What’s involved in a ship’s Galley Tour? Today we take a closer look at a tour of the Galley as we continue along with our Celebrity Millennium Cruise Review – Tour Around The Ship

Have you ever wondered what the kitchens look like on massive cruise ships? Did it ever amaze you how it’s even possible to produce thousands of plates of food in so little time? Well, a Galley Tour on Celebrity Millennium would help to answer these questions and others.

But before we take a closer look at the galley on Celebrity Millennium, let’s catch up with a few things.

After cruising away from Japan last night which concluded our epic, awesome adventures in that wonderful country, we are now on our way towards Canada. But, we have one more stop to make before crossing the Bering Sea.

Day 72 – May 14th.

Cruise Day 5 – At Sea

Starting the day with sunshine and an omelette up in the Oceanview cafe is perfect.

See the sea below your chair

The buffet is often very busy, but today we manage to score a table overlooking the sea… below us. Yup, that’s right, the glass floor in parts of the Oceanview cafe allow you to see the sea below your chair. Probably not for the faint hearted.

The Oceanview cafe with round glass floor view holes

Celebrity Millennium opens its kitchen for viewing

The Galley tour is busy as expected, however it is one of the best tours that we have seen.

Entry to the Galley tour on Celebrity Millennium

First up we receive a number and then some literature about the galley and what the Millennium stores and serves on board a standard cruise. Moving along we grab a glass of bubbly before taking a seat in the MDR and await our call to begin the tour.

Before we get going, the F&B director introduces some of the team of chefs from the Millennium. The Executive Chef then takes the microphone and adds more juicy details about his staff and the daily running of the galley.

Introduction to some of the senior Chefs from the Millennium

Galley tour on Celebrity Millennium

Once our number is called we can begin the tour of the galley. First we must travel down not just one, but two sets of moving stairs. Now, imagine doing this every day, probably hundreds of times and add to that carrying trays of heavy plated meals. How bad was your day?

Two flights of moving stairs (escalators) down to the Galley

Once down in the galley the first thing we see is the wash up area.

Wash-up area on Celebrity Millennium

Bakery area of the Millennium galley

Action stations in the galley

Many of the stations are in full operation with the busy chefs going about their duties.

Galley tour in full operation on Celebrity Millennium

As with all food premises, the amount of paperwork that needs to be done daily is immense and on board cruise ships it’s no different. In fact the hygiene and cleanliness of the galley is the best you’ll find be a long distance.

A chefs office where a bucket load of paperwork must be done

This was only a part of the galley on the Celebrity Millennium, there are more of which we didn’t get to see, but as you can imagine it’s not easy having a few hundred people walking through your work place taking photos and generally snooping around. Come to think of it, how would you appreciate it?

Across the way to more of the galley

Did you pay attention to how immaculately clean the kitchen was? For a place that really never sleeps it’s amazing. Sure enough they have a whole army of cleaners that get to work at each day, but still, this place produces thousands of meals each day, for breakfast lunch and dinner.

A special bonus at the end of the Galley tour

From here we made our way back out to the restaurant. Here the speciality venues of the Millennium displayed some of their dishes and also one of the waiters was cooking one of the dishes from the fine dining restaurant where they cook certain meals tableside.

The restaurants display many of their specialities

At the end of the tour, they had a special on for four speciality dining options for $100 as opposed the three for $119 that they offer prior to boarding and even on all other days onboard. It’s a no brainer to us, so we grab that bargain.

That concluded the Galley tour of the Celebrity Millennium. It lasted about 30 minutes depending on how much time you really wanted to spend in the galley. The best part for us was we were the last group and had a little extra time, not being moved along by a following group.

Have you done a galley tour on any ship? Would you like to work in the kitchens of a cruise ship? What do think would be the hardest job on a cruise ship?

Let us know in the comments below

We’d love to hear from you and any stories you’d like to share. Moni & I both had jobs offers to work on a cruise ship once, we never pursued the cruise line jobs after turning them down.

Continuing on with the cruise review, this afternoon we had a peek at behind the scenes of the performing crew on a Celebrity Millennium backstage tour .