Thanks to my wonderful boyfriend, Mike, I had the pleasure of not only going on a 7 day cruise for spring break but, I was also given a private tour of the ship's laundry! We went on the Carnival Magic, one of Carnival's newest and largest ships that is less than a year old to Jamaica, Grand Caymen Island, and Cozumel, Mexico. My boyfriend sent a special request to the Captain asking about getting the tour and when the Captain approved it, Mike surprised me with it!

Bear with me as I have 23 photos to upload and I'll be explaining each one!

First up, a dry cleaning machine. Only weird thing about these is they are not actually dry cleaning as there is no solvent (not allowed on a ship, pollution) so I believe this is a wet cleaning process, notice how each washer has 8 chemical injectors.... There were two or three of these and I'm pretty sure they were made by Alliance judging from the doors.

There was a special wash and dry service they offered f you didn't want to do your own laundry while on the ship, but it was expensive and I don't trust anyone else with my clothes, but here are the machines! Sadly, in my excitement, I forgot to take a picture of the ONE washer they have for this service, a Cissell machine, I think it was 35lb capacity. Those have always fascinated me with their extremely tilted tubs! There were 3 dryers to go with this one washer, not sure if the dryers are slow, the washer is fast, or both...

I should also mention, I'm wearing the lime green shirt and standing next to me is the Laundry Manager.

One of their presses for ironing/drying dress shirts...

One of five split-pocket 450lb capacity Braun washing machines. These are soft mount machines that can hold about 400 bath towels at once (200 in each pocket), are steam heated, and use about 560 gallons of water per cycle. Cycle time is 35 minutes and they reuse the rinse water from the first rinse to wash the next load.

Chemicals used in the Braun washers. Solar Brite detergent, Chlorlite disinfectant, Neutralizer laundry sour, and So Fresh softener. The last three are the same chemicals the fitness center I work at uses.

One of five 250lb capacity dryers. Made by Vega and steam heated. The dryers run for about 20-25 minutes and dry at 180 degrees Fahrenheit or 190 degrees if they are running behind.

The drum of the dryer. You could fit a love seat in there easily. Each dryer takes one pocket from a washer aka about 200 towels or 225 lbs.

The flatwork ironer, made by Vega as well. This is for drying, ironing, and folding linens and sheets, automatically.

The controls... The Laundry Manager showed us how the controls work by cranking the speed all the way up from about 1.2 (a normal speed) to 3.7 (no units...) and lets us watch the two workers start to panic when they couldn't feed the sheets in fast enough... :P

Halfway through the linens/sheets pass out of the ironer/dryer and into the folder.

Me next to the output for the dry, ironed, and folded sheets. (To my left, you can see a stack of them through the blue grate.)

Mike and I with the two workers who were feeding wet clean sheets into the flatwork ironer.

Back up stock of bathrobes.

Their automatic towel folder (made by Braun) uses compressed air and rollers to fold all the towels.

Feeding in a towel...

The machine moves around a bit inside and the folded towels drop out of the trap door near the top onto a conveyor belt.

Stock of flat top sheets and some spare bath towels. The ship has over $1,000,000 worth of towels/linens.

4,100 fitted sheets. The ship has over 12,000 bath towels and they order new ones in 30,000 towel shipments. All the old retired towels are used as rags to clean the ship or are donated to charities. They switch out their sheets/towels/linens every 6 months.

The system of steam pipes leading to the washers, dryers, and flatwork ironers to heat them.

Since the laundry is below the sea level, there are these massive air/water tight doors in various places. I think my worst fear being down here would be seeing one of these begin to close.

The Linen Manager to the left, me, and the Laundry Manager to the right. They were both very nice and funny and they even gave us goody bags!!!

Jamie how cool ...

I want to say first it is so nice that you and your partner are together and he seems to support you.

Through your family and your college support I can't wait to see what is next for you.

Truly a blessing which I did not have growing up.

And wishing you the best in the future.

What clean laundry systems...

Wetcleaning systems are the future in dry cleaning talking to

my friend who has one say's it's the processing afterwards

that is a little harder then using Perc which is less wrinkeling.

The machine that he uses ..talking about COLD water washing this machine cools

the water very cold for some textiles.

I would like to see Co'2 machines work.

Love the 5 pocket washers it's amazing how much it hold's

then dipping in a bath of solution water ...

Did  the manager say how the temps where in the wash mode ?

Sudsmen posted his machine awhile back.

So you can put a small sofa in that drum or five of you in there lol.

Big drums blows me away , It seems all of the flatwork ironers and folding

machiens are brand new they look like there very fast.

Did you lose yourself in all those sheets and towels 30.000 towels incredible.

Where they any extracting machines ?

It looks like you had a great time I would have and thanks

for posting very nice pictures.

Darren k

Wow Jamie, that is absolutely fantastic, what an AWESOME tour!   Thank you SO MUCH for posting these photos!

I would love to get the chance to tour any commercial or industrial laundry!   Even on a cruise ship, what a neat treat!

I the first cruise I went on (July 2001) was a 7 day Alaska cruise aboard Princess Cruise Lines.  

I had requested (and got) a tour of the engine room on board our ship, which was incredible, but I never even thought about asking for a laundry facility tour!

Wonderful Jamie, just wonderful!   Congrats!  

By the way, was the rest of the cruise awesome or what?

Kevin