For a while now, and when I say a while now I mean like 30 something years, I have wanted to go on a cruise. It seems like so much fun and there’s so many things to do on a cruise ship. I don’t specifically remember watching The Love Boat but I’m sure I caught some reruns during the times we had cable tv and I bet that was an influencer on it.
I remember that my mom would order these cruise brochures, and they weren’t no flimsy two-page foldover like you might see today. No, these were real magazine like nearly-books. They would detail all the ports and onboard activities. There were schedules and pricing and my favorite was the deck maps. I would look at them and imagine myself going to all the different places I could see. I remember learning the word Discoteque from them as every ship had one.
But as time went on, the brochures would get smaller and my interest would fade. Every now and then I’d hear people talking about their cruises and it would pique my interest a bit but it just never came to be that I could go on a cruise. The stars were not aligned, I guess.
But then, a couple things happened. One? was my wife and kids. Two was we all moved to Florida. And do you know what they do in Florida? Well, they do lots of stuff, lots of crazy stuff, stuff we shouldn’t talk about here. But one thing they do is they have cruise ships ports. The elusive cruise was closer than ever!
Even though we lived in driving distance to the cruises, we still couldn’t make it happen the first 5 or so years we were here. Florida is not the land of prosperity you might imagine it being. They give you part of your pay in sunshine and the cruise lines don’t accept that as payment.
But then as we became more established in our professions here and our kids grow ever older it came to be that Spring Break 2026 was fast approaching. We happened to have some extra funds and this dusty old blog that was started a few years back but never used. So just why the heck should we not fulfill one of my long-time desires and go on a cruise?
And that’s what we did! I’ll be posting a few things about it here in further uh, posts. You’ll really want to stay tuned. I’m great at this, LoL.
