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.
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…