nin137

Cruisin' on the Ghetto Princess

to celebrate our one year anniversary of not getting a
divorce juliann and i decided to treat ourselves to a
cruise. we took our tax refund which the government so
kindly gave us to help us with our educational expenses
(SUCKERS!! haha!) and booked a cruise on the Sun Princess of
the Princess Cruises.
now it seemed that the only thing that people couldn't stop
talking about when it came to cruising was that there would
always be food. i thought that this was the usual hyperbole
that people feed you after a trip like, "no really, epcot is
fucking awesome, spend a day there."
but let me tell you this, there is food there at all times.
there is a buffet open 24/7 and on top of that there is 24/7
room service. and that's just what has you covered from
midnight to five in the morning (you know that time of the
day that normal people spend sleeping and not eating).
during normal eating times? shit, about 5 different
opportunities present themselves to you.
i call our cruise the ghetto princess instead of the sun
princess because it was a.) the cheapest one we could find
and b.) filled with rednecks. and god damn people drink on
cruises. next to eating, drinking is apparently the only
thing people can think of doing when on a ship. we had the
joy of watching a redneck family reunion as we were sitting
reading in the atrium lounge (some fancy shit, although
about to get ruined). the redneck family had just finished
a "treasure hunt" and there was apparently a bit of a tussle
with a server (more on them in a sec) as to whether or not a
cocktail glass was actually a shot glass. it's not a shot
glass, the server said so, and this loser of a dumbass (i
think already drunk) flew off the handle at the server,
"you should have a name-tag, cos, cos that way we could
report you and get you in trouble for..." at this he
flailed his arms like a retarded dolphin, "this!!"
i think this whole redneck intrusion served as a weird
juxtaposition to the cruise itself. you could tell that on
the one hand the cruise staff and company wanted to create
an atmosphere akin to the royalty on the cruise ships in the
20s (probably to please the geratric ward upon the ship).
yet it started to look ludicrous when a manager was like,
"sir, i must humbly and kindly request you not to urinate
into the piano, it damages the wood."
so now i have to mention the servers, waiters, room
stewards, and all of the helping hand on the boat. there
are no americans and no western europeans. at first i
thought this might be a minimum wage thing but then a more
plausible answer came to my mind.
only someone as happy to get out of a shit-hole like sierra
leone could possibly take getting yelled at because the
jello isn't "jiggly enough" and not murder the yeller.
seriously, these guys are not only sycophantic masters, but
never seem to lose their shit on anyone. and believe me
that's the type of attitude you need when about 80% of your
clientele is 60 or over.
damn that's another thing. people are pissy when they're
trying to have a great time and relaxing. seriously. all
the shit you gotta do is sit your fat ass down and eat.
tha'ts the fuck all! you have no obligation on a cruise.
if you do shore excursions (more on THAT in a sec) you just
have to show up at the pier in time. these people take care
of you. yet people get stressed and pissy on a cruise ship,
believe it or not.
like at the buffet, i was standing in line and i decided to
take maybe a half a step behind me and check out the menu
which was at my 4 o'clock, i took the step back, craned my
neck saw that i was hungry, came back to my former position
and had lost my place to three seniors, one who was staring
at me defiantly. now i had told myself prior to the cruise
that i was not going to throw down with anyone over the age
of 40, this dude seemed to fit the bill. i shrugged and
listened to him complain about the mashed potatoes.
so you may be thinking, damn is all you do eat on a boat?
nope! you also have shore excursions which are fucking
awesome. the boat docks at various ports and you get out
for fun things like whale watching and dog sledding. all of
our excursions were really cool (from the lumberjack show to
the dog-sledding). one that stood out in particular was the
whale watching cos it was the least fun. it's fucking
tedious to find a whale and when you do, it's not that
great, this isn't "Free Willy" type of shit, you get maybe a
fin after 4 hours of looking.
but of course if the animals don't entertain you the humans
will. behind us on the bus was the good ole "alcoholic
father". he entered the bus we took to the whale-watching
bus (i'm not kidding) with a BUCKET OF BEER! this was
around 11 am too. he had all of these buds in there and he
was apparently worried the boat would either a.) have no
beer or b.) charge too much for it. so we finally got to
the boat and he got in a fight with his son, because he
wanted to use his son's backpack to hide his beer so he
could smuggle it on board,
"give me your pack."
"no, the beer's going to get my clothes wet."
"the beer's not gonna get your clothes wet," the alcoholic
father said with that sardonic tone a football jock uses
when he's telling his virgin girlfriend she, 'won't get
pregnant' without the use of a condom.
so anyway, long story short that father had passed out in
the boat by about 3...no wonder there are so many fucked up
people on this earth.
the other best excursion was the dog-sledding camp, largely
because i was allowed to hold huskie puppies (i want a dog
really badly). so there i was in the pen with about 4
huskie puppies and two little girls (everybody else was
watching from outside of the pen). it was all good and well
until about 5 minutes when i could tell i was getting
somewhat weird looks from the "grown-ups" and that's when i
found out that there is a cut-off time for men aged 25
playing with huskie puppies with little girls until it got
fucking creepy, that time is apparently 5 minutes.
nevertheless i had a blast and have decided possibly i will
stop my legal education and become a dog musher?
hmmmm.
i recommend a cruise, really i recommend it if you are
elderly and don't want to deal with much shit. they take
care of you and you will never go hungry. there were 1,948
other people on that boat with me and juli and it NEVER
seemed crowded...mind you this is coming from someone
acutely aware of people crowding his space.
i wouldn't specifically recommend the sun princess mainly
because it seems to be filled with low class, pre-gaming,
bastards. but even that didn't bother me that much just due
to the sheer enormity of the thing. i guess if you want to
not have drunks yelling at waiters about, "how mashed
potatoes should be really fluffy" then i'd recommend one of
the more expensive lines like Holland or something like that.
i wouldn't recommend sun princess necessarily, and if we
ever go on one again i think we might try a different cruise
line in general.
one of the coolest parts of the cruise was the art auction.
they had several throughout the course of the cruise and
they had beautiful works of art available and unbelievable
prices, if you are an art collector i would recommend a
cruise because the money you spend on taking the cruise is
probably the amount of savings you'd get from buying a
painting on board.
so long ghetto princess!