03 February 2013

CRUISE SHIPS: FLOATING CESSPOOLS

Every time I see an ad for a cruise ship it makes me want to vomit.

Forty years ago, when I was a young traveler, cruising was a still a civilized undertaking.  Cruising was just that, you cruised. You embarked on a ship and between ports you walked the decks, sat on chaise lounges  reading a book and maybe did a little skeet shooting off the stern. Dinners were formal affairs. Entertainment consisted of stage shows, casino nights and dancing.

Today the largest cruise ships carry over 6,000 passengers, plus staffs of well over 1,000, that is 7 times the population of the nearest town to me. Royal Caribbean has the two largest ships which each can carry 6,296 passengers and is 1,187 feet long. That is four football fields!!!!!  Aboard these floating garbage dumps you can surf, rock climb, fly down a zip line, ice skate and play golf. People don't cruise on these things they just take their ADD selves on to the ocean and keep up like they were on land. The cruise lines know what it takes to keep their clientele engaged. I think it is a sad commentary.

Can you imagine the  amount of waste that is created by these floating cesspools? Oh, yes, there are rules and laws but surely you know how that goes. Corporates cheat all the time to increase the bottom line. It's almost a given. If you don't think these ships pollute, how convenient for you.

All the ocean pollution certainly doesn't come from cruise ships there are thousands of tankers and container ships out there too. But, they don't carry very many crew. And a lot of waste surely swirls out into the oceans from third world activity. But, you can't do much about that.

Take a look at this video the next time you want to take a cruise on one of these floating hotels for the brain dead.  MIDWAY FILM

If you want to surf try my nephew's Surfari Charters in Nicaragua. If you want to rock climb give El Capitan a go. If you want to ice skate go to a local rink or come to a winter wonderland like Montana. If you want to play golf there are almost 16,000 courses in the US. The only reason these monolithic, fuel guzzling cesspools are built is because people buy tickets. Think about it.

If you do use them, stuff your righteous indignation over the oil companies and their slicks. At least the oil companies are endeavoring to do something useful.

©Kinsey Barnard 

PS: Please share the video with other people who need to know. MIDWAY FILM







3 comments:

Rilly said...

It truly is a sad situation....so why the ad for Oceaniccruises.com on your blog, not once but twice?

Walker said...

Rilly:

I don't have any control over the ads. They just come up based on tag words in the article and what the reader has recently been looking at on the web.

If I was Oceanic I sure wouldn't want to be wasting my money advertising this post.

Rilly said...

never thought of that...glad I don't do ads on mine, nor do I do tags. :)