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)
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.