Fun For All, and All For Fun, or Life is One Long Week on the Carnival Magic. Part 1

Welcome Aboard, It's Fun!

The night before my wife and I took off for our week-long cruise to the Caribbean, I was talking to a friend on the phone.  When I told him we were going, he offered two pieces of advice:  people watch and act like an Ugly American.  To his well-meaning advice, I responded that I wasn't out to write a piece of investigative journalism and that people were the last thing I wanted to see for a week, but not to worry because I planned to spend the first twenty four hours at sea eating hamburgers and that I'd packed every shirt with a fish on it I own plus my trusty floppy hat, which, when I put it on, would be a dead giveaway that I was there to order food in my rockiest English and pick up enough tacky knick-knacks that we'd have to throw our underwear and medications overboard to make room for them.  We've been back for over a week now, and during that time, I've arrived at the conclusion that my friend has either been on a cruise he never told me about, or possesses preternatural  powers of prescience.

On Sunday morning, my wife and I were up early awaiting a call from my parents, with whom we were to rendezvous at a Whataburger just before the 59/45 interchange.  In a gesture of tremendous generosity, my mom paid for our tickets.  I believe she did so because she thought we were in sore need of some time abroad.  To be sure, there was a bit of damp and drizzle in our souls, but still, and speaking just for myself, I hadn't quite reached the point where I was knocking peoples' hats off in the grocery store.  I wasn't quite convinced that a cruise would serve as that panacea (although I did look forward to a snorkeling excursion in Belize), but both of us sure needed to get the hell out of Houston for a while.

The ship was due to set sail from Galveston at 4 PM sharp; by 10 AM, I was outfitted in my nearly threadbare "Beat Kansas" t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and the hat, as prepared for an all-night burger crawl on the Caribbean as anyone could be.  By noon I was up to the brim of my stupid-looking hat with vexations (my wife, on the other hand, bears up things like unpacked suntan lotion with remarkable grace and cool.)  Embarkation ended at 3, our rendezvous had been delayed at least a good hour, and the members of our party, eight strong, began the procession to the Whatburger restrooms while I waited outside, drinking a bottle of water, smoking cigarettes, and talking to my aunt (whose ticket my parents also ponied up for) and dad.  The prospect of watching the ship and its merrymaking passengers take off without us loomed large.

Naturally, my fears, like most, were chimera engaging in giggly chicanery. Even from the shadows of downtown Houston, and despite touch and go southbound traffic (I think somebody's cap blew off his head), Galveston's still a stone's throw from a sissy away.  We made it with time to spare.  Unfortunately, that bottle of water I drank at the Whataburger managed to make it all the way down.  No restroom in sight, genuine panic overtook me, the type that causes folks to pee in their pants for reasons real or putative.  My mom, no-nonsense during these types of crises, told me what any loving mother to a piss-silly son would:  get out of sight and go.  There was no other way; besides, as a seasoned cruise veteran, I can all but swear on the Holy Bible when I say that I was not the first guy to relieve himself all over the Carnival Magic's parking lot.

Also from the perspective of a seasoned cruiser:  I cannot make any claims about dark arts, whether real or merely titular, although my wife, a redoubtable woman, saw an act levitation from the wings of the ship's theater, which Elvis Costello could probably pack, and maybe even Molly Hatchet.  That should give you an idea of the vessel's girth.  I'm certain that if we'd been on the lookout for it on the way there, we'd have seen it from ten miles away.  Imagine a floating mall.  Presto, you might be on it!

We'd been on the move since early that morning, and we weren't close to settling in for naps or burgers.  Carnival Cruise took every reasonable measure to ensure against treachery on the Caribbean Sea, and we were subjected to each of them, along with the other 4000-odd cruisers.  Two shirts with fish on them, a goofy hat, two lighters, six pack of cigarettes, four books, and a cellphone several models behind the latest and especially useless at sea evidently represented no threat to Carnival, so we were permitted to pass.  We walked a good quarter mile, maybe more, navigating a few twists and turns before we reached the ship's foyer, located on the third floor.  It's too easy to characterize our path to the ship as a long intestinal tract.  Believe me, it was easier to think of it that way.

We were welcomed first by a blast of cold air.  After close to six hours of packing loose ends,  driving, walking, being frisked, walking some more, and a depositing enough pee in the parking lot to float a Carnival Cruise lifeboat, I was now no longer on the lookout specifically for a double bacon cheeseburger.  Movie nachos, the kind with the runny, pulsating-yellow cheese and stale chips would have done by that point, and I expected someone to hand me a paper basket spilling with them and put a lei around my head at the entrance.  Impossible, because we were next welcomed by the voice of the cruise director. The cruise director made lots of things impossible.

I wanted nothing more than nachos and to deposit our carry-on luggage onto the floor of our suite, but first, the cruise director commandeered the ship's intercom to instruct us to report to a site which we didn't know the whereabouts of (Someone Ina A Carnival Uniform:  "Do you know where your site is?"  Me:  "LIKE HELL I DO!") for mandatory safety training, aka, Instructions For Putting On a Life Preserver.  Not fifteen minutes on the ship and I hated the cruise director already.

For one, he was born to take to the intercom and make announcements so loud my ears rang.  For another, his voice was of a quality anyone would be hard-pressed not to call "fruity."  I hated him and I hated taking instructions from him in that dribbly, Robin Leach accent of his.  I hated his lack of regard for my peace, quiet, and comfort.  He was on that intercom all day announcing each of the hundreds of activities he'd planned for us, and I hated most of those, too.  I hated him before I'd even set eyes on him, but that would happen soon enough.  It turns out that our cabin's television had a channel devoted entirely to him.  The cruise director turned out to be an impossible presence to elude from the moment we stepped foot on the ship to the moment I was giving it the finger out the car window on the way back home.  The cruise director is a greasy little weasel, a weasel who makes a living planning activities that are no fun on land and less fun at sea, a weasel addicted to the sound of his own voice, the rush of histrionic personal displays, and methamphetamines.  He's also Australian, I don't care that he said that hails from Great Britain.  He has to be Australian.  The British are too polite to beat this guy up, and this guy's been beat up a lot, at land and at sea, by cruisers, staff, and Australians alike.

You think I'm being rough on the cruise director.  Spend a week at sea with him.  If you don't throw him overboard, you're a worse person than I am.