`Well, would you take a look at that,” I said to my wife as we drove through Miami. “Somebody’s put a funnel atop the Fountainebleau.”
Then I remembered we were not on the Beach; we were headed to the port. Some smaller funnels suggested that the hotel was really a vessel. Not just any vessel, of course, but Carnival’s Destiny — the largest cruise ship in the world. I had my ticket in my book bag.
“Have fun,” my wife said, dropping me in front of the terminal.
“Tomorrow,” I reminded her, “is a `fun day at sea.’ “
Through check-in, across the gangway and into a nine-story Rotunda with four glass elevators outlined in Tivoli lights. On a raised platform behind the bar, a quartet played Vivaldi.
Then down to the lowest (passenger) deck, the cheapest cabin: Inside, with the threat of a roommate. As I opened the door a presence rose from the bed. In the darkness I could make out only a stream of flowing hair. “Somebody’s made a mistake,” I thought. But then, as the figure fell to the floor on hands and knees, the glow from the television caught a prophet’s beard. It took him only a few seconds to crawl to the door.
“Hiya,” he whispered, standing up and pulling me back out into the corridor. “I’m Norman from Oklahoma City. Nice to meet ya. I’m videotaping the TV and didn’t want to get in the way.”
Norman was short and round and wore a tightly stretched, canary yellow Carnival T-shirt printed with nautical flags, the majority of them shrouded by his salt-and-pepper beard and mane. “Wait here a minute — I’ll turn it off and give you my 10-cent tour.” As the door closed, I reminded myself: My wife just dropped me off for a week cruise; my parents didn’t just drop me off for my first semester.
Norman, who looked like no one I’d ever seen on a cruise ship, had been on the maiden voyage of the Destiny the week before; that was his ninth maiden voyage on a Carnival ship, his 30th cruise. “Do ya think this one could count as a maiden voyage?” he asked, seriously, as he led me down the corridor. “I mean, it’s the first time she’s been to the western Caribbean.”
We climbed three flights. “You’re really gonna like this,” he said, and we entered a large theater with a steep horseshoe-shaped balcony. “This is the Palladium. Amazing, isn’t it? They have 10-watt water-cooled lasers.” Then he climbed on stage and found a door that led behind the curtain. I stared dutifully at a system of pulleys. “They can pick up whole sets,” he said.
Back outside, we paused at the Rotunda. “Ya see how part of the ceiling is dropped? Joe Farcus did that and I’m not sure it’s totally successful. On other ships it would all be open. There are supposed to be clouds in it, but they’re hard to make out.”
He opened the door to the outside. “They have a promenade that doesn’t go anywhere. But beautiful deck chairs. Thick pads. Very comfortable.”
He climbed the Rotunda stairs to the Galleria Shopping Mall. “There seem to be fewer shops on this ship. But I like this idea” — and he pointed to the tuxedo rental.
Down the Promenade Deck, past the Millionaire’s Club Casino and the Cappuccino Bar (“didn’t seem too popular last cruise”) to the Point After. “Look at that video wall. Have ya ever seen so many monitors in a disco? I think they said they’ve got 535.”
A curved flight of steps led down from the dance floor. “This is a strange room. Joe’s idea was that it would be for people who didn’t want to be involved in the disco but didn’t want to be cut off from it either.”
Then into the Apollo Piano Bar. “Look,” said Norman, walking to a table and picking up a microphone from an opening in the center. “For singing along. They can also spotlight any table in the room.” From the Down Beat Lounge — “great jazz singer in the evening” — we walked over into the Criterion Lounge.
“I personally think they ought to move the Late Night Show out of here to the Palladium, where the sight lines are better. One of the serious omissions on this ship is a place for ballroom dancing. Cruise ships are the last bastion of ballroom dancing.” It seemed an odd cause for Norman.
On the Lido Deck, I was proudly shown the 24-hour pizzeria, the Chinese kitchen, the burger grill (Norman grabbed two) and then led out onto a vast tract crammed with deck chairs, pools, whirlpools, a glass-roofed bandstand and a 200-foot spiral waterslide.
“Up there,” Norman said, pointing to the base of the winged funnel and moving close enough that I could make out burger crumbs in his beard, “is the topless bathing area. It was officially initiated last week by a woman who publishes a swinger’s magazine out of Michigan. She had the date of her cruise posted on the Internet for months.
“Now if women can go topless, does that mean men can go bottomless? I’ve got a thong that is about as bare as you can get. I’m gonna wear it this cruise and see if I get any reaction.”
– – – –
“I’d like to change my cabin.”
“That’s not possible,” the man behind the purser’s desk said.
“Why? Is the ship full?” “For the next seven months.” And he smiled smugly.
I wandered listlessly, and returned in a few hours, and petitioned a young woman named Elizabeth.
“I’d like to change my cabin.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I’ve got a cabinmate.”
“What’s the matter, isn’t he your type?” I gave the briefest physical description of Norman. She knew him instantly. Her eyes softened with sympathy. She suggested I check back tomorrow, after everyone was settled.
We pushed away from the pier a little before sunset and a little after the first official playing of the macarena. Far below, along the banks of the channel, camera bulbs flashed and tiny figures waved; causeway traffic slowed to a crawl. We were an attraction, one of the few in the world that consists of locals staring at tourists. South Beach drifted past like a miniature village on a moated platform. Then the sea enwrapped us, and the largest cruise ship in the world became just another speck in its dark immensity.
At dinner, my table was occupied by a thin-lipped couple from Georgia and their head-lolling teenage son. They sat at one end — it was set for eight — I at the other. In silence, I ate my gazpacho and curried vegetables. The show began at 10:30. “Welcome to Carnival’s Destiny!” cruise director John Heald cried from the stage of the Palladium. He wore a double-breasted navy blazer with a red kerchief in the pocket and spoke with an English accent.
“The largest, newest, most expensive cruise ship in the world! One hundred thousand tons of fun! Right now we’ve got 3,097 passengers on board — the most people ever to sail on a cruise ship! Ladies and gentlemen, you are part of history!!!” I was the only one who didn’t applaud.
Eight people were called up on stage, stooges for games and that moribund mix of sexual, ethnic and scatological humor. “Take her hand, not mine, you idiot. This is a fun ship, not a ferry boat!” (Howls from the audience.) Cruise ships are also the last bastion of political incorrectness.
I retreated to the Down Beat, where I listened to the jazz singer and sought solace from the bartender. “Ivana,” I asked, “where are you from?”
“Croatia. Far away from here.” And her dreamy smile suggested she meant more than in the geographical sense.
– – – –
Norman’s snoring woke me around 2. My immediate feeling, other than discomfort at the frigid temperature in the cabin, was relief that a) he was asleep and, b) I now had a legitimate (and non-incriminating) case for transfer. I knew from the female purser’s response that the ship probably wasn’t full and I decided that, if refused a change, I would threaten to sleep in the Rotunda.
So began my fun day at sea.
I walked out onto one of the dead-end promenades and slept on one of the very comfortable deck chairs. A little past noon I went up to the buffet in the Sun & Sea Restaurant and sat down with three attractive young women in bikinis. (Let somebody else endure an unwanted presence.)
“Tom? Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Leigh and this is Kathy and this is Lisa. There are 21 of us. We all met last year on the Sensation and made a date to meet on the Destiny.”
“How do you like it?”
“Love it. It’s the best of the Carnival ships. The food’s much better and there’s more cabin space. You know, the important things.”
“My cabin’s smaller,” said Lisa.
“Really? But everybody’s so nice. We staked out places out near the bandstand and we already know all the musicians. Three of the guys in our group have one of the penthouses and we have a party up there every night before dinner. They came on board with 21 bottles of champagne in their luggage. You should come up some evening — it’s room 7198. But you’ll hear it before you see it.”
“Leigh, we’re missing out on good tanning time.”
“OK, Tom, nice meeting you. See you up at the party.”
– – – –
In the afternoon, high in the Palladium balcony, Norman sat videotaping the cruise director’s port talk. Outside, I struck up a conversation with an exotic woman named Carmelita.
“I’m here with a group of law enforcement people from Sacramento,” she said. “Most are in SWAT teams and undercover narcotics. They’re pretty wild.”
I left her to wander past the purser’s desk, but Elizabeth wasn’t there. I strolled down to the infirmary on the crew deck and found posted on a bulletin board a list of crew members’ names and nationalities. In addition to the usual Latin Americans, Indonesians, Filipinos, a good number of Croatians, Hungarians and Romanians (especially in the bars) and a high percentage of Indians in the kitchen.
Back at the purser’s desk I saw Elizabeth and took my place in line.
“Do you remember me?” I asked after a short wait.
“Oh, yes. Let me go check.”
She came back shortly.
“Yes, there’s an empty cabin — 2191. Here’s your new key.”
I packed in minutes, and carried my bags up one deck. Never had an empty room looked so beautiful.
Later I ran into Norman in the Rotunda. He was passing an elderly man with uncombed white hair playing solitaire at the bar.
“Norman, I found another cabin.”
“Really? Why’d ya do that?”
“Well,” I tried to be delicate. “You snore.”
“Oh, sorry.”
Because of the number of passengers, the captain’s cocktail party was held in all the bars on the Promenade Deck, with the captain stationed in the hallway opposite the disco. To his right stretched a line of men in tuxedos and women in sequined gowns, waiting for him to grace their pictures.
At dinner the Georgia family was replaced by a writer for Vogue.
“I have a place in South Beach,” Viva said. “Last week I came back from Paris and I sat down and looked out the window and saw this ship sailing by. And I said to myself: `I’m going on that ship.’ ” Astonishing how quickly the traveler’s fortunes change.
“This is wonderful,” she said. “I’ve never been on a cruise before. My friends all said: `Oh, Viva, you’ve become one of those divorced women who goes on cruises.’ But I love this ship. I spent all morning out on deck with a hilarious crowd from South Carolina. They were all lit by 10 o’clock. And the casino is divine. Before 5 o’clock you can play 25-cent roulette.”
“What about the food?”
“Eh. I lived in France for a year. But this Caesar is tasty.”
Around midnight — after the Paris review and the late-night adult comedy show (Al Ernst on men’s health problems) — Carmelita sat with her friends Freddie and Dozer in the disco. During the dance contest, a deputy’s date did a lap dance on him.
“She’s a stripper,” Carmelita whispered to me. “Everyone’s really embarrassed by her.”
– – – –
Tuesday morning, getting off on Cozumel, I talked to a Polish couple from New Jersey. “There are about 20 of us,” they told me.
The Destiny was turning into a kind of Noah’s Ark for collectives — the party group, the police group, the Polish group. Many of whom spent their one day in Mexico with hundreds of fellow passengers at an upstairs bar called Carlos and Charley’s.
After buying a few Christmas presents, I returned to the ship for dinner. My table was empty save for a pretty young woman in a black dress who was translating the menu into French for a bald man who could have been, but obviously wasn’t, her father.
“I’m Claudine,” the woman introduced herself. “And this is Pierre.”
I recognized Pierre from the casino. “I’ve won $900 already,” he said casually in Quebecois French. “And we paid only $1,200 for the cabin. People on this ship don’t know how to play blackjack.”
“He’s very good,” said Claudine proudly. “Hotels in Las Vegas fly him in as their guest.”
“So you like the ship.”
“It’s a good deal,” Pierre said smiling. “But the food is so-so. And look,” he reached over his plate. “This is a $50 bottle of wine. We shouldn’t have to pour it ourselves. Monsieur?”
– – – –
We sailed a little after midnight, to the tune of the macarena. I had never really liked the macarena, though I realized that it was reducing the number of times I had to listen to “Hot, Hot, Hot.”
Up on the Lido Deck, a couple staggered away from the dance party to make out quietly on the side. Tired of bending, the gangling young man lifted his new paramour onto the railing, where she rocked drunkenly in his rubbery arms 12 stories above a marble black sea.
I walked over to them.
“Howdy,” the young man said, slowly extricating his mouth and trying to act casual.
“Get down from there,” I ordered. “It’s dangerous.”
Then I headed off to my empty cabin. As I turned the corner, he was fumblingly lifting her back up.
– – – –
“Ninety-nine percent of them are the friendliest, funniest people you’ll ever want to meet. Super, super people. But one percent will spoil your day by hassling.”
It was John Heald, our cruise director, on the Jamaicans. It was Wednesday morning, and we were somewhere south of the Yucatan Channel.
“And please do not buy any drugs,” Heald continued. “Last year Carnival had 400 passengers arrested for purchasing drugs in Jamaica.”
Outside, a young Japanese woman stood at the railing looking down into the Rotunda. An elderly man with uncombed white hair was playing solitaire at the bar. In the shop across the way, a woman with a camera was zeroing in on a young man buying a Snickers bar.
“I get things ready for group of 1,000 Japanese people that sail next week,” Takako, the Japanese woman, said. “They do not speak English so I very busy all day translating bulletins, menus, things like that.”
I wondered how they’d like the food.
“Japanese have different tastes,” she said with traditional delicacy. “It a bit better than other Carnival ships. Kind of like Denny’s.”
Then she looked at her watch. “Have to go. Time for lunch meeting.”
In the afternoon, the usual sea of bodies blanketed the Lido Deck. It rose up from the bandstand in 10 gradual, chaise-longued levels, a gently rolling jigsaw puzzle of furniture and flesh.
Leigh, who at lunch the second day had invited me to her friends’ penthouse party, danced languorously by the pool with a hurricane glass in her hand. She was the picture of cruising contentment. There may have been another, my ex-cabinmate Norman sunning in his thong up on the topless deck, but I didn’t go see it.
At dinner my table was empty. In seven cruises I had never had such a mercurial table: one night laconic Georgians, then Viva the fashion maven, followed by a couple of high-rolling French Canadians. Ken the maitre d’ appeared — an Irish Rhett Butler, with slicked back hair and a pencil-thin black mustache.
“Come with me, sir.”
He led me down the stairs to the dining room’s lower level, pirouetting around serving carts and swerving past waiters and ducking under trays (Scorsese would have filmed it beautifully) and deposited me into an empty chair in the middle of an animated party gladdened by a beautiful young Indian woman with a small diamond embedded in her left nostril. Viva presided happily in the center. (She flashed me a conspiratorial smile as I unfolded my napkin.)
In four days I had gone from a shared cabin and deadbeat diners to an empty cabin and exotic tablemates. And I hadn’t even been up to the penthouse party.
“I met the chef this afternoon,” Viva said, leaning across the table. “He took me all over the galley.”
– – – –
Thursday morning a grumbly crowd filled the corridors, waiting for the tender to take them to Grand Cayman.
“We go on Royal Caribbean,” sniffed a 60ish woman at my left elbow. “Ten times better than this.”
“Look how much more you pay with them,” answered a 60ish man abutting my right shoulder. “This is the line we take when we bring the kids. By ourselves we usually go on Holland America.
“The first day I went to the purser’s desk and asked about table tennis,” he continued. “They told me there weren’t any tables. Well, that shot me down for about an hour. Then I found the ice cream machines.”
“We miss bridge, too,” his wife said. “On most ships you get loads of people playing bridge. Here only eight people have shown up.”
“I got stuck in an elevator yesterday,” her husband said. “There was one woman who was pretty hysterical. I guess she’d been stuck in one earlier in the day. They finally had to pull us out.”
“A dollar and seventy-five cents for a soda,” the elbow woman whined. “That gets me. It’s like they’re trying to suck every penny out of you.”
“That bottle of water in the cabin that they try to sell you,” the shoulder man agreed. “That’s pretty tacky.”
The Polish couple I’d met in Cozumel appeared, pushing their way in the opposite direction.
“A man fell trying to get onto the tender,” Basia said. “It was very terrible. They had to pull him up out of the water. Somebody said he’s a baseball player.”
After 45 minutes we finally got on the tender for the short ride to the capital. Walking by a bank I saw the solitaire player. Almost out of a sense of obligation, I introduced myself. If not for Norman, I figured, he would have been my cabinmate.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Buffy from Baton Rouge.”
Buffy was in his usual tan suit, white shirt and thickly knotted red tie. The tie was criss-crossed by several camera straps and studded, together with his lapels, with souvenir pins he had gathered on his travels. Prominent among them was the LSU tiger.
“You weren’t interested in any of the ship excursions?” I asked.
“No. I’ve been here about 14 times.” “Really?”
“I’m 73 years old,” he said. “This is my 96th cruise.”
Norman, I thought, 30 years hence.
– – – –
Back on board I sat in the shade with a pale, 30ish woman with thick black hair.
“I loved the Fascination,” she said. “This ship is trying to be more sophisticated, but it has lost some of the whimsy and hasn’t replaced it with anything.
“And I don’t get a sense of it being so big, in the sense that there are all that many more restaurants and clubs and places to go.”
Amy worked in marketing in Manhattan, though she was gradually starting a career as a comic.
“I’ve been getting some material here — from the perspective of someone who’s a little scared of sailing. The menu, for instance. Do you really want to be on a ship and hear about iceberg lettuce? And the lip sync contest. I mean, if my lips are syncing, what’s the rest of me doing?”
On my way back to my cabin, a woman wearing an anxious expression joined me in the glass elevator. I wondered if she was the one who got stuck.
“I’m so afraid,” she said, looking up to the railing opposite, “that somebody is going to jump from there.”
An hour later I knocked tentatively on the door of penthouse 7198.
“Tom? You’re Leigh’s friend, right? Nice to meet you. Come on in. I’m Roger. This is Phil and this is Weasel.” Leigh and Kathy waved from the corner.
“Are you from Boston too?” I asked Roger. “No, sir. I’m from Chicago. Union sheet metal worker. We met Leigh and her friends last year on the Sensation and we just hit it off. They’re good people.”
I had penetrated the notorious Carnival party sanctum and it was resembling a scene from “High Society.”
“Here,” said Phil, handing me a glass and looking a bit like Cary Grant in a T-shirt. “Let me pour you some champagne.”
– – – –
On my way down to the dining room I ran into Takako and three of her translators. “Can’t talk,” she said. “Time for dinner meeting.”
During the appetizer — tough chicken satay (Oriental night) — Ken appeared and told us that the passenger involved in the tender accident was Eddie Mathews. He had suffered fractures of the pelvis and been flown by air ambulance back to Miami.
“An older gentleman. A fine player, was he?”
“A hall-of-famer,” I said. “Played third base for the Braves when they were in Milwaukee.”
“Tis a real shame.” Cindy, a newlywed, said that she’d run into passengers from another ship who told her that the previous day in Jamaica one of their excursion groups had been robbed at gunpoint.
After dinner Buffy stood in the Rotunda holding two typewritten pages.
“It’s a story I wrote about getting on the wrong ship once. I wanted to read it in the talent show but your cruise director John Heald wouldn’t let me. Instead he stands up there and makes jokes about sex,” he pronounced the word with gravelly distaste.
“And going to the bathroom. I’m planning to write a letter to the cruise company.”
Before the show, Heald announced that word had just come from Jamaica that, in honor of the Destiny’s first visit to the country, there would be free rum and beer for us all day on the pier. (Super, super people.)
Then three passengers performed — out of a reported total of 3,097 — all of them singers. They were followed by an “improvised” audience participation skit, choreographed by Heald, of predictable script and in dubious taste. The audience howled.
Later in the disco, Leigh and Weasel and Kathy and friends talked near the bar. Carmelita sat with her Sacramento SWAT team crowd. I told them about the Jamaican mugging. Freddie and Dozer practically licked their lips in anticipation.
“That explains,” said Freddie sagely, “the free rum and beer.”
– – – –
We docked in Ocho Rios early Friday morning. Colorful booths of distillers lined the otherwise sorry pier and representatives from resorts handed out brochures. A military band, regal in fusty yellow uniforms, greeted us with marches.
It was too early even for Red Stripe. I took a taxi into town and spent the morning at markets. At the recommendation of a vendor, I walked to the Jerk Center for lunch.
Taking a seat at a picnic table in the grass, I was approached by a young woman in revealingly tight shorts. She was one of about a dozen painted ladies lingering in the wings.
“Is this place always like this?” I asked, stabbing a piece of pork.
“No. It’s because de ship is in town.” (In honor of the Destiny.)
“But there’s nobody else here from the ship.”
“Dey fom de ship,” she nodded to my left, and looking over my shoulder, I saw a huddle of hungry-eyed crew.
– – – –
About 3,096 passengers — I learned back at the dock — climbed Dunn’s River Falls. All had an exceptionally good time. Nobody got robbed. Everyone was now celebrating with free rum and beer.
We sailed at 3:30, leaving a pier of empty paper cups.
As I sat down for dinner Ken appeared and informed me I was expected at the captain’s table. Viva, of course, was already there. I shot her a hostile glance (she obviously had blown my cover) and took a seat between the first engineer (the captain apparently had better things to do) and an executive from Hawaiian Pools.
“We have about 140 of our people on board,” he told me. So: The party group, the police group, the Polish group, and now the pool group.
A few hours later, Buffy — eternally non-aligned — sat playing solitaire at the bar in the Down Beat. I introduced him to the Croatian bartender; he seemed so lonely.
“What is it,” Ivana asked with interest, “that you like so much about cruising?” “The people,” he said.
– – – –
Saturday — our last day — I stopped by the purser’s desk and requested the official passenger figure. The young man checked on the computer and said, “2,666.” I had been wondering how 3,096 people had fit into Dunn’s River Falls.
For the last dinner, our Colombian waiter appeared in straw boater, bow-tie and red-and-white striped vest. After the meal he gathered with his colleagues — a boatered company of Latins, Asians, West Indians — and sang “God Bless America.”
Late at night, a weary young woman named Vivien sat at the bar in the Down Beat.
“I’ve been doing the sound for the film team,” she said. “I’ve been on just for the last two weeks, but they’ve been on since the ship left Trieste. They’re making a documentary for British TV.”
“Tell me,” I said, “the skit they do on talent night — it’s rehearsed, right?”
“I think so. Did `Mary’ run into Heald and knock him down?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes, it’s the same.” The director entered, with some of his crew. Vivien introduced me.
“Oh, right,” the director’s assistant said. “You’re Weasel’s friend.”
From Norman’s roommate to Weasel’s friend. It had been an eventful seven days.
“They’re good kids,” he said in a patronizing way. “They work hard and they want to make the most of their one-week holiday. The company sells them this dream of a luxury cruise and they think they’re getting it.”
I took one last look in the disco. It was around 1 a.m. and only a few couples bobbed on the dance floor. Weasel stood off to the side in his coat and tie.
“Last night at dinner,” he said, “I was trying to eat and they were sticking the camera in my face. They’d come in the cabin and film me getting dressed. I said, `Hey, I can’t brush my teeth with you standing there.’
“They asked me what I did and what I thought of the ship and why I came on board. They tried to get me to say that I came on to meet girls, but I wouldn’t play along.
“Annie over there, for instance,” he pointed to a petite woman in a red dress. “We like each other. But I’m not going to sleep with her because I know she wouldn’t respect me and I wouldn’t respect myself. We’re just good friends.”
At that sentiment I headed down to bed, and when I awoke the largest cruise ship in the world was making a 180 degree turn in the roseate glow of a Miami winter morning. And I knew that all the people who had agreeably crowded my week would now disappear back into their real lives.
DESTINY DETAILS
The ship: Length: 893 feet; width: 125; size: 101,353 gross tons; passenger decks: 12.
Passenger capacity: 2,642 based on two per room. Maximum capacity is 3,400 if all third and fourth beds in cabins are occupied.
Itinerary: Seven-night cruises depart every Sunday from Miami and offer two itineraries: eastern Caribbean–San Juan, St. Croix, St. Thomas; and western Caribbean–Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Ocho Rios (Jamaica).
Information: Contact Carnival Cruise Lines, 800-327-9501, or contact a travel agent.
