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A truly great week

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by dog428, Mar 5, 2007.

  1. dog428

    dog428 Active Member

    Just returned from a week aboard Royal Caribbean's Navigator of the Seas cruise ship.

    Loved it. If you haven't been on a cruise, or haven't been on one in a while, I highly recommend it. Those big-ass boats are unbelievable. The food is out of this world. There's something going on constantly. And the people you deal with on a daily basis are pleasant and professional.

    The only thing I can find to bitch about from the week is that I was forced to suffer through Nancy Grace each evening as I waited on my wife to get ready for dinner.

    That nails-on-a-chalkboard shit was my only viable option for news on the stateroom TV. There were three legitimate stations -- Headline News, some sort of CNN station that played a 10-minute loop that was updated every six hours and ESPN International. Between the hours of 7 and 9 p.m., Headline News was all Gracie Jane and ESPN International was the Spanish sports report. (I also had the option of watching Mission Impossible III in Spanish, French, German or Arabic.)

    Allow me to provide a sample of the absolute shit that is this woman's nightly show. On Wednesday, a few hours after eight kids were killed at a high school in Alabama, two college baseball players were killed after the team bus crashed in Atlanta and 30-plus people were killed in Iraq, Nancy Grace used her two-hour time slot to cover "the battle over Anna Nicole Smith's rotting corpse." (I shit you not, she actually used those words in her intro.) In between guests, which included some bat-shit crazy interior decorator guy, the lumpy-headed medical examiner and every celebrity "reporter" known to man, there was a 20-second roundup of "other news of interest," during which I found out about all these other tragedies.

    Most nights, I made it through about 30 minutes of this terrible show before either turning the TV off and finding something to read or flipping over to ESPN to watch soccer highlights with the sound off.

    But I tell you, if this is my only bitch after a week, you know it was a damned good week.
     
  2. Cadet

    Cadet Guest

    I saw one of those giant cruise ships for the first time in my life last week - holy crap, those things are massive!
     
  3. dog428

    dog428 Active Member

    The one we were on had a damn street running through the middle of it with several different shops and restaurants on each side, a 5,000-seat theatre on one end, an ice rink, 11 different bars, a three-story dining room that was nicer than any restaurant I've ever seen, 15 floors, a full-size basketball court next to a rock-climbing wall and four swimming pools.

    If you never left the ship for a week, it would still be an awesome vacation.
     
  4. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    It would have been even more awesome had you witnessed this all-time dada moment ...

    [​IMG]

    Andy Warhol on Love Boat. With his Polaroid?
     
  5. novelist_wannabe

    novelist_wannabe Well-Known Member

    My last vacation I made a concerted effort not to watch any news and just focus on relaxing with my family. If my only option had been Nancy Grace, it would have been easy.
     
  6. Nancy Grace should not use the phrase "rotting corpse" idly.
     
  7. MacDaddy

    MacDaddy Active Member

    People I know who've been on cruises either think it's the greatest thing ever or say to never, ever go on one. There seems to be no middle ground.
     
  8. CradleRobber

    CradleRobber Active Member

    What reasons could people have to warn against cruises?

    I went on Vision of the Seas during Thanksgiving week 2004. Not only is it the location where my SportsJournalists.com handle really came to life, but I don't think my family as a whole has ever had more fun on a vacation.
     
  9. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    Same reason people would warn against packaged tours. They're not everyone's cup of tea.
     
  10. dog428

    dog428 Active Member

    This was our third cruise. It and the first one were wonderful. Had we gone on the second cruise first, though, we wouldn't have gone again.

    The boat makes all the difference. If you're on one of the newer, enormous ships, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone not enjoying themselves. There's absolutely nothing you could want that's not there for you.

    If you're on a lesser ship, it's just not the same. The food isn't as good, there are less activities, smaller gathering areas and a line for everything.

    If you're thinking about taking a cruise, definitely spend the extra money for a nicer boat.
     
  11. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    You go on a cruise, I've spent the better part of the last two weeks with Wanda Gilliland... which one of us got the better end of that deal, pal...
     
  12. OTD

    OTD Well-Known Member

    From those who've done both, what's the difference between a week in a nice resort hotel and a similar time on a cruise? I've not been on a cruise but it looks to me just like being on a resort hotel that moves. The only difference I see is that you're dumped out periodically in small tourist towns with a couple thousand other cruise ship people to buy T-shirts.

    I guess I wouldn't mind an Alaskan cruise, but I'm not sure I'd want one of those Love Boat trips.
     
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