Lets talk about cruise ships....?

I will not go on a cruise ship. I am just opposed to so much of what they are.

Always wanted to go on one of them smaller cruise ships that go up all the waterways of Norway and what not. Pretty sure those focus on all the the little stops on the way instead of activities on the boat. I figure if you're looking for some kind of Vegas vacation, just go to Vegas. That new one they got looks pretty insane though. Like Willy Wonka designed the thing. Seems to be geared toward families. What I would dearly love to do is go on one of those working old timey sailing ships where they actually put your ass to work as a deckhand. That looks like a total blast.

I went on one in January of 2019 with my family. It was a very interesting and fun experience. It was the first time I'd ever been in a giant, floating hotel. We went on a Princess Cruise to the Mexican Riviera, which consists of three coastal cities along the tip of Baja and the west coast of Mexico. My favorite parts were swimming with dolphins and going on a tour through Mazatlan.

One of the more fun things to do on board was "Movies Under the Stars," where they have this gigantic LCD screen on the central boat deck, and you can sit on lawn chairs or go get some booze to drink while watching a movie. I would have enjoyed it more if they hadn't been playing movies I wasn't interested in, like "Crazy, Rich Asians" or that stupid "Jumanji" reboot. They also had football and other programs and popular tv shows playing on the screen at other hours.

Exploring the ship can be fun too, and they make it really easy to find your way back to your room if you get lost. They had brass maps everywhere, showing your exact location.

In our cabins, they had something similar to streaming, but it was all popular tv shows (past and present) saved on the ship's server, rather than stuff you could watch on an actual streaming service. Any other tv was satellite-based. Using cell phones was dang near impossible below deck, so we had to use the old-fashioned, corded phones in our cabins to communicate (my family took up two separate cabins [thankfully on the same deck] that were not next-door to each other, so we had to call each other in the mornings to coordinate what we'd do for the day).

It actually isn't common to hear loud, drunken parties on there. You have to actually go looking for them to find them, and my family didn't.

For those of you with motion-sickness, there is a nice alternative to Dramamine. My family all wore prescription seasickness patches during the trip. They helped a lot and it was great going out to sea without feeling ill. In fact, we decided to wait until our first night on the ship to put them on, because when you do that, the medicine will knock you out for three hours. Better to do it when it makes sense, right? Like when going to bed? So I spent the first evening on the ship feeling kinda dizzy and unbalanced, but strangely, I didn't feel nauseated. It's weird, the vibrations you feel as the ship's traveling long-distance. But it's way gentler than some water vessels, trust me.

We’ve never been on one, but plan to one day.