Note: This post may sh!t on the cruise ship a little bit, so we’ll call the ship the Festival Ghost.

Our heroes hadn’t been on a cruise since 2019. Covid-19 canceled the 2020 trip. Acting like a bunch of pussies canceled the 2021 trip.

In fact, since the last cruise, they’d gone to Hilton Head, Aruba, and Anna Maria island.

During this time, PS and SS had moved to Naples, Florida, so they only had to drive for a couple of hours to get to Miami, the cruise ship’s departure port.

Arriving at Miami

As the team assembled in Miami, LU texted to everyone that she needed to buy some white shoes. She also mentioned that auto-correct had changed “white shoes” to “whore shoes.”

The gang promised that they wouldn’t give her any crap about that.

As the team sat by the hotel pool, cosmos were consumed while they planned dinner. They decided on dinner at a place called Berries where they ate some good food and drank more cosmos.

From there, they watched a UM / Michigan State game. Some of the ladies picked a fight with a group of female UM fans. Michigan State then had their asses handed to them.

First day of the cruise

Breakfast was free at the hotel and worth every penny. The scrambled eggs were helped by drowning them in Tabasco sauce.

The gang took a shuttle over to the port and they had one of the smoothest boarding experiences to date. No, really, Festival managed to avoid the whole “cattle call” thing that the gang had come to expect. There was a lot of time cooling their heels but they’d had worse.

Poor old Steve (no, this is a complete stranger, not one of our heroes)

After hanging around the pool for an hour or so, a man behind SS collapsed. The man then seemed confused, wondering how he wound up on the floor.

Long story short, he was very dehydrated, only had 2 cups of coffee, a drink, and nothing else. When they took his vitals, his BP was 110 over 60 and his blood sugar was 239.

The notable thing was that the performance of the cruise ship staff was reminiscent of the three stooges and the Keystone Cops. None of the staff knew what to do. It took them over 20 minutes to figure out to take the poor man’s vitals and a lot longer to figure out that he should be taken away on a gurney.

Moral of the story: never ever need medical attention on a cruise ship.

The first full day on the ship: sea day

A lot of the day was spent on the deck, gathering some sun.

There was a sighting of Poor Old Steve. His arm was in a sling and he had a few band-aids for some cuts where he fell. He was feeling a lot better and hydrating. At least they didn’t kick him off the ship.

SS played a couple of trivial quizzes. The first one didn’t work out because English wasn’t the first language of the MC and there was also a lot of noise. SS didn’t have a chance.

Later, the team played bingo and didn’t win anything.

Halloween

The last time the gang were on a ship on Halloween, they all dressed up as vampires and devils.They mostly did this again, but SS found that his cap and dreadlocks (he’d been a Rasta vampire) were missing. He tried ordering a replacement, but that didn’t work out.

As a plan B, he ordered a Sandman mask. While the Sandman show was hugely popular with the Sandman fan base, no one else had heard of it. SS spent a lot of time explaining who/what Sandman was. Responses were along the lines of “I’ll be darned” and “Oh, so that’s legit, huh?”

The rest of the vampires and devils looked great.

Douchebag

Several years ago, on Family Guy, Stewie talked about what “douchebags did to the guitar”. The show then cut over to a douchebag sitting against a tree playing an inane song on a guitar. SS has since called that style of music “douchebag guitar”.

On the ship, one of the musicians was playing that style of music, so SS called him the “Douchebag Guitar Guy”.

It looks like some folks overheard him, or PS passed it along, so by the end of the week, everyone was calling him Douchebag. SS thought that maybe it was a bit harsh, but maybe the musician could have played better music.

Half Moon Cay

Half Moon Cay is one of Festival’s private islands. The team rented a cabana on the beach. Some folks did more shopping.

Art Shake Trio

There were a few musicians performing around the ship. One group was called Art Shake Trio. Two of the trio were from Belarus and the third was from Ukraine. Two of them played violin and the other played viola. They also had some recorded accompaniment.

They occasionally played a piece that SS and PS could dance to but PS and SS enjoyed just listening to the trio even when they weren’t dancing.

SS bought a CD of their performance. It was pretty much the worst live recording that he’d ever heard. That includes recitals that he’d recorded on his phone.

Grand Turk

They went snorkeling off a boat at a couple of sites.

Dominican Republic – Amber Cove

Most of the gang lounged around a pool by the port. Shopping was involved. They were pretty much done with laying around in the sun on exotic islands. Shortly after noon, they were back on the ship and laying around in the sun on the pool deck.

The other sea day

There was more laying around in the sun on the pool deck.

SS joined a “Calling All Nerds” trivia quiz. He scored a miserable 10/20. He lost 3 points on Pokémon questions and also for calling the three headed dog in Harry Potter Cerberus.

Back to Miami

They did their usual “hang around the pool deck until someone chases them off” thing, but they were on the other side of customs by 10:00. PS and SS were home by 1:00pm.

Epilogue

After getting home, some of the gang had a kind of cold/flu thing. PS and SS both got Covid. They’re fine now.