Manifesting

My brother-in-law tells a story of a family friend back in England who tried to hide a driving ban from his wife by booking a round-the-world cruise. Six months later, once the licence was reinstated and life returned to landlocked normal, she stumbled across an incriminating letter. After that, the man had to pay for the cruise, the fine, and his failed attempts at spousal deception.

The story boggles the mind in multiple ways. First, that gender relations in this instance appear not to have progressed an inch since the 1950s. Second, a spontaneous twenty-six-week holiday? In this economy? Even if this was the early 2000s, how anyone could spend half a year on a floating hotel dedicated to small talk with strangers and organized fun is beyond me. No matter how tantalizing the buffet.

I was not concealing any minor infractions. Nor was I running from the consequences of my actions. But I did recently find myself aboard the Symphony of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s fifth‑largest cruise ship, with my husband and twenty-six members of his immediate family.

Picture the scene: three generations, consisting of fourteen adults and fourteen children. Two grandparents. Ten parents. A fun aunt and uncle (me and my husband). Two teenagers. Ten between the ages of twelve and four. Two babies. Matching caps and T‑shirts for all. The occasion: a celebratory adventure for my father-in-law’s eightieth birthday. The goal: to get some much-needed winter sun and to not be a complete party-pooper. But I did intend to keep a weather eye out for the absurd. A sense of humour, I suspected, would be among the essentials to bring, along with swimwear and factor 50.

What vegetable isn’t allowed on a ship? Leeks. A nervous first-time passenger asks the captain, “Do boats like this sink very often?” “No,” he replies. “Usually only once.” Such lines are best reserved for private appreciation. To bring up shipwrecks on a cruise is probably the equivalent of naming the Scottish play in a theatre. Humour here is of a more “anchored in safety” variety, with additional buoyant references to “vitamin sea” and “beach hair, don’t care.” Apparently not everyone thinks constantly about death. And they especially don’t want to think about it while encased in a metal hull of potential disaster.

When things go wrong offshore, they tend to do so spectacularly. Engines fail. Fires break out. Power goes off. Septic systems malfunction. Storms erupt. Passengers fall overboard. Just last October, an elderly woman died after she was stranded on a small island off Australia, her ride having set sail without her. “Did you know that the ships have morgues?” a few helpful friends inquired before we departed. Another friend warned, “Perhaps don’t watch the Poop Cruise documentary.” And that wasn’t even about the waves of norovirus that constantly crash through the seafaring populace. (The week before our trip, an outbreak on a Celebrity vessel spread through 100 people.) These post-pandemic days, it is impossible not to associate cruises with contagion: All those hands. All those surfaces. All that closeness. In other news, I had spotted a headline back in August about a mass brawl breaking out on a Carnival tour over chicken tenders. Was this the week I would finally become an optimist? The forecast was not looking good.

There is a whole subsection of journalism dedicated to placing a writer on board a megaship to professionally disapprove. David Foster Wallace is the undisputed captain of the genre. His essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” originally published as “Shipping Out” in Harper’s Magazine, in 1996, is as well known for the title as for its contents. More recently, The Atlantic — a publication that has ample claim to the cruise piece — sent the author Gary Shteyngart to shudder through a week on the inaugural voyage of the Icon of the Seas, then the biggest ship in the world. I was innocently on vacation with my in‑laws (a supposedly fun way to spend time with the extended family?), so two opposing frames of mind had to be maintained: I had packed a notebook and intended to use it, but I was also determined to enter into the spirit of the festivities. Split selves vied for creative control. One that said, No, I will not be joining any conga lines, and another that said, Yes, I will shout louder every time the entertainment coordinator cries, “I can’t hear you! I said . . . Are you having a good time?” Because the crew members have a job to do too, and you don’t want to make their day any harder.

Enthusiasm is part of the culture here. If it’s not infectious exactly, a person can easily get caught in the flow. The promotional material describes the Symphony of the Seas as “a perception remixing, memory maxing mic drop.” That perspective certainly becomes scrambled the moment you come face to face with the ship. (“Use the ‘it’ pronoun,” Royal Caribbean’s online writing guide urges those who might otherwise say “she.”) Eighteen decks high. Nearly 1,200 feet long, just over the intended reach of the new Pinnacle SkyTower in Toronto — now Canada’s tallest building. The comparison to a skyscraper is apt. This is a floating 228,081-ton mini-city, complete with the 1,400-seat Royal Theater, a conference centre, an ice rink, a casino, a rock-climbing wall, a merry-go-round, and an outdoor park with real trees and plants (and fake bird and cicada sounds piped through speakers). The ship can carry up to 6,680 guests and 2,200 crew. The surfaces are so clean and white, as David Foster Wallace noted, they look boiled. Gazing up from the PortMiami terminal, mouth open and head bent backwards like a Pez dispenser, I thought of a spider contemplating a bathtub. Both of us would end up stuck inside. Sometimes you must accept your fate.

On embarkation day, we scuttled through the vast, air-conditioned boarding area and entered the vast, air-conditioned belly of the beast. Already people were wearing their personalities on their T‑shirts: “Put it on my husband’s tab,” “I like my wife a little bit older,” “Loyal to Royal.” And there we were, sporting our custom hats.

Cruises have long charted a course of their own parallel universe. The industry emerged in the ’60s as a response to the rise of air travel. While they couldn’t compete with speed, companies decided to change tack and sell slowness. Ocean liners were revamped as vehicles for luxury and relaxation, the ultimate getaway, where holidaymakers could hop from shore to shore without having to repack their suitcases. The three-tiered class system was abandoned in favour of greater access to amenities. The ship became the journey and the destination.

The smaller nieces and nephews wanted to ride the merry-go-round; I wanted to see if there was a carpet design that could beat the Neil Armstrong lunar-footprints pattern I’d spotted in the theatre. The Promenade, on deck 5, was the locus of the action, with its faux-fronted restaurants and bars, glittering lights, live bands and parades, and rows upon rows of watch shops. A running track (a 0.67-kilometre loop) circled the outside, which offered a good view of the lifeboats (capacity: 370 people each). Scattered around the huge interior were more artworks than the Louvre, ranging from paintings of Marvel and Disney characters to a disturbing canvas inscribed with “Dreams Keep Me Awake.” A sculpture of a red VW Beetle, rolled up like a giant meatball, took pride of place in this maritime mall. Classic vehicle mascots — presumably in celebration of man’s mastery of machinery — are a feature across parts of the Royal Caribbean fleet. The Beetle Spheres are the work of the Indonesian artist Ichwan Noor and go for about $180,000. This one wasn’t for sale.

Plenty of things did need to be purchased: internet packages, any coffee that wasn’t drip, candy, alcohol, and meals at specialty restaurants, alongside the more predictable expenses of land-based excursions, spa treatments, and souvenirs. An app was required to upload the personal, health, and banking details that formed a passenger’s SeaPass — which functioned as both identity card with benefits and room key. (Funky, nautical-themed lanyards were purchasable from the Promenade.) The app also featured an in‑boat chat function, to inquire after errant aunts and uncles who might have snuck away to the adults-only solarium to read their books, and a calendar to keep track of all the unwinding.

We assembled on the top deck to watch the Miami skyline slowly fade into the distance as the sun set over Donald Trump’s America. Music blared. The horn blasted. Hype people asked if we were ready to get this party started. “I can’t hear you!” Goodbye, real life. All aboard the Good Ship Fantasy.

Of course, fun was had. It is not every day you can watch one of the largest passenger carriers ever created motor smoothly through the Atlantic from a whirlpool tub. Bored? Try on‑deck basketball, pickleball, or soccer. In need of spectacle? See the belly-flop competition or a samurai-themed diving show at the AquaTheater. Body conscious? A fab abs class, ladies’ pamper party, IV vitamin drip, or contouring cryotherapy. And if that isn’t enough, add in trivia, an escape room, line dancing, miniature golf, karaoke, teeth whitening, boogie boarding, waterslides, silent disco, a robotic bartender, and a Latin fiesta party (at which a few people line danced), as well as an abridged production of Hairspray, and, strangely, a musical about the history of aviation.

The kids, in particular, had a ball. They went ice skating before breakfast and spent the rest of the day at the pool. Small rubber ducks were secreted across the decks for small guests — and some big ones — to hunt (it’s a cruise thing). Towels were folded into the shapes of monkeys, frogs, and elephants (another cruise thing). Ice cream was available on demand. While seminars on hair restoration and eye anti-aging oxygen treatments suggested a certain clientele, it is millennials and Gen Z who are part of a sea change in bookings. The old joke that ships are packed with “the newly wed, the overfed, and the nearly dead” no longer applies. The average passenger is now forty-six.

Some thirty-seven million people were forecast to take to the waves last year, and numbers continue to surge. Hand sanitizer stations may dot the decks — with cartoon octopuses singing, “Wash your hands and make your mother proud, and maybe you can join the popular crowd”— but there is no further evidence of the event that temporarily sank the industry in 2020. On the surface, it doesn’t hold water: the most climate-conscious generations shoring up the most climate-destroying means of transport. You need only look at these hulking sea monsters to know what damage they are doing to marine life and to precious port cities, and to see how they are contributing to ocean warming, to noise pollution, to levels of blackwater (from toilets) and greywater (from sinks, showers, galleys, and laundries), and to food and plastic waste. Even with the recent move to liquefied natural gas, a supposedly greener alternative, the fleet still pumps harmful methane into the atmosphere. Symphony of the Seas just missed the boat on that upgrade. It still guzzles regular old marine diesel.

Ecological concerns to one side, the idea of broadening your horizons on a week such as this is similarly illogical. With a cruise, there is no sense of exploring the unknown, of expanding into new experiences. Here you bring your cushy world with you. That’s the point. The soap in the bathrooms has a distinctive smell; it took us a while to pin it down. Then we realized: talcum powder.

Days of the week were displayed on the floors of the elevators, lest we become entirely untethered from time and space. The only live outside coverage on the ship — without the internet add‑on — was the continual broadcast of sports games. Stops in Nassau and one of Royal Caribbean’s private islands, called Perfect Day at CocoCay, were so short they seemed like a fever dream. Let your troubles drift away. . . . And then we got to Jamaica.

Hurricane Melissa had left its mark, even though we were on the opposite side of the island to the worst-hit areas. Our tour guide told us her electricity in Montego Bay had been restored only two weeks previously. She gave a shout-out to the Americans on the bus, as a group of U.S. truckers had come over to help fix the power lines. We gazed out the windows at fallen trees and shut‑up hotels. The rain poured down. “Liquid sunshine,” the guide said. Were we helping by bringing money into the economy, or were we guilty of rubbernecking? Possibly a bit of both. The true luxury is to be in a position to ponder your privilege. But yes, we would buy that photo package at Dunn’s River Falls.

Such a cognitive juggling act is difficult to handle. We are in the late stages of the decline of human exchange. Self-serve cash registers, online shopping, social media, food delivery left at the door, the slow demise of Canada Post. We have grown used to not interacting with one another, maybe even slightly repelled by it. Loneliness is an epidemic. So any occasion to be thrust into the maelstrom of humanity should be a good thing, right?

For elderly travellers, or for people with accessibility needs, these trips might be the difference between going on holiday and not. The very nature of the crew, with country of origin listed on their name tags, suggests an admirable global project. Everyone is working hard, often seven days a week for as many as seven months straight. The kitchen of the Main Dining Room rolls out 20,000 loaves of bread each day. A program called Crunchtime uses AI to predict portion quantities, which seems a much more sensible use of AI than as a replacement for actors and novelists. Waste food is dehydrated and incinerated to help power the waterslides. The towels have an exchange program to cut down on excess usage, with fines for failure to return. Crew members referred to their duties as their passion, their calling. A woman named Theresa, who managed the Izumi restaurant, had been with Royal Caribbean since the ’90s. What right have we to deride someone’s vocation?

As we made our way back to Miami, a U.S.-flag-cupcake party coincided with the American arrest of a foreign head of state. Escapism threatened to tip over into dangerous disconnection. Either way, reality landed with a bump.

The past eleven years, according to the World Meteorological Organization, have been the warmest on record. Increased absorption of carbon dioxide has made the oceans more acidic. Carbonate ions, the building blocks of shells and coral, are less abundant. Reefs are undergoing mass bleaching events. Glaciers continue to melt. But cruise ships aren’t going anywhere. There can be no magic wand to turn a 220,000-ton vessel into a giant white pumpkin. Companies head toward carbon neutrality at the same chuntering pace as the rest of the players in our machine age. It is not enough.

For my part, I will cherish the memory of shocked eight-year-old faces when they realized their grandparents knew of 6‑7 (another epidemic). I will enjoy that we saw an upside-down pineapple on someone’s door — cruising code for swinging. I will savour the escape from irony for a few days. But never again.