Nurse the Hate: Hate Carnival Cruises

I would imagine it would have been "disappointing" to have been on that Carnival Cruise ship that drifted around in its own filth for most of last week.  I’ve seen those Carnival TV ads.  It shows people laughing it up, eating good food, and swimming around in the sunshine.  I don’t really recall seeing a tent city made out of bed sheets like it was an African refugee camp.  Do you remember seeing people sleep with one eye open for fear of getting a shiv in their side over a soggy tomato sandwich?  I certainly don’t remember seeing smiling laughing people putting their excrement into plastic bags and squishing around on urine soaked carpet.  I didn’t see the TV spot with old people gagging in the lower decks as they struggled in the pitch black hallways through the stench of shit, piss, and sweat.  Maybe that was on a different version of the commercial I just didn’t see. 

I don’t feel bad for those people though.  This comes in part because I am a heartless fuck.  However it mostly comes from the fact that I believe that cruises are generally a bad idea and meant for rubes that can’t handle international travel on their own.  If you decide to board that floating prison, you deserve whatever horrible fate befalls you.  I would never go on a vacation to a resort that would not allow me to leave it.  I would not go to a resort that could sink into the earth and kill me.  I would not go to a resort that provided me with accommodations roughly one quarter of my own bedroom.  I need to be able to walk away from any bad situation, not wait and hope it gets better on its own somehow. 

This whole hustle is designed for people that think they are somehow getting over with promises of unlimited buffet food and multiple stops in glamorous ports of call.  Let’s be honest here, buffet food almost always sucks.  Anything that is not cooked to order, sitting in a steam table or out in the elements is not going to be very fresh.  Additionally since this food is cooked for the great unwashed masses, the flavor profile is targeted at the lowest common denominator.  When you see all those ads on TV for “pizza sliders” and ‘blooming onions” in high priced network programming, you can rest assured that huge masses of people are eating this shit.  These are the same people that are cramming themselves into Carnival Cruise ships and strapping on the old feedbag.  You think they want fresh oysters on the half shell or foie gras?  No way man.  They want nuggets.  Nuggets of any animal you can bread and deep fry. 

As they float around on these enormous boats eating and shitting these people are very excited to go to all these exciting places.  Well, let’s define “go”…  What happens is the boat docks at various horrible tourist trap ports.  Every parasite that lives on that island descends like a locust to sell these people things they don’t need or want like drugs, counterfeit purses, and hair braiding.  As the passengers fight their way through them like British nobles in 1921 Calcutta, they head into the inevitable “straw market” which has tacky souvenirs sold by confrontational locals.  Or maybe they go to the “Duty Free” jewelry stores where they can buy wildly marked up items with no guarantee of quality or provenance.  After some time at this glorified airport shopping mall, they get back on the boat to repeat the process the next day.  This is what is sold as “fun” and “travel adventure”.

If you will notice, every person interviewed departing this stricken Carnival Cruise ship has seemed like someone you would move away from at a bar.  It is a never ending parade of boring hillbillies and shell shocked senior citizens.  The best part is that Carnival got paid to give 4200 people the experience of being in a Turkish prison, and then shamelessly re-marketed to them.  After making these people endure days of miserable conditions, they generously decided to refund the price of the cruise and give discounts for a future cruise.  Are you fucking kidding me?  A coupon?  You pay to put yourself into one of the worst experiences of your life, and then Carnival says, “Look, this didn’t work out so well.  We will admit mistakes were made.  Here’s the good news though...  You can give us money again.  We are going to give you this coupon that will allow you to come back and let us make a profit off of you again.  Come on!  We have nuggets!”. 

After getting backlash in the press, Carnival then decided to grudgingly cough up $500 to each passenger.  This had to be a proactive move recommended by their legal department to try and stave off the personal injury lawyers that must have swarmed down on Mobile like jackals.  I would imagine there is a lengthy document that must be signed before you get your $500 back that says something along the lines of “It’s a helluva thing that happened, but if you take this $500 you can’t hold us responsible for anything.  Peace out.”. 

I have every confidence that most of those rubes will take that $500 with the coupon and put themselves right back on one of those shitty boats.  They will have learned no lesson and happily gobble up nuggets and pre-sliced turkey in gravy and scoops of mashed potatoes and soggy green bean casserole and limp French fries and unrecognizable fish swimming in “butter sauce” and terrible pizza under a heat lamp and mountains of nachos from the Nacho Bar.  Fuck them.  They learned no lesson and never will.  They need to be kept quarantined on these Ships of Despair and kept away from the rest of us.