How to Spend Seven Days with 3,000 Strangers Without Developing an Eye Twitch
Let’s begin by addressing the elephant in the lifeboat.
To the uninitiated, cruising appears to be a spectacularly poor vacation choice for anyone who generally finds people… a bit much. You’re voluntarily locking yourself onto a floating city with several thousand strangers, many of whom have already begun drinking before the gangway has been raised. Cruise commercials don’t exactly inspire confidence, either. They invariably feature unnaturally attractive people gyrating around the pool while a DJ with the subtlety of an air-raid siren encourages everyone to “MAKE SOME NOISE!” If your resting heart rate increases simply watching these commercials, you’re hardly alone.
Fortunately, they bear about as much resemblance to an actual cruise as a car commercial bears to your morning commute.
The first thing you’ll discover is that a modern cruise ship isn’t really a ship. It’s a small city that happens to float. Like any city, it has busy neighborhoods, quiet neighborhoods, tourist traps, hidden gems, peaceful parks, loud bars, elegant restaurants, and at least one place where you wonder why on earth everybody insists on congregating there.
The mistake most first-time cruisers make is assuming they have to experience the ship the way everyone else does. You don’t.
In fact, if you’re wholly misanthropic, or simply selective about your human interaction, you may discover that cruising is one of the most relaxing vacations imaginable.
You just have to know the rules.
Choose Your Cruise Line Like You’re Choosing a Neighborhood
The single biggest mistake skeptical cruisers make is assuming that “a cruise is a cruise.” That’s a bit like saying Boston, Barstow, Banff, and Beijing are all basically the same because they begin with “B”.
Every cruise line has its own personality. Some lean unapologetically toward the party crowd. Others cater to families with enough children to repopulate Andorra. Some seem to believe that every waking hour should be accompanied by a whistle, a microphone, or a game involving inflatable objects. None of these is inherently bad, they’re simply different ecosystems.
If, however, your ideal afternoon involves a frozen cocktail, a comfortable chair, and the sound of the ocean rather than a DJ remixing “Sweet Caroline” for the third time, choose accordingly.
That’s one of the reasons Glibscruise 2.5 is sailing on Celebrity Cruises. Celebrity has earned a reputation for attracting adults who appreciate a more refined atmosphere without crossing over into stuffy. You’ll still find lively bars, live music, excellent entertainment, and plenty of opportunities to socialize—but the ship never feels as though it’s desperately trying to convince you that you’re having fun.
Think boutique hotel, not floating fraternity house.
Learn the Migration Patterns of the Herd
Human beings are wonderfully predictable creatures.
Left to their own devices aboard a cruise ship, they display migration patterns that would make David Attenborough positively giddy.
At around eleven in the morning, hundreds of passengers independently conclude that the absolute best place to spend the afternoon is packed shoulder-to-shoulder around the main pool. Shortly thereafter, they begin drifting toward the buffet with the churning determination of spawning salmon. Forty-five minutes before the evening show, another great migration begins toward the theater.
This is not a problem – this is an opportunity.
While everyone else is participating in what can only be described as a supervised people casserole, vast stretches of the ship become almost eerily peaceful. Somewhere there’s an observation lounge with panoramic ocean views and precisely four occupants, all silently pretending the other three don’t exist. Somewhere else, there’s a shaded promenade where the only soundtrack is the rhythmic hiss of the ship cutting through the sea. A bartender is polishing glasses in a nearly empty lounge, wondering whether anyone besides the crew has discovered this little oasis.
Spend an hour exploring on embarkation day. Find those places. Claim them as your own.
The secret isn’t escaping the people, the secret is letting the people escape you.
The Daily Planner Is Not a Court Summons
The first time you open the ship’s daily schedule, you may experience a brief moment of panic.
Trivia.
Dance classes.
Wine tastings.
Bingo.
Cooking demonstrations.
Karaoke.
Pool games.
Seminars.
Art auctions.
Latin dance lessons.
Many first-time cruisers make the mistake of believing they’re somehow expected to participate in all this. As though Guest Services will send Julie McCoy to your cabin if you fail to attend “Battle of the Sexes Pool Volleyball.”
Relax – the daily planner isn’t a checklist. It’s a menu.
Dip into a trivia contest for twenty minutes with Shpip and win fabulous prizes. Wander into a jazz set until your martini is empty. Watch sail-away from the upper deck, then quietly disappear before the line dancing begins. Skip karaoke entirely unless you’ve reached the magical intersection of Caribbean rum and questionable decision-making.
Nobody is keeping score. The Cruise Police evidently got caught up in the Defund movement.
Embrace the Sheer Laziness of It All
The most exhausting part of many vacations isn’t the sightseeing.
It’s the administration:
Book the hotel.
Find another hotel.
Rent the car.
Find parking.
Research restaurants.
Navigate unfamiliar roads.
Pack.
Unpack.
Repeat until your vacation begins to resemble middle management.
Cruising quietly eliminates almost all of that.
You unpack once, your hotel politely relocates itself overnight while you sleep. Every morning you wake up somewhere new without touching your suitcase, consulting Google Maps, or discovering that your hotel “with charming local character” is apparently located directly above a nightclub called Señor Boom Boom. There is something delightfully decadent about expending absolutely no effort while still arriving in a different tropical paradise every morning.
It’s gloriously lazy.
You should lean into it.
Curate Your Human Contact
One of the nicest surprises about cruising is that you don’t need to become everyone’s new best friend – you simply need a handful of pleasant acquaintances.
Get to know your cabin steward, or your favorite bartender or waiter. Make chit chat with the quiet couple in the smoking lounge.
By Day Four, your bartender is already making your usual before you reach the counter. Your waiter remembers that you like extra pepper. Your cabin steward greets you by name and somehow seems to know exactly when you’re out of the room.
You’ve successfully created a perfectly functional social circle consisting of hospitality professionals and perhaps two fellow introverts.
Final Thoughts
Here’s the wonderful irony about cruising: the bigger the ship, the easier it becomes to disappear.
While everyone else is packed around the pool debating whether they have time for “just one more” frozen cocktail before lunch (they do), you can be stretched out on a quiet deck with a book, a gentle sea breeze, and water so impossibly blue it looks like the your blind Aunt Betty Caribbean has adjusted its saturation settings.
You haven’t packed a suitcase in days. You haven’t driven anywhere. You haven’t searched for parking, yelled at the GPS, or argued whether to stop at Cracker Barrell or Waffle House.
Your hotel has done all the work while you’ve been occupied with the serious business of deciding whether your next beverage should contain rum, gin, or an umbrella.
You came aboard convinced that cruising meant seven uninterrupted days of compulsory extroversion.
Instead, you discovered something rather wonderful.
A cruise isn’t about being surrounded by people.
It’s about having an entire floating city at your disposal…and knowing exactly where everyone else isn’t.
Come with us then leave us alone, April 4-11, 2027: https://sklasen.cruiseonegroups.com/Glibertarians
I thought this was about what Al Pacino was doing in that movie. Or George Michael.
I was going to say William Friedkin.
Wait – You unpack at the hotel?
I have one suitcase with the clean clothes, one for the dirty clothes and simply take clean from the first and deposit the dirty in the second as the time passes or until I drop in on a laundromat when the clean set gets refilled.
The absolute Last thing I’d do is unpack at a hotel – that guarantees I leave stuff behind.
Same. I am extremely paranoid about leaving things in a hotel. I live out of my suitcase, always.
The thought has never even occurred to me. I’ve never left anything at a hotel but maybe I’ll try this next time.
I’ve never managed to leave anything behind, but the paranoia is always there. I do a final sweep of the room before turning in my keys to make sure I didn’t forget anything. The number of times that I’ve spotted something is nonzero.
I’ve never managed to leave anything behind
My eldest daughter forgot to unpack a whole drawer in our New York hotel. I asked why we needed to pay that much money to have them shipped to us, couldn’t we just buy her new clothes. It was then that I discovered how expensive Lululemon clothes are.
Likewise.
I’ll partially unpack the car, coats, pillows and extra stuff but never the duffle bags.
If it’s for more than a night or two, yes I do. Suitcase goes in the closet, clothes hanging or in the dresser.
Dirty stuff in the laundry bag I bring.
Packing up for home is just “check the closet, check the dresser”. It’s not that hard.
But then you waste all the time moving crap between suitcase and dresser/closet. For what? The inconvenience of having to pack it back up again?
Hanging stuff should be hung anyway so it doesn’t wrinkle.
It takes less than 10 minutes on either end of the trip. If I’m staying for 5 nights it’s well worth it.
Sounds fopping. Clothes are wrikled five minutes after being put on anyway. And if it only takes ten minutes you’ve got more suitcase than you need.
*foppish
Too many different conversations going on
I’m with slum on this one. If it’s more than one or two nights, I unpack. Rooting through your bag like a homeless person is just messy and, yes, time consuming (if one is really obsessing about a few minutes over the course of a day).
Oddly, I can wear my “nice clothes” for more than a few minutes without looking like a disheveled bum. So hanging them is definitely worth it.
So, RC is a robot. Noted.
It’s a lovely write up, but you haven’t convinced me it’s not a trap.
😛
It is a trap – a tourist trap.
Now, that’s not fair. Everyone from GlibsCruise v1.0 returned intact and un-violated (at least so far as they were willing to admit.)
You’re not being violated if you consent to it.
I got felt up getting back on the ship.
Yeah, but that was just Sheldon goofing around.
I pay good money for the security checks. I want it good and hard.
It’s a boat. On the ocean.
Pass.
I also don’t find cruises alluring. I would rather take a road trip.
I’d rather sit in a poorly lit room in front of a monitor and a Mt. Dew in one hand while furiously Firsting with the other
If Leslie Nielsen is the captain, nope right out.
Also nope right out if the paid dance partners are being supervised by Lt. Data.
Same with cities.
This is great & almost convincing me that a cruise might be for me.
You may be less likely to be noticed, but aren’t you still surrounded by people at the end of the day?
If they leave me alone, why do I care.
They’re there.
That’s enough to drive me bonkers.
Especially since they always, inevitably make noise.
Too much noise. Incessantly.
Unless you live in the middle of the Gobi Desert or something, that is *always* going to be a problem.
Do they grow a lot of cauliflower in the gobi desert?
I start randomly yelling and cursing when people get within a certain proximity to me. It’s about the length of two football fields.
I’d been on several cruises and finally 2013 occurred.
‘Poop cruise’ documentary exposes 2013 ship nightmare featuring chaos, gross conditions
https://www.foxnews.com/travel/poop-cruise-documentary-exposes-ship-nightmare-featuring-chaos-gross-conditions
A Carnival spokesperson told Fox News Digital the incident from over 12 years ago was a teachable moment for the entire cruise industry.
Yes, the “teachable” moment was having almost no redundancy for electricity and therefore the creation of potable water. And if one of these larger ships actually does go down. There really isn’t a great way to immediately pick up passengers in large quantities. That’s why despite the conditions on that ship it really was safer for them to simply ride it out.
I read an article like a decade ago that the required redundancy for water and electricity was at the time something like $4mn more per ship. They had no desire to spend that and/or remove space for paying passengers.
As a former service member, I can poop under any conditions. You civilians are soft.
Ever pissed into a bottle while driving a MRAP at top speed down Iraq’s busiest road?
Had an XO piss in his canteen on a bus ride once. 1SG absolutely hated him and made him sign a statement of charges for a new one.
I mean that’s just pretty fucking dumb to me. The XO part. I get the 1SG’s position more.
Brawls on Carnival or GTFO.
They need to partner with Waffle House.
I noticed that some of the security staff on GlibsCruise v1.0 were little smiling dudes, with crossed khukuri badges on their lapels. That alone was enough for me to tone down some of my usual misbehavior.
Yikes, yeah, don’t mess with the (retired?) Gurkhas.
You skipped the boss fights?
I seriously skipped the boss fights. Fighting with the highly trained ex-members of a unit renowned for their physical prowess and close combat skills, with nothing but a crappy 2″ composite neck knife, in a place where I can’t realistically run away or hide a body? No thank you, not on my vacation.
Well, aren’t you optimistic, thinking you would be needing to hide dead Gurkhas.
Well if you don’t, the rest are going to start looking for you.
/get the joke already, RC
You throw them overboard, of course.
I’d be curious to hear how a Gurkha ends up as security on a Carnival cruise.
Apparently it’s a thing retired Gurkhas do?
https://gurkha.com.hk/gurkha-international-manpower-services-limited/ship-security-guards/
I enjoy cruises. This past two years though, I bought a house and am building a pool. So I cannot go back out to sea.
How you doin’?
*waggles eyebrows*
Oh, not that kind of cruising.
No cruises for me but this was a somewhat enticing write-up.
Perhaps someday on one of the ultra-bougie options.
Along those lines, for those of a more nature-loving bent: https://www.expeditions.com/campaign/new-2028-29
The family did a 7-day cruise to the Galapagos Islands last year – highly recommended!
Sweet.
Silverseas does expedition cruises, for that bougie/nature mash-up.
https://www.silversea.com/our-cruises/luxury-expeditions-cruises.html
You don’t tell me what to do. I don’t want to be on someone else’s schedule.
Guest Services will send Julie McCoy to your cabin
Insert archer gif here.
Sniff… Sniff…
https://katv.com/news/entertainment/love-boat-star-admits-regret-over-handling-co-stars-cocaine-struggles
lol I didn’t know any of that.
*childhood ruined*
I didn’t know that either. But it was the 80’s, coke was a big part of the era.
I’d be more shocked if a series of the era was full of straight edged teetotalers.
Yup on both counts
Since I’m about to be a normal W2 employee and so then maybe I will be able to save up for one of these here cruisy thingies.
Nice write up, thank you! I can confirm a lot of this. Mrs. TOK went on a Disney cruise for our honeymoon. Even on that ship, there were adult pools and lounge areas, and if you ate later, there weren’t many kids. Not wall-to-wall kids like you might think.
Our problem was, Mrs. TOK got quite seasick. Little things like the water in her glass moving, or my wheelchair rolling on its own, set her off. Her cousin has some extra rewards points from his casino visits so he’s offered to treat us to a cruise, so we might try again.
Super lurker
My wife hates crowds, but likes to go on cruises because of the cruise perks.
You unpack once and get to wake up somewhere new each day, logistics of eating/activity planning is all done for you – pick something and show up.
Two of the big perks of a cruise for us are permission to indulge (she got a massage last trip), and most importantly permission to relax (our usual vacations involve camping/hiking and a lot of work).
We’ve of course worked out how to minimize being with crowds (the tips noted above work).
Shows in the main theater are about the only place you might find yourself unable to avoid a big crowd. Like most venues there are less desirable seats so find the balance there.
And if you don’t care for what’s going on in the main theater, its such a large venue it will greatly reduce people elsewhere on the ship.
If you are in port and don’t go on an excursion the ship becomes a ghost town.
Our last cruise, nothing in Jamaica interested us so we stayed on board and it turned out to be one of our favorite days because the scheduled onboard activities were lightly attended (trivia games, entertainment in the atrium, scavenger hunts).
I will point out to everyone that Nepal could be an alternative choice! According the crack AP reporting you could help the local economy.
https://x.com/jarvis_best/status/2080299750784708780
“I have nothing against the transgender prostitutes of Nepal. Some of my best friends are transgender prostitutes in Nepal.”
Jarvis is a good follow.
Iowa hawk from the top rope
I can’t believe that’s real.
Sweet summer child.
You think make-work jobs stop at liberal women in America? Commies worldwide were feeding at the trough of the American taxpayer.
That I believe.
What I don’t buy is there were 100 “open trannies” in Nepal “forced” to go into “sex work”.
More likely they weren’t “open” but they were already doing “sex work”.
I find it very difficult to believe that none of these 100+ LGBQWERTYs were involved in the sex trade before their American money was cut off.
Better question – how many of these QUILTBAG ‘aid workers’ were actually Nepalese, versus US and Euro expats livin’ it up in the third world?
I think I mentioned, but my sister and BiL are avid cruise-goers, and they talked me into going on a Celebrity cruise in the Caribbean next February. I’m sure they’re hoping I’ll become an addict, but I suspect it will be a one-and-done thing for me. Thanks for this write-up; hopefully it will let me avoid the masses for the most part.
*furiously pounds F5 looking for the “Next Article” link*
Then realizes the commenting just stopped…it’s not 3. 🙁
Look, I’m sorry, I have work.
It does happen.
I have a theory that all Glibs go to lunch at the same time, regardless of time zone.
In reality I have been working too. I came out to the garage to blow off steam after hours of meetings and boot up the old Linux PC.
I will say that tonight’s film is a kung fu epic: “Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog.”
So gird your loins and all that.
It’s only 92 degrees in the garage! Hooray! Lawn mowing tonight will be a cake walk. It’s been over 102 for a few days prior.
I’ll note that Monocle displays a ‘new article’ arrow when one is posted.
https://gitlab.com/glibertarians/forumProject
Well, back to the grist mill. These grists aren’t going to project manage themselves.
Has anybody else noticed that workdays are becoming more and more like Groundhog Day? Everyone around me forgets what was discussed the previous days. It’s happening all the time now. Like reverse Alzheimer’s, where everybody else is forgetful and you are cursed to remember everything.