Sunday, November 22, 2009

Bigger isn't better for cruise ships

Here's the last three paragraphs of an article by Arthur Frommer in the EssEffChron:

The sole explanation for a 6,000-passenger ship is that it is able to offer more entertainment and thus cater to more of those people who are unable to entertain themselves, those arrested personalities who rely on constant, massive, outside distractions to ward off depression. I'm talking about people who get fidgety if they have no nearby television set, who never read a magazine, let alone a book, who have never enjoyed simple conversation or encountering viewpoints or beliefs foreign to theirs. Who want all the world to be like America.

I think of 4-year-olds being taken to a restaurant, who have to be supplied with Play-Doh and coloring books to keep them occupied at the table. I can speak only for myself, of course, but I don't want to travel with adults who need to be treated like children.

Stuffing 6,000 people into a boat is not my idea of progress, but the opposite. Stuffing 8,000 people - the next probable step - will be even worse. Am I alone in such views? As I gag at the sight of Oasis of the Seas, looking like a several-block-long, multifloor apartment house balanced on a ship's hull, is it me who is crazy, or the perpetrators of this stunt?

I think it's the folks who think it's a nice way to spend their vacation to be stuffed into a (large) sardine can that might sink, but hey, it's their money and they can spend it any way they want.

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