When it comes to superstitions, there’s arguably nowhere that they play a bigger role than at sea. It makes sense. Back in the old days you needed every bit of luck when you headed out to sea, unsure of when you might be home again.
But while modern ships are much safer than sailing hundreds of years ago, the superstitions still survive in maritime culture. From christening a ship by breaking a bottle on the bow to taking your first step aboard with your right foot to never renaming a boat, there are a number of these quirks that many mariners still continue to follow.
But there’s one superstition you find on cruise ships that might actually make it harder to get around the ship… if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
An Entire Missing Deck on Many Cruise Ships
With cruise lines being massive, multi-billion corporations that have tens of thousands of employees, publicly traded stocks, and making corporate plans up to a decade in advance… it comes across as a little funny they can still be superstitious.
Whether it’s actual superstition from a major corporation or just a quirk to give a “hat tip” to a tradition, we will never know. But we have noticed that if you’re around the ship, you might discover that an entire deck and/or cabin is missing.
It’s certainly not every cruise line or even every ship. But knowing about this superstition can help you in getting lost.
I’m talking, of course, about many ships not having a 13th deck. Like you might find in some high-rise hotels, there is simply no 13th floor. Deck numbers skip immediately from Deck 12 to Deck 14.
If you’re not careful, this could confuse you while going up and down around the ship. For instance, if your room is on Deck 12 and you’re on Deck 15, you might think you need to go down three flights of stairs. In fact, you only need to go down two. Thankfully you should find large deck numbers for every flight of stairs; you just need to keep an eye on them. If you’re on an elevator, there’s no risk of confusion as you just need to hit the deck you want.
Or if you’re a dad like me, it can help you to play a joke on your kid. When you tell your kid that the ship’s arcade is on Deck 13, it can cause all sorts of confusion as they hunt for it.
No Rooms Ending in “Unlucky” Numbers
And while less common, there are other superstitious quirks you might find around the ship. For instance, we’ve noticed that Icon of the Seas — among the largest cruise ships on the planet — skips numbering for a couple of rooms.
If you view a deck plan of the ship, you might notice that certain rooms don’t exist. Numbering skips any cabin that would end in “666.” So you might have cabin 14664 and cabin 14668, but no cabin 14666.
And the ship takes it even farther. There are also no rooms that end in “13” either. The cabin numbering system skips right over them. If you’re headed down the halls and see rooms 8607, 8609, and 8611, cabin 8615 will be next, not 8613.
Massive Operations That Still Succumb to Superstition
The good news is that for passengers these small superstitions are more of an oddity to keep in mind than something that makes it impossible to get around the ship. While it might catch you off-guard the first time, it’s pretty easy to keep in mind there’s no 13th deck or that the room ending in “666” is missing.
But we think it is interesting that such massive ships that are planned down to the last detail and massive cruise lines worth billions of dollars still go out of their way to follow these superstitions when it comes to building a ship.
