The Ships Will Sail Again, and So Will I

I booked another cruise for less than 3 months from now, and I’m not scared or nervous. I’m excited, and remaining optimistic. How and why? I thought that’d be a good idea for a post.

I previously wrote about my April 11th cruise’s cancellation, and the subsequent credit I’d be given from the cruise line. Well, that credit had arrived, so that meant only one thing: Time to call my travel agent! With the total amount of my credit, I was able to book a longer cruise, whose itinerary is one of the best I’ve seen. I have an overnight in Bermuda, multiple sea days, and a stop at Royal Caribbean’s new private destination entitled “Perfect Day at CoCo Cay”. If you click the link on “Perfect Day…” it’ll take you to my good friend Matt’s blog all about Royal Caribbean. Definitely a fun site full of information.

On this cruise there will be diving…there will be drinking… but most importantly, there will be relaxation.

Right about now, at lease some of you reading this may be thinking things like:

“Dude, it’s gonna get canceled. Don’t even bother getting excited.”

“Why are you going on a cruise? Don’t you know cruise ships are a breeding ground for viruses?”

…or something like that. While those concerns and questions are completely valid, they do not dissuade me from wanting to get back on a ship.

I place my full trust in Royal Caribbean. They have always kept passenger safety as priority #1, even above the belly flop contests, shows, and bar crawls. I have been on a number of cruises with them, and have never once felt in any way unsafe. I trust their sanitization procedures, and the measures they are putting in place to keep me and the other passengers safe.

I’ve allowed what I believe to be enough time between now and the date of my cruise for Royal Caribbean to resume operations. It doesn’t seem like the company can keep their ships unoccupied and not sailing for much longer than they have been; they’ve been inactive since March. I have over two months to go until my cruise, and I trust that a solution will be in place in time.

But what if there isn’t? What if this cruise gets canceled?

If it does, I’ll just book another one. If that one gets canceled, I’ll book another one. Cruises are my favorite form of vacation; I wrote about that in a post from a few years ago that you can read here. My love for cruising hasn’t changed, despite the worldwide pandemic.

The sun will rise again tomorrow, and the ships will sail again. If everything works out and my cruise doesn’t get canceled, I’ll be sailing too. If it gets canceled, I’ll just book another one. I’ll keep on going until I set foot on another ship, and have another amazing time, doing what I love to do.

I got the idea to write this post because a friend told me I was way more optimistic than he. I know it’s easy to be consumed with all of the coverage of covid-19, but I think therein lies the problem. We tend to live for overconsumption of media coverage, and we all have our reasons why we want to stay “on top of everything.” There’s no right or wrong answer here, but I have opted not to overconsume this coverage. I’ve limited my information gathering to posts on social media, and conversations with friends or family. If something is of grave importance, I’ll be informed that way, and can do further research on my own.

I prefer to surround myself with people and content that are positive. Especially in these times, I don’t need or want anything else to instill fear or saddening thoughts in my head. If I focus on the positive, being a good person, and helping anyone I can, I can also remain happy, which makes getting through this all that much easier.