Thread: Cruise Photos Taken By the Ship

When exactly are pictures taken by the actual cruise ship? Is it only on formal night? (the picture that's normally in front of the stairs or some sort of back drop). Or do you have the option to have them taken every night at dinner?
And if we are going on a 5 day 4 night cruise (on Royal Caribbean) is the one formal night that we will have going to be towards the front of the trip, or at the end? I'm just trying to prepare before we leave in 7 days!!!!

Originally Posted by lil2krayzee

When exactly are pictures taken by the actual cruise ship? Is it only on formal night? (the picture that's normally in front of the stairs or some sort of back drop). Or do you have the option to have them taken every night at dinner?
And if we are going on a 5 day 4 night cruise (on Royal Caribbean) is the one formal night that we will have going to be towards the front of the trip, or at the end? I'm just trying to prepare before we leave in 7 days!!!!

On formal nights, they will always offer photos in several locations around the main atrium area of the ship. I suggest having your picture taken at each one of them - doesn't cost anything to have them taken. Then the last night of your cruise, go look at all of them and decide which one/s you want to purchase.

Normally, they will also offer photos at other times during the cruise before dinner, but they'll always be taking pictures when you get off the ship at each port.

And lastly, if you really want a photo taken in a particular place at a particular time, you can talk to the people in the photo studio and usually arrange a private photo shoot.

In fact, just as a side piece of trivia information, Carnival makes approximately $1 million in profit per ship per year on photos. Needless to say, there will be many opportunities to get your picture taken - don't worry about that.

Pete

Wow, that's an impressive amount of money just on photos! And I'm sure that translates into somewhat of an expense on our end, but I'm willing to pay it.
Thanks for all the info!

Having gone on several Carnival cruises, they take every opportunity to take photos and display them every day. They take them when you first board the ship, when you get off the ship at new ports, at dinner most nights. On formal nights (we had 2 on an 8 day cruise), they take them at dinner, then have various backgrounds available (formal garden, moonlit night at sea, picture of ship at a distance away, etc.). Also throughout the week, the scatter a lesser number of these settings around the ship so you can have more casual portraits made. One night, they had a crew member, dressed as a pirate, come through the dining room for pictures with a large knife at your neck. Another night, they had a couple of showgirls (in their Las Vegas style, "briefest" best) to pose for portraits as you leave dinner. So, needless to say, I can see why Carnival makes a lot of money on photography!

It seems like Princess is upping the number of photo opportunties onboard ship. They offer "casual" photo seatings on nonformal nights. I would imagine it's easy to set that up, but we haven't bothered with any photo shoots in years (hubby doesn't care for waiting in line, so we just take a photo as they come in the dining room, getting off ship in the ports, etc.)

Something to keep in mind though, we ended up getting our pictures taken a LOT, assuming we'd pick a handful of cute ones at the end, not knowing (and this is totally nobody's fault but our own since we didn't check once we got on board) that it was going to be $26 a photo... so at the end of the week, we had taken all these photos we weren't about to cough up the cash for, and we missed out on a handful of photos we could have taken ourselves or had someone snap of us because we let the crew take their photos instead. So we were a little bummed that there were some nights/times we didn't get any of our own photos, but again, nobody to blame but ourselves, just something to keep in the back of your mind.

We usually go for the formal night photos. Sometimes we get one that is good enough to purchase! That is all we buy at those prices. Of course, some loyalty programs give frequent cruisers a free photo

On Carnival, you're under NO obligation to purchase any of the photos. They have trash bins set up to get rid of unwanted photos and free up space for new ones. With all of that printing (and waste), I can see why prices may seem high. But, they're still making money on it. I think the small ones (5X7) were $8.99 and the large ones (8X10) were $19.99.

I take pictures whenever the backdrops are setup. As previously stated there's no obligation to buy. On my last cruise, we were hanging out in lobby while the photograhpy trainees where setting up,etc. The supervisor asked if we could be "customers" for them. It was pretty neat to go through the process over and over. We didn't get any deals on photos though, bummer. I'm already planning to buy several sets this time around. Last set of photos was lost by AA. I will never forgive them for that. LOL

Originally Posted by Sandie

On Carnival, you're under NO obligation to purchase any of the photos. They have trash bins set up to get rid of unwanted photos and free up space for new ones. With all of that printing (and waste), I can see why prices may seem high. But, they're still making money on it. I think the small ones (5X7) were $8.99 and the large ones (8X10) were $19.99.

You're under no obligation on any cruise line to purchase any of the photos.