If Gay Men Went To Summer Camp

If you've ever been curious what a gay cruise is all about, I can sum it up for you: it's summer camp for gay men. But I'll get back to that in a moment.

This being the year of gay travel for us (P-Town, Southern Decadence, Vegas... It's close enough), we picked a gay cruise as our final big gay trip for 2011. Like many of our vacations, we went in to this event a bit blind, but relying on the information we had gathered from friends and the ever-trusty interwebs, we decided to book a room with Atlantis Events for their Mexico cruise.

We truly had no idea what to expect.  Originally, I assumed that this trip would be a lot like our vacation to Riviera Maya. We stayed at an all-inclusive there and really enjoyed our time on the resort. I just assumed that the cruise would be more of the same kind of thing as the resort, only with a throng of gays. But that turned out to be very, very incorrect. At the resort, we barely met anyone, we spent the majority of the day lounging about the pool or beach, and the entertainment, while not horrible, was just OK. In comparrison, on the boat we met several great people, we spent our time between lounging, partying, and socializing, and the entertainment options were all top notch.
I have to admit though that I was a bit mortified to be going on the cruise. The idea of it sounded great, but the realization that I'll be on a boat floating over the ridiculously vast ocean while millions of unknown and unseen critters swim beneath us just waiting for one of us to fall off and become the next sharktopus snack… well, that spooked me a bit. So my husband wisely drug me to a bar shortly before we were scheduled to board and ordered a pitcher of beer that we just had to drink in 40 minutes, which went a long way in relaxing me enough to be able to get on the ship.

Once we were on the floating kraken feeder boat, I was fine. The room was nice, if a tiny bit small, the layout of the ship was pretty intuitive, and there was plenty enough room for everyone to be able to kick back and relax. And this is where the summer camp feel started to kick in.

Every day we were greeted with a little pamphlet listing all the various activities going on that day, when and where. For someone like me who is a habitual planner and someone who if given a schedule must follow it, these little booklets of "fun" soon became an ordeal. Luckily, I have an understanding husband who quickly learned to hide the packet from me and only allow me to choose one activity throughout the day that we could plan for. Everything else would just be happenstance as we lollygagged through the boat or lazed about the pool.

Really though, there was just a ton of stuff going on every day, so there was no need to plan unless there was something in particular you wanted to do. Shows, shopping, game show things, bingo, comedians, string quartets, cabaret acts, Broadway stars, singles and couples meet-and-greets, movies, gambling, and that doesn't even cover everything. Through it all, these abundantly nice crew and staff members were around to help direct you to events or provide you with whatever you needed. Oh, and then the requisite camp boat announcements from the camp cruise directors.

What really amazed me though was that with a boat packed full of 1900 gay men, I believe we only encountered one genuine act of bitchiness, and even that was rather mild. Everyone was just nice. And there was a pretty solid mix of people on the boat too, although the demographic certainly skewed well in to the mid-30's or later for average age range, but even the age and other differences didn't stop everyone from just kicking back and having a great time together.

I was also surprised by how many people on the boat that were interested in sparking up friendships. The boat was fairly big (the veteran cruisers said it was average, but for us newbies it was huge), and there were plenty of people on the boat, but we did manage to meet quite a few people that we enjoyed hanging around. By the second day of the cruise we had made quite a few new acquaintances, most of whom we talked with and hung around with throughout the rest of the trip.

True to the summer camp feel, the cruise directors threw a huge going away party on Thursday night and one last t-dance on Friday, which allowed us all to say farewell to the trip and to get the contact information for everyone we met that we wanted to stay in touch with. Of course, keeping in touch is vastly easier these days with Facebook and all, but we still heard quite a few people saying "keep in touch, ok?" Atlantis even offers an alumni website to help facilitate these connections, which is pretty nifty.

When Saturday morning rolled around, everyone's face shared the same somber yet wonderfully tanned look. Except mine. Because I somehow failed to inherit the tanning gene that allows the rest of my family to so perfectly tan. Anyway… we all knew we were heading home, but we all had a great time on board. Certainly, there will be quite a few memories from the trip. Especially for that one couple that decided that 4 a.m. Wednesday morning was the perfect time to go through a nasty breakup. In the hallway. While drunk. I'm sure they'll remember the trip quite fondly.

So you can see how this Atlantis cruise really was like summer camp for gay men. With alcohol. LOTS of alcohol. The husband and I really enjoyed the experience and will likely do it again. We've reserved a cabin for the same cruise next year, basically just in case we do want to go. From talking to the people on the cruise, it seems like cruises are much like tattoos: once you do one, you want more. And even though I'm certain the next time I get on that boat Cthulu will rise up out of ocean and devour us whole, I think it's a fair trade off for a great week with some like minded travelers!

Trading One Service For Another

Like pretty much every Netflix subscriber out there, the husband and I received an email last week informing us that, "to better serve their customers," Netflix had decided to hike their prices again. Well, really they broke out their pricing to be to different plans, one for streaming movies and one for the DVD/Blu-Ray rental-by-mail service.

Bottom line: they want an additional $5 a month from us.

It's an interesting move, because Netflix's streaming plan is now $7.99 a month. Alone, that's not a bad price point for hundreds of movies and TV shows to instantly stream to your laptop, iPhone, gaming console or other internet-connected device. But since it used to be included in the price of our Blu-Ray by-mail rentals, being charge anything extra for it feels a bit insulting.

So we've decided to give Hulu Plus a shot. Hulu by itself is a fantastic service. I've been using it since it's beta days a few years back and my husband and I have been using it heavily for the past couple years to catch up on the shows we never get to watch when they air live. But Hulu Plus gives us the ability to stream those same shows to our laptop, iPhones, gaming console or other internet-connected device (sound familiar?). It also gives us access to full seasons of shows and quite a bit of other content that free Hulu users do not get.

Hulu Plus also has movies, but that selection is a bit limited. I haven't perused the movie selection in a hot minute, but last time I looked it included all the best of late 80's and early 90's cinema… thrilling.  Like Netflix, content on Hulu is served up at the studio's whim: when they decide that they tire of allowing people to enjoy their decade-old show they simply tell Hulu to remove the show and that's that.

Plain old Hulu includes ads in the shows you watch, just like watching TV except that there's only one ad, maybe 2, during each commercial break and it's almost always the same tired ads over and over again. Hulu plus also allows you the opportunity to view these ads, which is a bit annoying. If I'm paying to use your otherwise free streaming service, I should not be required to watch the ads. That gripe aside, the streaming quality is almost always nice and the player works well.

I'm not sure what to think though. Hulu Plus also costs $7.99 a month. And you can't always stream all their content on your various devices. We're basically trading a large selection of streaming movies and a smaller collection of streaming TV shows for a large collection of TV shows with a smaller collection of movies. For the same price. And adding ads to the mix. And we're doing this because Netflix decided to hike the price on us, but we'll still be spending the same amount of money in the end either way.

I'm not sold on the idea yet, but I'm definitely up for giving it a try. As it is, we watch way more TV shows than movies (of which I watch virtually none while my husband watches lots of anything that involves explosions and cheesy acting), and we do use Hulu on a daily basis whereas we use Netflix streaming occasionally to rarely. I'm just not sure whether paying for Hulu will be worth it for us either, but I suppose we won't know until we give it a shot.

Am I Bored, Or Is This Just Too Long

As I get older, I've noticed my taste for entertainment has changed, but I'm not sure what aspect has changed. Have I grown impatient of longer form entertainment, or do I just lust for more diverse entertainment options?

I've been reading Game of Thrones lately, George R. R. Martin's epic modern fantasy novel. The book is the first in a long series of book called the Song of Ice and Fire and has recently been adapted into an HBO show. The book is a monstrous 800 pages in paperback form. I suppose for a fantasy novel that is probably normal, but for someone that hasn't read a true fantasy epic in a while it seems a bit much.

I've also recently started up playing Fallout: New Vegas on my PC. The game comes with rave reviews and has a spiritual ancestor in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which is at the top of my favorite video games list. Both Oblivion and New Vegas feature huge, vast open worlds each with more than 60 hours of gameplay, and that's at the low end of game time.

With both Game of Thrones and Fallout, I've jumped head first into the venture with a lot of anticipation and excitement. I've been loving watching the HBO adaptation (we haven't finished it yet) of GoT, and I adore the idea of a post-apocalyptic spin on the Oblivion-style gameplay with updated mechanics that Fallout offers. But in both cases, I'm wondering if I didn't bite off a bit more than I care to chew with regard to the time commitment it'll take to finish them.

It's not that I'm not enjoying reading and playing. Both are fascinating and very well done. Each time I crack open the book or fire up the game, I'm enthralled by the world presented to me. But when I step away from them because I'm getting off the bus or because diner is ready or it's time for bed, I'm left wondering if I'll ever reach the end of these gynormous adventures.

That feeling, for me, is both awe-inspiring and annoying all at once.

When I was younger, I can remember burying myself in the Lord of the Rings books and relishing every moment of their often-times dense text, regardless of how long it took me to read through them. I can recall racing home from class in college to figure out what was going to happen to Yuna next in Final Fantasy X, or even coming home from work a few years later and not being bothered at all by losing my entire evening and even some of my scheduled sleep hours to dungeon crawling in Oblivion. I enjoyed the time I spent in those worlds and I did not once think that I was missing out on something else.

Now though, as I read Game of Thrones or fire up New Vegas, I find myself wondering what else is going on that I'm missing. I'm not enjoying the time spent any less, but I'm wondering if I'm cutting myself short on other experiences. I know that I can tear through the new Sookie Stackhouse book in less than a week and that I can blow through a game like Dungeon Siege 3 in less than 15 hours of game time, which then allows me to move on to something else, some new experience.

But I can't say that I enjoy those experiences as much as I enjoy what I'm reading and playing now. I like them, and they are fun, but not quite as deep and rewarding. Which makes me wonder if I'm just becoming impatient. I need the reward of completing, of knowing I've finished X books/games this year and I liked them, even if saying I've completed (X-5) books/games and I LOVED them seems like the wiser thing to do with my free time.

So I can't really tell if my tastes are changing because I want to have more and varied entertainment options at the expense of better or more rewarding options, or if I just bore easier with longer-form entertainment now that I'm older. /sigh...