I’m a day removed from having gotten off of the Disney Treasure, and hoo boy do I really feel my age these days. For the first time in all of the cruises that I’ve done before, did I feel a little motion sick on a cruise before, but thankfully that was very short lived, and I was able to sleep it off and remain normal throughout the duration of the trip. Driving back home all the way directly from Port Canaveral, I found my back hurting pretty badly to the point where I had to take some ibuprofen, thus making it the first time that I’ve needed painkillers, just to make a long distance drive, something I’ve done countless times in my life previously.
And unsurprising, the sea legs sensation of feeling boat rocking on solid land is hitting hard, and it’s mostly when I’m standing still or trying to remain as motionless as possible does the rocking sensation kick in, and I anticipate this will be the case for the next week or so, as it has been for me on previous cruises.
But anyway, big ass famiry trip in the bag, and do I have a lot of thoughts about it. As curmudgeon as it may sound to say, I don’t necessarily refer to this entirely as a vacation, because the truth of the matter is that wrangling my two kids, on a boat, is still a colossal amount of effort that leads to a lot of aggravation at times, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get fried and pissed off at undesirable behaviors throughout the week long journey through the Caribbean on an egregiously overpriced boat.
#2 hijacked almost every single evening of the trip, mostly on account of fatigue and a lack of napping, but it usually amounted to her refusing to eat, behaving like a little shit at dinner, and then me needing to walk her out of the restaurants or carry her from point A to point B, and thusly being unable to really enjoy large chunks of time. I don’t love her any less, but that’s about as succinct of a description of what happened throughout the course of this trip.
Oh, and I’m sure she’ll never live this down, she also barfed on the very literal center of the boat; in the grand hall of the main concourse, right at the center of the stage, where they had a photographer taking pictures of guests. Immortalized, and definitely one of those stories that we as parents will always be able to recollect whenever we want to embarrass her in the future.
Still though, there’s little I won’t do for my kids and famiry, and despite the fact that I was probably burning out more than I was at any state remotely close to relaxation, there were still numerous pockets of happiness that makes it all worth it, and when the day is over, I want my kids to experience things and see things and visit places, and in those regards, it’s easy to say that the trip was a success.
My children stepped foot onto the soil of other countries, experienced things that aren’t easily available to us elsewhere, and they got to experience a boatload of things that made them smile, rejoice or just be plain happy to see a bunch of Disney characters. As a famiry, we went swimming with stingrays and sea stars, ate a ton of decadent foods, and enjoyed beaches, pools and a whole lot of fucking sunshine.
Some other observations about the trip were that this was apparently a tremendously busy cruise on account of two major factors:
- It was the fall break for numerous school districts in the country, with a large quantity of them being from Georgia; I’m not even joking if I said that probably 2-3 fifths of the cruising populous were from Georgia, with quite a bunch of them being from my county specifically. The shore excursion we went on, our boat was literally over half from my exact zip code, as we were all on the same fall break. Mythical wife even had one of her own students’ family assigned two tables away from us, so we saw them literally every single night.
- This particular cruise was a Halloween at Seas cruise, which meant that there was a specific evening dedicated to Halloween, complete with characters all donning Halloween costumes, décor changing to be Halloween themed, and most importantly for the littles, trick or treating on the ship.
However, let’s stay on that latter bullet, because I feel like that was a big contributor to what I did not necessarily enjoy about my cruise experience as a whole.
Namely, the fact that because there was a Halloween theme to the boat, it felt like it attracted a metric fuckton of Disney Adults™ all over the place. And of course, adults have every right to enjoy and experience The Magic™ of Disney cruises all the same as families and groups with kids do, but bear with me here, it’s when adults start getting into that no one of us is as _pejorative_ as all of us mentality is where I begin to get critical.
Like those adults who get all uppity about there daring to be kids around, on a fucking Disney boat, encroaching on their space or bumping into them, or running amok from time to time. I’d be waiting in line, and my kids, being kids, meaning spatially completely oblivious and accidentally bumping or wandering into someone’s personal space. I’d get some old fujoshi bitches who would roll their eyes or completely no-sell my courtesy apologies as a parent, and I’m just thinking, I take the apology back you fucking dorks, pardon my kids for being kids in a line to meet some fucking cartoon characters.
And speaking of lines, despite the cruises’ piss-poor lack of rules or guidelines when it comes to meeting characters, I found that the Disney Adults were the biggest problems when it came to bogarting meet up time with characters, with all of them wanting to be art directors and piece-meal their shoots with groups and sub-groups and then individuals, and hog the most amounts of time with these poor cast members who had to dress up like cartoon characters who just want to get through their meeting blocks without too many gross people touching them. Meanwhile, my kids would run up for a quick hug, a few pictures, a little bit of interacting, and then be on their merry ways within 2-3 minutes, and not the 8-10 that every adult group seemed to take.
This would be the case in almost every single line, and it got to where I’d have to go to a line 30-45 minutes early to try and ensure my kids didn’t have to wait in line forever, and I’d still find a bunch of grown ass adults already there ahead of me.
Then of course, once the sun set, the Adults would start to really gather, start to drink, and then really start clogging up the public areas en masse. I got the feeling that this was a preview to what it would be like if I were to have brought my children to a nerd convention, and I felt really relieved when I could get them back to the stateroom where they were content to just watch movies on-demand in the room to wind down from each day’s excitement.
Frankly, as much as grumpy adults might complain about children, on a Disney cruise, I found the adults to be the biggest problem as far as my experience was concerned. Most of this shit was designed for kids in mind, but instead the boat is full of a bunch of grown-ass adults bogarting all the space and offerings, and thankfully mythical wife and I had the guile and tenacity to overcome all of these man- and women-children from usurping all of the shit really meant for kids.
Although it might seem like I had the shittiest time ever, I really didn’t. I know I have this reputation of being surly and curmudgeon, but I am glad that my kids did enjoy themselves, and I can set my happiness aside if it means my kids are happy, and I can derive a genuine degree of happiness from that. However, as cliché as it sounds, these are the kinds of vacations that require the want for a vacation for just the adults afterward, and honestly if I don’t go on another Disney cruise again any time soon, I wouldn’t be too torn up about it.
