I’m a happily married dude. I am about to embark on, most-likely, a once in a lifetime adventure with my family: a cruise to the Bahamas. However, when I discovered that almost a third of the guests on Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Sea were attendees of some sort of fraternity leadership conference that Royal Caribbean was happily ($$$) hosting, the wind in my sails diminished just a little. Even though I’m happily married, I am not dead. I had some preconceived notions of what the view around the pool on that cruise ship was going to look like.
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My “notions” were quickly replaced by reality.
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Yeah. Disappointing, to say the least. Anywho, now I can try to focus on actually enjoying the family time, right?
The ship is amazing. It’s like 14-stories tall, and it travels across the ocean; this in and of itself is utterly amazing to me. There are two formal dining halls, a buffet, a pizza place, a deli, and a burger joint. Everything except the burger joint is included in the cost of the cruise (you have to pay an entrance fee of like $5 to get into Johnny Rockets). There was a full-fledged casino, two or three lounges, an awesome weight room with a spectacular view of the ocean (which I promised myself I would use… but never did), a teen hang-out area, a little kid hang-out area, two small swimming pools (constantly full of frat boys), two hot tubs (constantly full of frat boys), a basketball court, a climbing wall, a ping-pong table, and the Chorus Line theater which had nightly live entertainment. The center of the ship was kind of like a mall, with various stores selling various expensive items: a Caribou Coffee, a jewelry store, a liquor store, a gift shop and the like. Each day, in the area between the stores, they were selling different garbage that looked expensive and was ridiculously inexpensive. The wife and youngest son each got a watch for like $10 each, and they looked like they were worth much more. We’ll see how long they actually last 🙂 Needless to say, the ship itself was pretty cool. Our room, on the other hand, not so much.
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Standard rooms on a cruise ship are extremely small. I cannot stress enough how small these stinking rooms are. It’s a good thing you pretty much just sleep in the rooms, because, in a family of four, someone would end up dead if you had to spend too much time together in those stinking rooms.
So, we check in on the ship and go through a “muster drill”.
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A muster drill is where they make everyone get outside by the lifeboats and tell you what to do to avoid dying if the ship starts to sink. Great! Now that we are all now terrified, let the fun begin.
We spent the first night at sea and just enjoyed the boat and tried to avoid the drunk, potty-mouthed frat boys. Man, when the frats were sober, they were bearable, but once they got liquored-up, we pretty much had to walk with our hands over our sons’ ears to block the f-bombs. Thanks, Royal Caribbean! Thanks for not warning us our cruise was going to be a floating college party full of frat boys with no chicas for them to concentrate their alcohol-fueled, testosterone-driven horn-doggedness on. I actually overheard a frat boy talking to a girl who appeared to be about 16-years-old, and he was trying to talk her into going to one of the lounges with him. She kept shaking her head, looking around for someone to rescue her, and I heard him say, “I keep forgetting you’re under age.” Man, that girl’s parents (as well as almost every parent with a daughter on that cruise) had to be loving Royal Caribbean for that week.
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The next day, we ported in the Nassau. Pretty cool, if you could look past the poverty that was prevalent everywhere. We got off the ship and were immediately accosted by numerous people trying to get us to take a taxi or go on a tour or buy stupid toy turtles. One old guy even asked me if I needed something to smoke, and when I told him I didn’t, he got pissed and stormed off. We walked around the streets of Nassau. Me loving people the way I do quickly grew tired of the people constantly in our faces, and we returned to the ship after a short time.
Later that afternoon, we went on a snorkeling tour. We got on a boat and left the port area to an area where we could check out the corral. We boated past a lot of really nice houses and the tour guide dropped a few names while cruising past these mansions. Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan had houses there, along with a bunch of other people whose names I don’t remember. Can’t imagine owning a mansion of such incredible grandeur surrounded by such intense poverty. Nothing like rubbing it in the face of the locals, huh?
The snorkeling was kind of lame. On the way, they warned us that people had seen lion fish in the area we were going to, and lion fish are apparently quite poisonous. Coolest thing about snorkeling was that I actually found a lion fish.
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I got both of my boys and the wife to see it before one of the tour divers discovered it and scared it away. Bastard!
That was pretty much the day in Nassau. The next day, we relaxed on the beaches of Royal Caribbean’s private island, Coco Cay. This was, by far, the most relaxing day of our adventure.
Swimming in the ocean…
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… playing with the conch…
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…tearing it up at the water park
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… avoiding the killer seagulls…
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… or hanging out in the hammocks…
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…oops, I forgot… stinking frat boys…
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Overall, a very good day. Then, back to the boat for a relaxing evening and lots of eating.
The next day, we ported in Key West, FL. Can you say “tourist trap?” Of course you can. I really felt for all of the foreign (non-US) guests on the Majesty of the Sea when we ported in Key West. Every single one of them had to take part of their day to go through US Immigration, whether they were getting off the boat in Key West or not. The immigration officers apparently set-up shop in the theater and the lines were horrendous of families waiting for immigration’s approval. I imagine those vacationers wasted hours of the last day of the cruise waiting for US Immigration to check them out. Honest to God, it’s no wonder why so much of the rest of the world hates the United States. Sometimes, our laws are just retarded. I really thought it was cool how there were different people from all over the world on this cruise and, except for the frat boys, we all got along just splendidly… up until “Homeland Security” kicked in and the US made sure there wasn’t someone vacationing from Japan or France setting off a dirty bomb in Key West (or someone who has just spent thousands of dollars on a vacation trying to sneak into the country… if they can make that kind of money, they have brains and a good work ethic… let ’em in!) by making every man, woman and child go through an immigration checkpoint. I didn’t feel safe, I felt embarrassed for our country. Why not allow these people to enjoy the last day of their vacation and check them out after the cruise in Miami? I didn’t have to go through immigration in the Bahamas… and I could of been planning to buy some crack from that dude who wanted to know if I needed a “smoke”… or something!!!
Anyway, back to the non-crappy part of the Key West visit. We did a little sight seeing
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… did a little shopping…
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… ate some conch fritters…
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… enjoyed frozen chocolate-covered Key Lime pie on a stick…
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and overall had a touristerrific, sunshiny day!
Then, back on the ship for the last time. We had a wonderful evening of eating lots of food and swimming with the frat boys… and then eating some more. I crap you not, I gained 10# on that stinking cruise!
When we woke up the next morning, we were in Miami. Up and at ’em and off the ship. We spent an entire day at Miami International Airport (’cause we had to watch our luggage… we could have “checked” it at this storage place, but they want to rape you and kill your first born as payment for that, so we said “screw it, airports are fun”). We discovered that Miami isn’t too exciting when experienced from the airport, so airports aren’t really that fun. Didn’t even get to see Tubbs, let alone Crockett 🙁
Finally, a turbulent flight back to Denver, a late-night hotel stop on the way home, and finally back to the Craphandle. And then, back to work with another year until the next real vacation.
Crap man… I just realized how much I miss my ΣAE buddies…
