hi,

I am a big fan of the Love Boat television series, but it is not very realistic. However, cruising was a lot different in 1970s and 1980s compared to cruises today.

I took my first cruise in 1967 (when I was two years old) and took cruises with my parents during the 1970s and 1980s (on ships such as the S/S Norway, QE2, Skyward and Sun Viking). In 2002, I took a cruise to Bermuda on the original Pacific Princess that was used for the television series (the final year that it sailed for Princess).

The standard cabins on the ships were very small. Most ships did not have any staterooms with private balconies.

A typical cruise ship only held about 600 or 700 passengers. The original Pacific Princess was only 20,000 tons (in comparison, a typical current ship such as the Emerald Princess is over 113,000 tons).

Due to the (relatively) small number of passengers the food and service were better. I remember a cruise on Royal Caribbean's Sun Viking in 1983. The head waiter prepared Cherries Jubilee and Bananas Foster tableside. Everyone had dinner in the main dining during first or second seating (no alternative restaurants). People dressed much more formally for dinner. Men usually wore a suit or at least a sports coat and tie.

There was a show each evening, but there weren't any big production shows (until the S/S Norway). There usually was a singer and a band. Also, there was an elaborate midnight buffet with ice sculptures. Overall, cruises were much more subdued.

In my experience, Cunard is the only line that currently offers a product that is very reminiscent of cruises during the 1970s and 1980s.

Chuck

OMGosh, the Love Boat was one of my favs back then. So was Fantasy Island. I think I was about 8 or so when I watched them. lol The Love Boat is what made me want to go on a cruise when I became an adult. My dad never went on one and my mom had been on 2 with me before she passed last year. As a very naive child, I thought that the show was spot on! lol As I grew up and got more savy, I realized it was mostly movie magic. But, this show is the reason why I wanted to cruise in the first place. Thanks for taking me down memory lane for a minute. lol

I agree ... the show made me want to cruise SO much. My first 'cabin'? It was a quad with 4 bunks. Tiny. Me and my friend were 'bunked' with 2 strangers. YUP ... 1982 on Carnival. The ship's photographers were our tour guides and we got those professional photos for free!

I agree ... the show made me want to cruise SO much. My first 'cabin'? It was a quad with 4 bunks. Tiny. Me and my friend were 'bunked' with 2 strangers. YUP ... 1982 on Carnival. The ship's photographers were our tour guides and we got those professional photos for free!

I couldnt imagine staying with strangers. But it is awesome that your tour guides were the photographers and you got free pictures. My first cabin was on PCL Atlantic in 1996, ocean view with my ex. Loved the cruise and should have went with someone else. lol But tiny room!! So glad my hubby loves to cruise like I do, just wish we had the opportunity to go more often.

I couldnt imagine staying with strangers. But it is awesome that your tour guides were the photographers and you got free pictures. My first cabin was on PCL Atlantic in 1996, ocean view with my ex. Loved the cruise and should have went with someone else. lol But tiny room!! So glad my hubby loves to cruise like I do, just wish we had the opportunity to go more often.

I'm going on my 8th cruise this year in 36 years. While it's great and I am really fortunate to be able to say this, I am not even close to being in the leagues of others here on CC.