Every year, millions of people willingly board enormous floating cities, surrender their sea legs to the whims of the ocean, and call it a vacation. Bless their hearts. Because according to a delightfully savage piece over at Vanity Fair, cruises might just be the worst thing you can do with your hard-earned days off - and possibly with the planet.
The holy trinity of cruise horrors
Let's run through the checklist, shall we? Disease. Death. Environmental destruction. That's not the plot of a disaster movie - that's apparently just... cruising. Vanity Fair's case against the industry is basically a three-course meal of reasons to book a nice Airbnb instead, and honestly? It's hard to argue with the menu.
The disease angle alone should give anyone pause. You've heard of norovirus. You know the one. It spreads through cruise ships like gossip at a high school reunion, and no amount of hand sanitizer stations by the buffet is going to save you. These ships pack thousands of people into a confined, recirculated-air environment for days at a time. It's basically a very expensive version of sitting in the middle seat on a long-haul flight, except you can't get off.
The environmental elephant in the room (or ocean)
Then there's the small matter of what these floating resorts do to the actual sea they're floating on. Cruise ships are not exactly poster children for green travel. The carbon footprint, the water pollution, the damage to port cities overwhelmed by thousands of day-trippers descending simultaneously - it all adds up to a vacation that the environment would very much prefer you didn't take.
Popular destinations have been vocal about the cruise industry's impact for years. Venice famously banned large cruise ships from its historic center. It's never a great sign when a city looks at your tourism industry and says "actually, no thanks."
But the buffet though
Look, nobody is denying the appeal. Unlimited food. Multiple pools. Stopping at five countries in eight days. It sounds incredible on paper, and cruise marketing is genuinely some of the most aspirational stuff in the travel industry. The problem is that "sounds incredible on paper" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
The reality, as Vanity Fair gleefully points out, is that you're paying a premium to be mildly imprisoned on a boat with several thousand strangers, collectively threatening coastal ecosystems while hoping nobody near the shrimp cocktail has a stomach bug.
Maybe this summer, just go somewhere and... stay there. Radical concept, truly.
