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Setting sail for the first time ever on the world’s largest cruise ship requires a bit of a learning curve.
However, it’s a learning curve that Royal Caribbean fully understands, and Icon of the Seas, the latest ship to claim that title, offers passengers a variety of ways to acclimate.
You can, of course, familiarize yourself with the ship’s design before boarding. Passengers don’t need to memorize where everything is, but you can learn some important touchpoints, like the locations of the pool decks, the bar you want to try, the main dining room, and your cabin.
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Even if you don’t do this homework, Royal Caribbean posts employees around the ship on departure day wearing T-shirts or holding signs that say “How can I help?” There are also stations for dining questions and reservations, internet issues and shore excursions, and the guest services desk usually has people coming to the line to sort out issues.
Yes, the whole thing can be stressful, but when elevators have pictures of the highlights on every deck and hundreds of people offer to help you, you’re unlikely to stay stressed unless you choose to.
Gary Shteyngart, the Atlantic writer assigned to spend a week on the inaugural sailing of Icon of the Seas, boarded the ship prepared to hate the experience. As you would expect, he wrote a story that shows his disdain for anyone who isn’t nice enough to be able to have a good time in a space designed for exactly that purpose.
Image source&col; Danielle Klein/TheStreet
A cliched writing cruise
Shteyngart notes early in his essay that “the author goes on his first cruise ship voyage” and then quips that it was a kind of literary subgenre. He cited David Foster Wallace’s book A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again as a standard-bearer for the idea of sending an older writer (in his case 51) on a cruise, ostensibly so they couldn’t have a good time and then ask all the other people who did. .
Not everyone likes sailing. Some people don’t like the idea of not being able to leave while others fear motion sickness. Some people want to spend more time in a destination than accommodation on a cruise ship allows. Others prefer solitude, the forest or the city.
Cruises may have broad appeal, but even Taylor Swift and ice cream have people saying “that’s not for me.”
You may not love cruising or becoming a frequent traveler, but a journalist—even a travel writer who is asked to share his opinion—should board a ship without having already written his elitist bylines. Shteyngart boarded the ship not in an honest attempt to try something outside his comfort zone, but to try to support his suspicions that cruisers are uncultured things.
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Sailing is about people
After asking a crew member for help, Shteyngart found his room (an en-suite overlooking the family’s Surfside neighborhood) and, before venturing out, expressed his apparent disdain for people traveling on a cruise.
He points out that he is prepared for people who “don’t adhere to modernity [diversity-equity-inclusion] “Standards” while wearing a T-shirt purchased for the occasion that says “Daddy’s Little Meatball.”
Wearing a t-shirt as a conversation starter on a cruise ship. Especially when you’re not extroverted, you can work. I’ve inadvertently met other Buffalo Tom fans (a moderately popular Boston band) by doing this, but if you put on a Celtics jersey and head to a sports bar, well, this will probably work better.
It was a failed maneuver by Shteyngart, who said he was ignored, and blamed it on not wearing a hat bearing a football team logo. Because, of course, normal people who like football and cruises can’t relate to a pretentious writer from New York.
Navigating and making friends can be a challenge for people who are not used to talking to strangers. Royal Caribbean tries to help by offering meet-ups for single cruisers, and many frequent cruisers make an effort to be inclusive.
Shteyngart explained that he hated the food and being on the ship, and that he felt ignored by his fellow passengers. However, this may be where his loving disdain betrays some true humanity. He used the word “shy” to describe his inability to communicate with anyone.
He talked to a lot of people, but his judgment of them prevented him from making any real connection. Many of the people you meet on a cruise are not like you, but a general common ground is that you like being on a ship, drinking at a bar, relaxing in a pool, or whatever it may be.
To make connections, you have to be open to them and you have to accept that not everyone who is fun to have a drink with will be a friend for life. However, these friendships do happen, and I now count among my closest friends people I probably wouldn’t have met anywhere except on a cruise ship.
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Shteyngart’s failure to connect with people has nothing to do with Icon of the Seas, or his inexperience on the boat, or even his apparent disdain for the whole thing. If his shirt had said “I’m shy, but say hello,” I think his experience would have been very different.
Sailing is community (if you want it)
“The whole thing is a cult,” he wrote while trying to explain how members of Royal Caribbean’s first-class loyalty program get special perks. In many ways, he’s right — in the same way that watching the U.S. women’s national team play in the World Cup in a bar full of strangers or watching your favorite band play makes everyone in the room agree.
Cruising does it in a very welcoming way.
It is a cult as many of the people on board love sailing. With Icon of the Seas, Royal Caribbean has taken what people love and given them more of it.
You can sit quietly in the tranquility of Central Park at night (a literal park on a cruise ship but an area Shteyngart describes as “another mall”) or you can surround yourself with people.
Shteyngart dismissed sailing as beneath him because how could he find someone with as refined hipster taste as himself on board something as ordinary as a cruise ship? This is his claim, not reality.
She talked about literature and independent film on cruise ships and she talked about great barbecue and professional wrestling.
I’m pretty sure Shteyngart and I share a lot of interests, because I’m a sometimes snobbish New Yorker (I used to live in a trendy Brooklyn neighborhood).
And if he wants to experience sailing without judgement, I welcome him to come on a cruise with me and open up to being part of a diverse, open and welcoming community.
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