We went on a cruise about a week ago, and now that I've had sufficient time to reflect, I can say with all confidence that I will never, ever do that again. Even if the cruise was free and Charo was performing in the lounge, NO, no no no, no more God damned cruises.

We sailed on the Carnival Victory, and if the Victory is indicative (systematic?) of the other ships in that particular fleet, I feel compelled to broadcast the sad fact that Carnival totally blows. What a horrible, awful cruise. What a miserable, ridiculous waste of money, vacation days and dapper first-worn pants.

I don't even know where to start. Everything that we loved about last cruise (on an NCL ship, keep in mind) was clearly absent on this one. The Victory's general decor bridged the gap between a low-level Vegas casino and a 1987 shopping mall's food court, and though I had no issues about that, my list of grievances is so long that, if I were to list them all here, I'd need to drop the font size by two points just to keep things manageable.

Lowlights:

1) You know the "muster drill" you must endure before sailing, where they gather everyone on the decks and teach them how to use lifejackets and such? It's an annoying but mandatory exercise, but I have to believe that the muster drill on this cruise was less than typical. If there are any cruise addicts out there, tell me: Do muster drills usually begin with a 45 minute waiting period, where you're forced to stand cramped with a thousand other people wearing neck-crunching lifejackets? I'm not talking about the actual drill, mind you. They made us stand like that for 45 minutes to wait for the 5% of lazy assholes who refused to come out of their rooms. I think the actual drill lasted 20 seconds. Oh, and did I mention that the boat started sailing away during the drill? So much for the joyous and romantic bottle-breaking moment when you hear the horn and feel the tiles shake for the first time. I was too busy getting a rash on my face from lifejacket velcro.

2) "Buckets of beer" are a big thing on any cruise ship. You're sitting out on the deck, and you order buckets full of ice and beer bottles for too much money. It's fun. On our last cruise, we had our pick from virtually any beer we could think of. On this cruise, our choices were limited to Bud, Bud Light and Miller Light in plastic bottles. They refused to serve anything in glass bottles. Anything. We asked why, and they said it was illegal to do so. Well, it may be company policy, but I don't think it's "illegal." Sound like a small gripe? Sure, but you try to get your load on with nothing but Miller Light out of a plastic fucking bottle for four days straight. Along the same lines, most cocktails arrived in cheap plastic tumblers.

3) The food. WAS HORRIBLE. I accepted the fact that Carnival still adhered to the archaic and ridiculous "eat in the same place at the same time for dinner each night" rule, even though it sucks. But what about the rest of the day? Well, for the most part, you were forced to eat from the worst buffet the world has ever known, which was half-inside, half-outside, reeking, filthy, sticky, with all the edibles thrice-cooked under the power of God's sun and Satan's 40 trillion heat lamps. I am a person who will pick a peanut out of a muddy puddle and eat it without nary a dare, and still, the food at this buffet was so unbelievably disgusting that I pretty much resigned myself to chicken tenders for breakfast and lunch for each of the four days. Serious haute cuisine.

4) The ship's layout was so insane and convoluted that there were literally instances of us needing to go up and down several floors just to get to a different point of the same floor we started on. I'm not fucking Algernon; I had nothing to prove by solving Carnival's Lament Configuration.

5) The ship's only port-of-call was in Saint John. Not the tropical island -- Saint John in Canada. Sailing northward meant that we were sailing into cooler climates riddled by fog, which was kind of neat but sort of ruined the ambiance of the lip-synching three-man calypso band which played on the pool deck incessantly. As for Saint John, it's a nice enough city, but I'm a little perplexed as to how it became a port-of-call for a large and trusted cruise line. When we got there, we had two options. We could've spent an additional hundred bucks each to get driven out to some wooden picnic tables to eat quickly cooked lobsters, or, alternatively, we could browse a local shopping plaza for an hour before heading back to the ship. We went with the latter. Highlight was, uh, getting coffee.

6) I lost a small fortune at the casino. I guess I can't blame Carnival for that, but it didn't improve matters any.

Now, it's hard to fuck up a cruise, even a horrible cruise. We still had fun and plenty of it. But when the highlight of an expensive vacation is signing a drink receipt to Lieutenant Eckhardt and getting away with it, chances are good that you picked the wrong vacation to go on. No monkey-themed towel animal was going to change that.

Granted, it could be that the stars just weren't aligned for this particular cruise, but I doubt it. Based on our (albeit limited) experiences on other cruise lines and from the hundreds of reviews I've read, Carnival really needs to figure out how to modernize. As other lines gravitate upward with ships that are true entertainment complexes with every conceivable whim catered to, this vacation felt like something you'd win from a shady church raffle. Blah.

In happier news, we're just days away from X-Entertainment's Summer Megaparty, starting July 1st. If you weren't around for previous Megaparties, all this really means is that I'll post everyday in July, if not longer. Revised Summer Jukebox will be active, and yes, for those concerned, sunshine-themed stickers will be added to our faithful Trapper Keeper logo.

In fact, I better go start taking care of that, so enjoy your SNT!

Posted by Matt on 06/28/2008. E-mail me!