hop in a pool suspended five stories above another pool on the deck of a ship that looks like the result of a mad scientist hybridizing the genes of an airport duty free terminal, a private athletic club, a five-over-one and the Evergreen Ever Given (with just a splash of Six Flags for flavor)
Cruise vacations are actually, sadly, very blue-collar American dream. No real bourgeoise would go on something as tacky as this. They all have their own yachts and sailing ships, take sailing class to sail around Seattle Sound. Sailing is an incredibly bourgie and pretentious hobby.
Cruise ships provide people a distorted, tacky, Disneyland theme park version to feel like a millionare for a week kinda thing. It is just like people would go to Golden Corral all you can eat to celebrate something, and eat glutonously for an hour like a King when you might be literally food insecure (or nutritiously insecure i.e., cannot afford healthy foods) on the weekdays.
t. I grew up lower middle class and my parents always take me to Golden Corral or all you can eat Chinese buffet everytime we had something to celebrate. They went on one of these messed up cruise ships as their retirement vacation.
Excellent analogy that cruise ships are the Golden Corral of vacations. It's quantity over quality and everything is carefully prepared to maximize decadence, but not leave the comfort zone of sheltered white people.
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Never been to a GC, but I've always heard horror stories involving the chocolate fondue fountain to the point I've made a mental note to avoid it if I ever find myself at the place. Lots of second-hand stories of double dipping and people sticking their fingers in it multiple times.
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To be fair, cruises are actually a pretty good deal considering what you get. It's basically a floating hotel with all you can eat food, drinks, and entertainment. Plus you get to hop off at several port towns and do little day trips and sightsee. You don't need to worry about booking hotels, rental cars, meals, drinks, or any of that bullshit. It's all included. If you had to buy separate plane tickets, book separate hotels, and do all that shit, it would add up to much more. Plus no need to constantly pack, unpack, check out of hotels, and load luggage and shit. Like take a look at these Royal Carribean cruise prices: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruises?search=departurePort:BYE,FLL,GAL,MIA,PCN,TPA|destination:BAHAM,CARIB|nights:7~7&sort=RECOMMENDED&icid=cybrpd_tctclp_hmp_hm_other_3453 (about $600 on the low end for a 6 or 7 day cruise). Try booking planes to all those port cities, as well as hotels and see how much the costs skyrocket.
Plus there's also the climate change aspect. Most working class people want to travel on these cruises (for the luxury to get away from their dreary life and the price reasons I talked about above). So I suppose it's better to have many people on one ship (I mean it's basically floating anyways, so no need to use all the propulsion just to generate lift) than have them all taking planes and booking hotels and rental cars and shit. With economy of scale less there's less waste. I'm not sure what the carbon calculations are, but I imagine it's much less than what it would be with planes and cars and hotels (here's what I found from a quick search, basically ships are way more efficient than trains as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jzhebc/comment/gdbvoba/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 and https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jzhebc/comment/gdbxqvz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
I think leftists seriously need to think about how people will relax without doing some kneejerk "fUcK cRuIsEs IT'S ALL CHUDS HURR DURR!!" response. Maybe touch grass and try talking to people who want to go on these cruises because it's the one time in the year that they get to go on a "real vacation." Moralizing at them about how cruises are "bourgeoise and they suck bro" isn't going to work. The same can apply to places like Disney World or Six Flags or whatever. People want to zone out and have fun and they like going to these places (for fuck's sake there's even a water park in Pyongyang). So let's try to be adults here (not you micnd90 but the other kneejerk comments in this thread) and not whine like babies. If it was a train ride across the country with amenities on the train cars and various stops at different towns/cities, I imagine leftists would be like "WOOO HOOO TRAIN GANG VACATION WOOOOO!!!" How is a ship any different? It seems to be that most hexbear users' kneejerk response to cruises is the perceived "chudness" of the clientele, as opposed to other aspects. Like I said, if it was a train experience, I wonder what leftists would think about it.
Actually I've known people who own businesses and are millionaires going on cruises. Also very well paid doctors/surgeons/lawyers will go on cruises. I think you're talking about the super duper 1% that have their own private yachts and shit. Fairly well-off people will go on a cruise, they just might get a better cabin like one with a window or some shit. I wouldn't be so quick to presume.
FWIW I've never been on a cruise, and I've never considered myself a "cruise person." But after talking to a few people I know that love them, they made a lot of good points, especially about what you get for the cost. And when I looked into it for myself and compared it to flights/hotels/meals/cars, it makes a lot of sense. I'm not trying to promote cruises, but now I kind of see where "cruise people" are coming from.
In a lot of poor rural places this is just what people do. I don't blame them, it's a nice all you can eat outing with family/friends. If this was in some Global South country and people gathered at some budget restaurant, would we also chastise them for this? I dunno this seems like some culture war bullshit designed to make us fight each other over dumb shit like what restaurant is better...
This is a fair assessment except the environmental part. Cruise ships are notoriously bad because they run on fuels, while most trains these days run on electric. Furthermore, it is common for them to switch to a dirtier fuel when they are away from the port and in international waters because there is no regulation.
Beyond the emissions, cruise ships also commonly straight up dump waste and junk into the ocean.
Bad take, trains don't completely destroy the ecosystems they are in like cruises do to coral reefs and the entire ocean in general.
I mostly agree, and appreciate you bringing these points up. However, cruise ships need to solve the environmental problems (they are disproportionately bad in this respect) and the fact that they are basically floating petri dishes. They also commonly have issues with exploited workers.
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They're also one of the only ways that some Americans visit other countries. People in my tiny hometown would refuse to get a passport since they could just go on a cruise ship and visit Cuba, Mexico, Jamaica, etc. It's like visiting another country but being so insecure about it you bring a floating American city with you just in case you think the local food is scary and you want McDonald's.
There are actually real luxury cruise lines. I know Ritz-Carlton runs one.
No cruise lines in the world advertise themselves as "middle-class" cruise lines, they all "luxury" cruise lines. Still top 1 percenters wouldnt want to be jammed with like 2000 other people, let alone potentially 2000 people below their class.
Just because middle class people cannot afford a $3 million dollar home or a Tesla or healthcare doesn't mean middle class people cannot afford $300 a night at Ritz Carlton once in their lifetime.
So much this. One thing higher-end/older types do not fuck around with is their vacation (I caution saying white or blue collar since the swath of cruise-goers straddles both). Yet, how do you appeal to xenophobic shitheads who only want to eat, drink, gamble, speak and hear only English and pretend to go somewhere exotic with no risk of running into the wrong kind of tan person?
Almost everyone I know over 50 either goes on cruises, or wants to go on cruises.
All I'm saying is that there are gaps between this type of cruise and private yachting. The Ritz-Carlton cruises start at $1K/night for the smallest rooms and most of them aren't even all-inclusive, IIRC. There's also flying to some resort locations and then renting a yacht for a day, which is actually what most "normal rich" people you see posting yacht photos have done.
Yeah some cruise ships are really stratified. Some literally have zones and if you dont pay enough you cannot be on the upper class zones/pools/restaurants. It's like Disneyland and Six Flags are stratified by the kind of tickets you have, if you are rich you literally can cut lines in front of the poors
I bought one of those fast pass tickets last weekend for a theme park, and I think that's one instance that kinda has some justification. As long as the price isn't something absolutely insane.
Like for mine, regular admission was $50, and the "line cutting" ticket was an extra $100. Which makes it worth it if you only go once every few years or something because you can do everything in a day. Doing single rider lines also makes sense so you can maximize capacity on rides and also give people an option to shorten their wait time if they're gonna be waiting in line alone.
Also most of the time the line cutting passes only really matter for like 2 hours. Early in the day and late in the day the lines are small enough that there isn't much difference between the two.
That being said, Disney is kinda fucked with how their tiered system is set up, it's so inscrutable and managed that it ends up causing more issues because they want you to keep spending more money as opposed to a one time fee.
When Disney first introduced the system it made a lot of sense. You were basically just making a reservation for a major ride, and then you would ride the smaller rides while you waited for your time. It made guests go from averaging six rides per visit to ten or something like then.
Then they discovered they could charge for it.
Yeah, I remember when thay first implemented it. The system was a great idea
They have really expensive first class cabins for like ski doo dealership owners or whatever
The ship pictured has a suite that’s got more square footage than my house, three levels with a slide and shit for kids, and it goes for $20,000 per person per week and Royal Caribbean says that suite is already sold out for the entirety of 2024 for an average rate of $80,000 per week.
To defend sailing, it's not purely a pretentious and bourgeoisie hobby.
You can get into sailing for less than some working folk spend on a cruise holiday.
I used to love the chinise buffet. You know before covid.
It's also selling a walkable city as a luxury experience.
undefined> Sailing is an incredibly bourgie and pretentious hobby.
I learned how to sail small boats as a kid, and my first job was teaching a sailing summer camp by my house. It was a lot of fun. Doesn't NEED to be bougie, but it certainly can be. Boats be expensive.
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