Boy, do I miss going on a cruise. Actually, my wife really misses going on a cruise, but she begins her lamenting as soon as our current cruise pulls into home port. As much as I love cruising, I at least wait until there is a worldwide pandemic to begin thinking of how much I miss cruising.
I remember when Mrs. Pincus booked our first cruise way back in 2013. I was not really happy with the thought of spending a week floating in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of strangers — playing shuffleboard, participating in some sort of dance class by the pool and wearing a tuxedo to dine at the Captain's Table. You see, my only frame of reference for going on a cruise came from The Love Boat.
From 1977 until 1986, I relished in the exotic locales, cheesy plotlines and familiar crewmembers that flashed across my television screen on a weekly basis — sometimes taking twice its allotted hour-long time slot to tell a tale filled with more intrigue than normal. I knew the Pacific Princess inside and out — from the split-level dining room, to the Acapulco Lounge to the secluded Pirates Cove where one could find a sympathetic ear from Isaac, apparently the sole bartender aboard. The staterooms depicted on The Love Boat were spacious and luxurious, decked out with full curtain-and-valance ensembles, wall-sized paintings and king-size beds (or twins with two feet of maneuvering space between). There was a large dresser and a bureau (those are two separate pieces of furniture) and a full bathroom with a door that doesn't hit anything when opened. Guests would regularly invite other guests into their cabin for drinks, hors d'oeuvres, hanky-panky or climbing into a two-piece horse costume to fool a couple of kids.
On my first cruise, I mistook the corridor to access our room for a "staff-only" passageway, due to its narrow span and the tiny doors that lined its walls. The actual room — once I wedged our suitcases through the door — was closet-like in size with just a few inches of buffer between the bed and the adjacent walls. The bathroom was bisected by a thin curtain that served (unsuccessfully, we would later discover) to contain the shower water from entering the rest of the room. The streamlined toilet jutted out awkwardly from a wall, its jet-engine flushing mechanism activated by a small button an inch above the unit, alongside an ominous sign warning that flushing should only be attempted with the lid closed. I am doing my best not to say the room was so small that you had to step into the hallway to change your mind... but I fear I'm going to fail.
The dining room on
The Love Boat was huge and the showroom was tiny with a small stage jammed with musicians, barely leaving enough room for Charo to shake her
cuchi-cuchis. There appeared to be just three bars on the ship — one at the pool, one in the Acapulco Lounge and the aforementioned Pirates Cove. The always jovial and accommodating Isaac Washington seemed to man all three, even donning an eyepatch and striped tunic to match the buccaneer theming. I can tell you for a fact that if ships only had
three bars, they would invariably tip over from the lopsided distribution of patron weight. The showrooms, on the other hand, are multi-deck affairs, some with stadium seating in the upper tiers and intimate booth and theater seating on the main floor. The stages are pretty elaborate, employing trap doors, hydraulic risers, props and lighting and
more than enough room to contain a
dozen Charos and all the
cuchi-cuchi energy they could muster.
Which brings me to the
other crew members. There was Burl "Gopher" Smith, the ship's yeoman purser — a position so
vital that the
chief purser was never seen, leaving Gopher to fumble through the cruise, chasing after Doc Bricker's cast-offs, hiding from the captain and tripping over his own feet. Doc Bricker was a baffling character. He greeted arriving passengers, assisting in checking them in and providing directions to their accommodations. He also surveyed the group for those who displayed symptoms of illness as well as those
female passengers on whom he could perform a "skirt-ectomy" by the time they dock in Puerto Vallarta. I have been on
eight cruises and I have
never seen the ship's doctor.
Cruise director Julie McCoy — with her cockeyed smile and look of constant bewilderment — is the
antithesis of every cruise director I have ever encountered. Most real-life cruise directors are pulsating balls of pure energy, injecting a feeling of fun and excitement where ever they go. They are
on 24 hours a day! Some are more
on than others, but
all subscribe to the same basic philosophy: "The passengers must have a good time
all the time!" Cruise directors are in show business and the entire ship is their stage. There is
no time to have a quiet, candlelit dinner with Tony Roberts when you got a ship full drunk and uncoordinated Baby Boomers who came to dance and sing along to the best of Motown. I swear I've seen some cruise directors in two places at the same time — leading a lesson in dancing like Michael Jackson and, minutes later in another part of the ship, reading "Green Eggs and Ham" to a bunch of over-stimulated children. Besides, cruise staff are not permitted to, shall we say, "interact romantically" with the passengers. I'm pretty sure that, when you're asleep, they are below deck, fucking
each other any way. The only thing that
real cruise directors have in common with TV's Julie McCoy is the cocaine usage. How
else can they keep up that energy?
Then there is the captain — stern but lovable Merrill Stubing. I have only seen the
actual ship's captain of any ship we've sailed on when he showed up on "Pose with the Ship's Captain" picture night and during an informal question and answer session, finally debunking the theory that there are shirtless guys below deck shoveling coal into boilers like in
Titanic. Otherwise, the captain is sequestered on the bridge,
driving the goddamn ship! He isn't mingling with the passengers, showing them where Promenade 215 is or joking with his college professor who said he'd never amount to anything. His look-alike brother isn't boarding and he isn't laughing off "bald jokes" from his barely-competent crew. He's navigating storm-affected waters for the quickest possible route to get your pasty white ass on a beach by 10 AM tomorrow morning... of course, that's
after you've downed a stack of fifteen pancakes and a couple of Sea Day Brunch Bloody Marys.
See? No time to court Marion Ross or help his ship-bound daughter with her algebra homework.
According to The Love Boat, the entire ship is effortlessly managed by five crew members, a couple of whom don't really seem to do anything. Sure, Al Molinaro was an ill-tempered chef in one episode and Abe Vigoda was a beleaguered steward in another, but Isaac and Gopher seemed to be pulling double duty waiting tables. In reality, the buffet alone has hundreds of workers silently putting out more food for the perpetually-famished diners. Others are stealthily clearing tables and sweeping up the messes left by finicky and frustrated children. Still others are behind the scenes whipping up familiar and gourmet fare on a scale that rivals a summer camp, an army base or a federal prison. The formal dining rooms are run like clockwork and never have I witnessed a waiter lose his footing and slam a multilayer cake into the captain's lap — a mishap that occurs at least once an episode.
And never have I seen someone fall into the pool fully clothed.
I miss cruising. But at least I have
Love Boat as an unrelatable distraction while I'm waiting to cruise again.
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