Originally Posted by
mahasamatman
That doesn't fit with the 100% load factor on virtually every ship worldwide. I haven't seen or even heard of a ship go out with empty cabins in the past 15 years.
You are correct that cruise ships rarely have more than a few empty cabins, but not always. Here is one counterexample from my cruises:
Summer 2010, Azamara Quest (former R-ship) 12-day cruise Istanbul-<Black Sea ports>-Ephesus-Athens(Piraeus). 395 passengers, slightly over 400 crew. That ship's capacity was around 700 IIRC.
I have also been on a couple mass market cruises where the top prize on first day of bingo was to move into the top suite onboard, so those cruises may have been close to 100% full but clearly weren't absolutely at 100%...