Although Korea was priority 1A on this vacation, 1B was very much the Disney Cruise that mythical wife booked, leaving out of Singapore. Frankly, the way I looked at things, seeing as how both mythical wife and I had a lot of plans, ideas and goals we wanted to do in Seoul, the real vacation wouldn’t be until we were sequestered onto Mickey’s boat, and had no other choice but to relax.
Seeing as how I logged the steps probably for about 125 miles while in Seoul, a vacation while on vacation seemed like a good idea and sufficient reason to tear ourselves away from the Motherland.
But not to go overlooked, were brief stops in Singapore before the cruise, and a whirlwind night in Hong Kong, both of which added value to the trip, and seeing as how neither of us had been to either before, were good toes dipped into the water to realize that both are worth seeing again in the future.
So Singapore, we actually spent two nights before cruising out, although the first was pretty much an arrival day at night. But with one full day and a morning, I felt like I got a good taste of the place, from a lot of walking around, as well as eating pretty much nothing but hawker stall food.
One of the observations I made about Singapore is that food is cheap, but booze not so much. I’m pretty sure all the food I ate for breakfast and lunch on our first day didn’t cost as much as one of the Singapore Sling cocktails we had at the Line Bar. And maybe it’s because it was at a touristy location, but Tiger beers costing the equivalent of $8-9 USD seemed kind of steep for what’s basically the Budweiser of Singapore.
Speaking of food, I wasn’t really a fan of Haianese chicken rice in spite of all the suggestions to try it. However, the satay from Satay Street was fantastic, but if I had to name a favorite food from the entire country, it was the curry puff pastries, that I housed like four of them in my short stay. They’re basically samosas, but still so fucking delicious.
I also made a point to go see the Merlion, which I summed up to being kind of like what the Mannekin Pis is to Brussels, some arbitrary statue that somehow has the identity of the city baked into it.
Honestly, Singapore felt kind of like the Chicago of Asia to me, since it’s such a diverse mixing bowl of cultures that all seem to converge in one harmonious city and country. Natives co-exist with people from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan, and it all seems to work out.
9/10 for Singapore, would visit again, even if it were ball-sticking hot and humid.
Before I get to the cruise, I want to go ahead and blurb about Hong Kong, which mythical wife manipulated the travel to where we’d have an overnight layover on our way back to Seoul before back to ‘Murica.
Our flight was delayed, cutting into the short amount of potential leisure time in HK because we had to be up early the following morning to head back to the airport. But we decided to still go into the city, regardless of how easy it would’ve been to punt, get a good night’s sleep and skip the city, but that would basically be like people who judge all of Atlanta based on a long layover at the airport and never actually get out in to the city.
If I had to describe HK in a nutshell, it’s a grittier Seoul, and that’s not a bad thing. The infrastructure is just rougher around the edges in public places, but still maintains airs of clean and modern in businesses. The Night Market was a fun little jaunt through merchants and cheap food stalls, and then mythical wife and I walked down Nathan Road until we hit up a high-rise bar a friend recommended, so we could get a nightcap as well as see a fantastic view of the city’s skyline.
HK is a beautiful city, full of life, energy and hustle. Not fair to give it a grade on such a brief visit, but would definitely consider visiting again in the future, and hopefully for longer.
Okay, onto the cruise; we sailed on the Disney Adventure, which was a four-day, entirely at-sea with no stops. Clearly, even the almighty Disney, doesn’t have anything in place with Malaysia, Indonesia, or Vietnam, which would’ve seemed like logical places to port.
From what I understand, the boat was originally constructed and meant to be another company’s, but they supposedly died during COVID, and Disney purchased the remains and outfitted it as the Adventure. And such explains a lot of the wonky navigation on the boat itself, which frustratingly had a lot of weird dead-ends and paths that required going up and over or down and around to get to point B from time to time, and it wasn’t really until the cruise was practically over did mythical wife and I really get our bearings straight with the ship, and even several of the ship’s personnel expressed similar agitation at the maneuverability within the vessel.
Being entirely at-sea meant that everyone on the boat was more or less going to be doing the same things at the same times, all the time. Breakfast at the Pixar Market or the whatever market on 6 were absolute shitshows of humanity, and led to a lot of frustration when seats were impossible to find, because some of the local residents were camping and reserving shit in circumstances that made it really dickish to do.
Frankly, I felt that for as big of a ship the Adventure was, there was a disproportionate ratio of places for activities, restaurants and quick service eateries. Maybe it’s because it’s entirely at-sea that these problems were exacerbated, but it’s like at no point was anything not packed, and leading to frustration.
And speaking of frustration, obviously it’s not anything that any cruise line can control, but the people aboard were definitely not something neither mythical wife or I had ever dealt with before, since this was our first time cruising out of Asia.
But being on the Eastern Hemisphere, it was expected that the boat would be full of a vastly different pool of people than we’ve experienced in the past, with the vast majority of cruisers being from China or India, with smaller contingents from Japan, Korea, Australia and scragglers like us.
And all jokes aside, there was a lot of reinforcement of stereotypes happening on a regular basis. Little emperors and their parents not doing anything about them, line cutters and just general behaviors, deemed unsavory by western standards, but honestly what took the cake was this absurdly large group from India that had to have been 40-50 people deep, seemingly celebrating some guy’s 40th birthday.
And they would absolutely take over anywhere they went, from the adult’s only lounge, the garden atrium, to the Disney theater. They even had their own photographer running around with them. It was classic behavior of no one of us is as dumb as all of us, and groups are only as smart as their dumbest member, and considering how much they were always drinking, it was not pleasant when they were around.
The best part was chatting up all the crew whenever we could; almost every single cast member we spoke to would, some heavier than others, insinuate how much they wanted to transfer to a different ship, preferably a western one, and how much they looked forward to their next leave.
It was pretty obvious why they all felt this way, considering the ship had an auto-gratuity of 18% on all services, something that is definitely not the case in the west, as well as the litany of shitty passenger behavior we saw. Especially for those who had experience on other ships before coming to the Adventure, they had to feel like they were being punished.
And one thing I noticed was how many crew were from the US; Almost all of Disney Cruises we’ve done in the past, the vast majority of service crew are from Indonesia, Philippines, England and almost no Americans. I was hypothesizing that the Americans are sent to the Adventure as a means of trying to toughen them up, because if they can handle the aggravations of there, then they would be able to handle anything
Other random observations, because I’m getting tired, and composing brog posts in Notes is extra tiring:
- HVAC on the Adventure sucks. Not sure if it’s because Asian HVAC is nowhere near as good as western HVAC, but our room always felt kind of humid and never as cool as mythical wife and I like it.
- Zootopia is on completely different stratosphere of popularity in Asia than it is in ‘Murica. It’s crazy. Princesses aren’t nearly as popular as Duffy and his Friends that were all created for Asian markets, but even they don’t hold a candle to the popularity of Zootopia. Girls, of all ages (and even a handful of little boys) dress up as Judy Hopps, and Nick Wilde are the most frequently seen Disney-bounding all over the boat, and no character appearance had a bigger line than when Judy and Nick went on stage.
- With the exceptions of Indian takeovers, most Adventure patrons don’t really drink like Westerners do. That being said, bar service was excellent the whole trip, and bartenders and servers were so eager to chat up with English speakers who actually tipped, even on top of the auto-gratuities.
In conclusion, the Disney Adventure was a good experience, but not without its own set of faults. Some things that they could control, or could at least have in the past, and some things they can’t control (read: people). As far as ships go, it’s not my favorite, but I don’t think it’s the worst.
I’m not as versed in all the ships and their names like mythical wife is, but the smaller one we did out of New Orleans remains at the bottom of the five Disney Cruises we’ve done, and I would put the Adventure at #4. The wonky architecture of the boat led to a lot of aggravation, exacerbated by the crappy behaviors from the sometimes excessively eastern habits of some of the local passengers.
That said, it was still a good cruise. Got to sleep in once, got to hit the weights and take some leisurely walks on the deck on some of the early mornings. Relaxed in the pool and read a good book, a lot more relaxing than I’ve really gotten to do in many years.
