Maybe he was planning on blowing up a moose or something.

THE
RICE COOKER
AARDVARK

Minor quibble: I was on the Star Princess, which is 400 guests and 100 crew less than the Ruby Princess. While I DID have the flying nightclub, I did NOT have 'SHARE by Curtis Stone' and that really looks like a bad trade on my part. Both are the same class of ship, half built with the flying nightclub, half built with 2 extra decks and the nightclub up under the exhaust stacks (they are scrubbed something fierce. It only ever looked like a briefest amount of steam coming out of them.) And like one or 2 built without the extra decks but without the flying nightclub.

Flack: did you ever notice the bow pool on deck 9 or 10? The one that is on no maps or documentation, has no conceivable access, and yet VERY MUCH exists? I feel it has to be for rich people somehow but I can't figure it out. Maybe an elevator from the forward spa place but that can't be either. Anyways I saw ONE girl down their two separate times during my cruise, otherwise it was empty. Not that I spent the whole cruise on top of the bridge wondering about it, but still.

Jiz: while Alaska has recreational weed the cruise is VERY STRICT... about posting signs saying you can't bring a pound of weed on the ship. While my family was concocting plans to buy liquor and pour it into reusable water bottles to smuggle it back on the ship rather than just pay THE EXACT SAME PRICE to have it delivered from a push of a button to their room, I was noticing that a metal detector is not going to find anything in my pockets and socks and brownies that aren't explicitly labeled with giant neon marijuana logos are the exact type of thing they expect you to buy in town, so maybe peel a couple stickers off.

None of this is even touching on the idea of just getting high in town and watching ravens fight fat people for their kettle corn. (The ravens always win.)

BONUS RACISM: Getting off the ship in Juneau for some fucking reason there are 4 cops in full fucking armor watching everyone walk down the pier, and then they immediately swarm the ONE guy with a beard and start asking him about his citizenship... in a town that is impossible to leave except by boat or airplane, because you can't build roads through glaciers. Some sikh guy thought that today MIGHT the day he wasn't constantly confronted by racist bullshit by men who could murder him with impunity but HAHAHA NOPE. WELCOME TO AMERICA ASSHOLE.

Tdarcos wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 5:19 amShe also told how one of the female passengers on one of the cruises had the intent of screwing every male member of the crew. She did it, too, including the captain. After all, it was "the Love Boat" and this was back in the '70s.

The Ruby Princess, the ship Happiness and I both took, has a staff of 1,200 people.

Jizaboz wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 9:02 pmI’ve also seen too many episodes of Love Boat and you guys have confirmed my theory that the show is about as realistic today as flying in a plane in movies from the 1970s.

I hadn't thought about The Love Boat for at least twenty years, until I ended up on this Alaskan cruise and they were showing episodes in our room. As Happiness said, there are just enough channels being piped into the rooms to create the illusion that you have television in your room. (If I recall, we had 12 channels, and half of those were advertisements for the cruise ship and/or live feeds from around the ship.)

While on the ship, we watched the Love Boat episode where Charo keeps sneaking aboard the ship at every port. I couldn't help but laugh. Maybe it was possible in the 70s/80s to sneak onboard a cruise ship as a stowaway, but not today. Every time you get on the boat during port they scan your cruise card and, if in another country, check your passport. It would be tough to smuggle a beer back onboard the ship, much less some lady who keeps shouting coochie-coochie every 30 seconds.

Interesting background point. Jeraldine Saunders, who wrote the book that became the movie (and series) The Love Boat, was interviewing for the position of cruise director. She was asked if she had experience in the role, and gave some examples of work she had done, lying her ass off to try and get the job. She did get it, although there was something she didn't know at the time that the men hiring her did: at that time, a woman had never been cruise director on a ship. She became the first.

They wanted to see if she was the type who either wouldn't lie or could lie convincingly, because sometimes a cruise director has to not tell passengers certain information they know while not being obvious they're hiding something.

She also told how one of the female passengers on one of the cruises had the intent of screwing every male member of the crew. She did it, too, including the captain. After all, it was "the Love Boat" and this was back in the '70s.

Haha that’s great about the guy crying over 50$ Flack. Once I took a shuttle van from the San Diego airport to a nearby hotel. The Mexican driver dude had Christian propaganda all over the inside of the van and was quite grumpy. When I get there I pay the roughly 15-20 $ with my credit card after insisting I’ll get my own bag. I then hand him a 5$ bill and say “Merry Christmas” (it was the middle of December). Dude lid up like a Christmas tree! “Ye.. yes sir! Merry Christmas to you too sir!” Smiling eat to ear. Shit like that really makes me hate all the self centered and self entitled assholes in the world. Like jeez, has no one given this man 5$ or told him merry Christmas this month? It’s a pretty pathetic state of affairs if I’m the Good Samaritan here.

The reading out loud thing FFS. These are the same people that point at the menu in drive thrus. No one working there can see what they are pointing at.. nope. Instead, these sad specimens point to the menu to sort their own thoughts! If you are behind one and see the finger come out, expect an extended wait.

While I’ve yet to go on a cruise this abundance of food thing does interest me. I’ve also seen too many episodes of Love Boat and you guys have confirmed my theory that the show is about as realistic today as flying in a plane in movies from the 1970s. I’m on the fence about taking one myself. Making a long trip to even get to the ship for one seems kind of a bother. I can drive 4 hours or less and get to the ocean but I’ve got to go like 17 to get to a cruise ship dock. Also, if I want really want extra bacon for breakfast, I can cook a whole package for an additional 3.99! I don’t mind crowds, but I do have a “It’s too crowded here.” breaking point like any other Roller Coaster Tycoon NPC.

However, the idea of walking into rooms filled with flashy video games and gambling machines while completely blitzed off a drink package and weed on a big ass boat filled with people-watching material seems pretty awesome.

Yup, Mendenhall it was.

So there are people who save up (or go into debt) for years and I think they believe the money they've spent gives them the right to act like complete and total assholes. And unfortunately the cruise industry feeds into this by essentially letting their employees serve as punching bags. If bartenders were allowed to say, "we don't serve Duck Day Paris champagne here you cow," people wouldn't act that way. It's like "the customer is always right" multiplied by a million.

Another thing a balcony room gets you is the ability to disembark first. On our last cruise, they told us to go to our meeting area at 7 a.m. for 8 a.m. disembarking, and then they let us off at 7:20. We got off so fast our hotel shuttle wasn't even there yet and they had to wake some guy up to come get us.

Also, once you dock, the ship changes from "have a nice cruise!" to "gtfo now" mode so fast it'll make your head spin. Food, gone. Casino, closed. A/C, off. They remove every reason you would want to stay as quickly as possible.

For Hawaii and Alaska we too Ruby Princess cruises which were great because they were big ships. We've now been to Cozumel twice both on Carnival and they were... meh. Our last cruise was less than meh, because we went on Carnival (the cheapest cruise line) during spring break, which meant our entire floor was full of frat boys testing their livers. When I'm away from home I sleep with earbuds in and music on shuffle, but even that won't drown out assholes banging on the hallway walls at three in the morning.

My favorite bar was in the casino. The drinks were (I felt) stronger there, and like I said before it doesn't take that much to rise above. Tip a guy $10 and he will remember you for the entire cruise (you're competing with assholes like duck sauce lady remember). Our Hawaiian cruise was 2 1/2 weeks and spanned both Christmas and New Years. We gave our statesman guy like $50 for Christmas and he cried and hugged me for so long that I through we were going to have to spray him with cold water to get him off my leg.

I haven't mentioned the Behind the Scenes tours. Each cruise has one and I've done one every time -- took one kid twice, one kid once, and my wife once. It's the cost of an excursion -- like $100 each I think -- and you get a four hour tour of the ship. You go everywhere from the laundry room in the hot ass bowels of the ship to the kitchens, the engine room, backstage at the performing area, and up on the bridge to meet the captain. I love trivia and everywhere you go they are telling you facts. Plus you get a backpack and a baseball cap and whenever staff members see you with either of those things they will hook you up constantly with shit. It's not for everybody and some people think it's a complete waste but I loved it. If you think the maids have it bad, wait til you meet the guys who wash and fold tablecloths 12 hours a day in a 100 degree steam coffin.

Vark: There is NO REASON not to call people out on being dickweeds! What are they gonna do, put their scooter in reverse and huff angrily? It's totally fun!

RACISM!
Upon boarding, you are stopped, your card is scanned, and a man takes your photo so when your card is swiped for, LET'S JUST SAY, your free liquor, you can't just hand your card to your friend to finish off your other 8 drinks for the day. Nothing is stopping you from not being completely stupid and ordering a drink, walking out of where that bar is, handing it to a friend, and then buying a drink at a different bar, but paying thousands of dollars to save eight-fifty is stupid, so I did not do that. This seems like a complete Paul-tangent, but the man taking the photos had a pretty think Spanish accent, so he pronounced my father's name as 'Denni' which caused my brother in law to have a thought, which he immediately stupidly shouted "Hey, it's Denni! From Noo Jork!" Which, as my GF and I were getting our photos taken exactly in front of this man, was VERY awkward. 10 feet later the photographer for the ship put all of us in the same picture so we couldn't even pretend we weren't part of the same group. This idea that you can yell any dumb shit that forms in your head is what people mean by "White Privilege." It is the modus operandi of Cruise People. What he was ACTUALLY doing was recalling a trip to Nuevo Progeso during 'Tourist Appreciation Day' (aka gringo-time) When they hauled my father up on stage and made a big production about his name and where he was from. Which is really only slightly less racist than what my GF thought with no context.

DEPRESSING!
Like any hotel, you get a book in your room detailing all the things you can do or get or would like to understand. In some part there is phrasing that "Sexual assault is not tolerated and will be prosecuted. All housekeeping staff have panic buttons." Which, if you have to write down as an actual instruction "Do NOT rape the tiny Filipina maids. We WILL catch you." is just pretty fukken grim, even for someone from the Internet.

There's no way I could be trapped on a ship with people like that and NOT try and tell them what dickweeds they are being. Things would go badly.

I can take about a week with my family before I'm done. I pretty much slammed my stateroom door in my mom's face when she wanted a hug because we may not see each other until next year not SOLELY because I am a horrible person, but ALSO because they kept banging on my doors and waking me up FAR before I was finished sleeping off my hangover CONSTANTLY. Do not do this. I know when and where I need to be, and I will be on time. Do not wake me up, and then let my insomnia rob me of 2 vital hours of sleep. I know this is when you wake up but it is FOUR FUCKING THIRTY AM LOCAL TIME. Breakfast is surprisingly not being served, and it will not take me 4 hours to get from bed to 100 yards from the pier. It will take me precisely 40 minutes.

In response to YOUR question, I could do 2 weeks easy, depending on the location and the excursions off ship. After 3-5 days you'll have ship routine down, so how much time do you need to revel in that ability? I personally was in no hurry to get back to work and would have been fine with the ship continuing to San Francisco, which it would probably make in another 3 days, figure 2 of those in ports, one in Oregon, one in northern Cali. On the other hand, they offer 35 and 42 day cruises for people who have no job, and Princess announced a 111 day around the world for people who really want to spit in the face of the God Norovirus.

How many days would you guys say is "enough" when it comes to the cruise experience? If I go home I have found I will snap at one of my parents, once, after 4 days. Dad will say the n-word once within 4 days so that is kind of our limit. It's tough for me to go anywhere longer than that.

Vark: ALMOST everyone is pretty nice and chatty, you can get any drink at any time, and the people-watching is fun. Feel a bit hungry? Here's a ham crossiant! nope, it's just free, don't even need to look at your card! then just wander to a part of the ship where there are not people and relax in peace and quiet. Then go laugh at the utter tools in the "art" "auction."

I mean, as I said, you can get more vacation for less dollar, but it is its own experience.

I concur with Flack's concurring. He is also correct that we did take the same trip and probably stood on the same glacier (Mendenhall.) We dumped my niece in the pools for hours at a stretch to tire her out. Worked well. There are also two day cares (like 5-12 and then 13-17) where she IMMEDIATELY freaked out and had to get picked back up. (They paged my sister basically with "We're not dealing with this shit.")

Paul found something correct, and I was lied to by wikipedia (I am moderately surprised by all the layers of this.)

One of the officers on our ship had a bit part on The Love Boat, which was portrayed by the ship Island Princess (which is not the current Island Princess.)


ASSHOLES!

"No it's actually a vodka worth calling, I know because they have a cardboard tag on it that says it's the best!"
I spent a lot of time at the bar located next to the cafe in the atrium. It seems to me this is a common cruise-ship configuration: the central multi-floor space with the shops and the 24/7 cafe. A horrible wattle-throated cow came up and DEMANDED in a pissy voice "A white russian, made with Tito's". Reuben, the delightful bartender, tried to explain that he would have to charge her for the white russian and the Tito's separately, because the white russian they sold was served with Absolut. After quite a large and aggressive haggle about how NO ONE ELSE had told her that all cruise and she ALWAYS got them that way she finally drops "Well I have THE beverage package, so it doesn't even matter!" Really lady? So why have you wasted all this time making me feel bad about being a passenger on this cruise and thus in some small way even partially connected with you? Do you just like being a cunt?

At the end of the cruise, upon ordering my last drink, Reuben asked me if I'd like a double, to which I reply "sure!" he then proceeded to not charge me for it, to which I was thinking "dude, it's free for me either way but I appreciate the gesture."

"Duck Day"
Another time, quite possibly the SAME DAY. You know those people who you just cringe and hope to avoid when you see them 100 yards away? This shriveled-up lady with a cane, a water bottle, and frizzy orange hair that creates an image you can't help but identify as "a really cunty chihuahua" shows up and stands at the widest portion of the counter; it's where the glasses are stored, and then flares out to be another 3 feet wide, so the short bartender and the short woman can barely reach each other. I quickly figured out this was for resting drinks while standing and if you wanted to actually order comfortably, you should move 2 feet in either direction. So she looks at Reuben and says in a thick Dallas accent "I want a bottle of Duck Day, Paris Champagne." Reuben and I are confused, because he does not sell that. He DOES sell a white wine with a picture of a duck on it named 'Decoy', but this is wrong. He asks her if she might want to check with the wine bar across the atrium, because they have more different wines and he only has prosecco, which he demonstrates by showing her the menu and asking for clarification. She takes in this perfectly unaccented English question as personal affront, thinks with her eyes about his brown skin, and remedies the problem by talking louder. "NO. I don't want prosecco! DUCK. DAY. PARIS CHAMPAGNE. I got it from Thomas right here, he went in the back and brought it to me!"

During this whole exchange I watched all the warmth and life drain out of Reuben as he reacted like nothing more than a dead-eyed Jack-in-the-Box employee.[1] He escaped to "the back" and this...woman looks at me and says "I don't think he liked that." I just stared through her as if she didn't exist. Reuben returns with a bottle of the house champagne, "Duc de Paris" (which is what they serve for free at the hard-sell jewelry pitches and is TERRIBLE) and she says "YES. I WANT THE WHOLE BOTTLE. THEY SOLD IT TO ME BEFORE." Reuben does not care in any way about this, his job is to make drinks. She holds up her lanyard towards him, being too lazy to take her card out of the holder, so instead of just being able to swipe it he has to read the tiny 4 digit number on it and key it in. She then demands her receipt for... reasons? She tucks her totally necessary cane under her arm, and wanders off.

Reuben and I exchange a "Did that just happen?!" look and life goes on. TEN MINUTES LATER, still carrying that bottle, she comes back and demands another. Reuben says he has to swipe her card this time, and says that she's already bought 3 bottles, to which she first disagrees and then concedes that maybe the all-purpose card the cruise uses to track our purchases isn't magically lying. Now the story is "I am GOING to drink this bottle in my room with my HUSBAND and then take that bottle off the ship. THEY SAID I COULD!" As Reuben goes in the back for another bottle she looks at me and says "They don't want to sell it to me because it's CHEAP and it tastes GOOD." I buy my house prosecco for $15 a bottle and it is worlds beyond this industrial swill. I again just stare through her, speechless that someone is being this garbage directly in my presence. Reuben comes back, runs the transaction and tries to escape while she loudly demands her receipt AGAIN from him. I'm going to bet it was the same price as the other bottle lady. She then thankfully leaves, and I am so wound up with sympathy-cringe that I have to leave and go get a glass of wine from the wine bar. Also it helps you feel less like an alcoholic if you switch bars every 3-5 drinks. My girlfriend was doing a wine-blending event[2] in the same space and this bartender, Robby, who also recognized us (we were probably one of the few people to get the wine and sushi dinner there. I was wrecked and my GF has blue hair so we're pretty noticeable amongst the sea of mustaches and camouflage trucker hats.) I told him if an awful woman demanded Duck Day she meant "get a bottle of house champagne." GF finishes event, we end up back with Reuben and while I'm trying to explain Duck Day to her the lady COMES BACK (it was the exact time that the bartenders' shift changed) and orders a bottle of "House Champagne" from the just on duty guy and then squirrels this third bottle back to her room. I imagine it was just packed floor to ceiling with this shitty fizz-wine. Like pitching sweatshirts overboard to stuff your luggage with it.

People like this always show up spoiling for a fight because every single interaction with a service employee has always been a massive fight, because they are ASS. HOLES. I can't imagine what going through life like that must be like.

"Irony"
Getting off the ship is a whole production. They muster different groups in different large spaces and feed them off the ship in an order, because they are re-loading and sailing that same day. After being a little confused but by simply following the instructions we were given, we are finally in the queue and walking towards the gangway when a bunch of dickheads just try to barge in front of me. They spend the time we are shuffling towards the door loudly complaining that they can't understand the (simple) instructions.[3] They then loudly complained about people "just getting in line whenever they want" and getting off the ship, after just cutting in front of about 100 people to get off whenever they want because again, being in a place at a time is too hard, even when they write it down for you. Cruise People must Loudly Talk through their lurching ideas because they can't read without moving their lips.

I don't have it in me to describe the turbo-assholes on the train, but they were so bad I immediately got off, marched away from everyone and everything until I had a shot and a beer in me, then sat in a tourist trap bar loudly bitching about what fucking assholes tourists are, which I know amused the staff to no end. I'll try to get that into entertaining form.


NOTED NON-ASSHOLES

Captain Charlie. In the atrium they do a daily-or-so dance lesson. A lot of awkward people trying to learn to salsa. On this day it was The Macarena, and there is the incredibly fat kid vaguely flailing and pretty much failing to have any rhythm whatsoever. His eyes were like tiny pinholes disappearing into his fat jowly cheeks. He was wearing a captain's hat and a black t-shirt emblazoned with 'CAPTAIN CHARLIE' in foot-high letters. He was ADORABLE. I cheered for him mightily. Later he was wearing a tiny oversized hockey jersey and was still The BEST.


QUESTIONS/RESPONSES

Flack, being on 4 cruises to not only different places but on different ships and I assume brands, can you contrast them at all?

ICJ: Of course you can article this, I am touched that you like it. Feel free to stitch these parts together, edit however you'd like, and if you procrastinate for another week maybe I can get something good about the train.


[1] Which is factually and scientifically proven to give you explosive diarrhea every time you eat there.

[2] Here's 4 wines by a winery. Walk through tasting each one with and without cheese to see how it affect the flavor. then you do two blends of them with a little mixing beaker based on actual blends the winery bottles and sells. Now use all your knowledge to make your own personal blend. Discuss all of this with the other 8 people.

[3] I was "Green 3", and the paper said "Be at this place at 8:30am." I was a bit nervous not seeing conspicuous Green 3s there, but sure enough they called us and we got in line as expected. These idiots got confused because there were people in different groups at their muster (Because some people ignore the "please don't show up way early and crowd out the people getting off before you" signs.)

I've been on four cruises now -- twice to Mexico, once to Hawaii, and once on (I believe) the same Alaskan cruise you took, back in 2012. We stopped in Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan. For the most part I thought your review was spot on. Here are a few comments/additions.

- We took our kids and rented two connecting suites. This awarded us a few upgrades, including the opportunity to board before the masses. Boarding early is nice if for no other reason than it allows you to stake out some real estate to camp in until the rooms open up.

- Staying in a suite also gives you free access to all of the fancy restaurants, all of the time. We ate breakfast in a restaurant every day that served nice food and only had four or five other groups (it was closed to the masses). It's nice to sit and eat and not have grubby people pushing past you as if the ship will run out of cake. (Spoiler, the ship will never, ever run out of cake.)

- Anything you can get at any buffet you can also get brought to your room for free via room service at pretty much any time. Again, the idea of a cruise is not to sit in your room and have someone bringing you floppy pizza 24/7, but there are days when you just don't feel like putting pants on.

- The food/buffet is a lot less congested if you're willing to shift your meal times just a bit. It's a lot less crowded at 11 as compared to noon.

- The unlimited soda plan is $50 for the entire cruise. My mom bought it for my kids (and herself) on our last cruise. I drank a lot of coffee.

- Being willing to spend a single dollar puts you above 95% of the people on the cruise. Princess isn't bad (Carnival is way worse) but you would be amazed at how offended people get when they find out something costs a buck or two. Our cruise had a sushi bar which had a nominal fee and we were literally the only people there.

- Obviously things are different with kids, but we had to find lots of things to fill the day. We spent time in the arcade, the library, playing bingo and trivia, and the sports bar (which let the kids in). My wife and I spent a little time in the casino and both thought they were the tightest slot machines we had ever seen.

- You either like the excursions or you don't. We did them in Mexico because we didn't feel like getting lost/killed in Mexico. We did some in Alaska but also went out on our own a few times. I think you have to walk all the way through their pseudo-village to call an Uber/Lyft, but there are also taxis waiting there as well and if you plan ahead you can get away from the masses and go see other things.

- Google cruise ship art auction scam. Absolutely fascinating.

Sounds like you had a great time. I have great memories of eating salmon, touching a glacier, and whale watching. I think we are planning another Alaska cruise next year.

Would you ever go on a falsely reported cruise ship Commander?

Endless buffets! And you can learn to drink

THE
26 FOOT DRAFT
AARDVARK

The Happiness Engine wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 7:59 pm It was... not what I expected...

STATS:
Ship: https://www.princess.com/ships-and-expe ... -princess/ which is their 2nd, soon to be 3rd largest ship class. It is too large to transit the Panama Canal.

I thought this didn't sound right, and after doing some research I call "bullshit" on this factoid.

According to https://www.princess.com/news/backgroun ... Sheet.html which is the official facts page for the Star Princess.
Here's the numbers (dimensions):
Length: 951 feet
Height: 201 feet
Beam: 133 feet (excluding bridge wing) [this is the maximum width]
Draft: 26 feet
Back in 2009 the Panama Canal Commission decided to install an additional set of locks to allow much larger ships. The new locks opened for business in October 2016. Originally, ships that could fit the old locks were called "Panamax." To distinguish them, ships that can fit the new lock size are called "New Panamax."

New Panamax limits:
Length: 427 m (1400 ft)
Width: 55m (180 m)
Depth (draft):18.3 m (60 ft) [Wikipedia says 50 feet]

This ship is waaay below New Panamax limits.

And you'd go again? It sounds like purgatory, the ship to hell. It's difficult to suffer idiots at the best of times, imagine being stuck on a boat full of them and allowing as much truth-juice as one likes.

"Exchuse, me lady, did you know you're fat and stupid and shaped like a kumquat?"

THE
BAD MOVE
SPACE CADET
AARDVARK

Also, can I make that an article for Caltrops's front page? I am scheduling posts there, once a week, for the rest of the year.