Shit Holidays Newsletter #11
Cruises
Welcome to another Shit Holidays newsletter. Fans of terrible trips will be tickled by the news that cruises are restarting, so this week we shine a shitlight on the world’s worst type of holiday.
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Cruises
A cruise is the perfect getaway for people whose favourite bit of a holiday is staying in a hotel without the hassle of having to see any sights or step outside their air-conditioned confines. In lieu of interacting with the outside world, cruise ship inmates are kept docile with a robust routine of dodgy buffets, copious amounts of alcohol and performances by fourth-rate karaoke acts belting out piss-poor covers of songs that were popular in the 1980s. This makes cruises ideal for a variety of groups including baby boomers, recent divorcees and Americans. Cruises have a misplaced image of glamour, something rather ironic given the most well-known cruise ship was the Titanic, which is most famous for failing to complete even a single trip but did manage the public service of drowning Leo DiCaprio.
A cruise ship is basically a giant hotel with added seasickness, threat of capsizing, and limited means of escape. The confined nature of a cruise and the heavily-diseased passenger demographic means the ships are the perfect breeding ground for any number of contagions. A common choice is the norovirus where you can shit yourself to death while trying to avoid drowning in a tsunami of senior citizens’ diarrhoea pouring down the cramped passages. Recently, COVID-19 has proven popular among cruise passengers — if you are really lucky your plague ship might end up marooned off the coast of Chile for an indeterminate length of time!
Cruise ships’ mobility means they are able to unload their cargo of disease-riddled Westerners wherever they want — sleepy seaside villages, secluded islands or even active volcanoes — so passengers can trample around, buy a bunch of sweatshop-made souvenirs from stores owned by the cruise lines, and fuck off again. The vessels are crewed largely by third-world abductees who spend their days in dungeons deep in the boats’ bowels, churning out plastic spag bol so clueless boomers can complain that it tastes like slave tears. Cruises are also responsible for horrific environmental damage — between emptying thousands of litres of human waste into some of the world’s most scenic spots, smashing into coral reefs and colliding with whales, cruise ships are the worst thing to happen to the ocean since Waterworld.
A particularly terrifying aspect of a cruise is passengers’ lack of inhibitions — once they are down the gangplank most elderly cruisers suddenly think it’s Ibiza after dark for the over-70s. A cruise is ideal if you are interested in seeing Grandad sunning his old ballbag poolside or watching Pops get two knuckles deep on your Gran in the jacuzzi.
If regular cruises weren’t horrific enough, there are also themed cruises where you can enjoy all the above punishments while being confined in a floating prison with fellow fanatics of such diverse interests as Star Trek, NASCAR or Nickelback. Imagine being trapped for ten days on an NCIS cruise where dozens of menopausal women are trying to get Mark Harmon hosed enough to let them jump on his saggy nut sack.
Fuck that.
Top 10 Things to Do on a Cruise
Fall overboard trying to re-enact that bit from Titanic
Catch chlamydia from a deckhand
Die from food poisoning
Die from alcohol poisoning
Get kidnapped by Somali pirates
Knock off your spouse
Root an octogenarian
Get dropped off on an active volcano
Go Costa Concordia and capsize the whole thing
Disembark for a few hours and infect a whole country with a novel disease
Top 10 Worst Cruises
Booze Cruise
Nude Cruise
Walker Stalker (Walking Dead) Cruise
KISS Kruise
Meow Meow Cruise (for cat fans; cats not allowed)
NASCAR Cruise
Flat Earthers Cruise (which presumably just goes around in circles)
Covid Cruise
Ku Klux Kruise
Tom Cruise
Bloody Great!!! Never been on a cruise, have no desire either!! You have encapsulated my thoughts about Cruises into very descriptive words!! Thanks for a Great Laugh!!
Hilarious