HEYA MON! Feeling Irie? Want to get away from it all and sail to a warmer climate?

That’s what the family and I did last week when we took a cruise to the Caribbean for my wife’s birthday. We’d planned to do this for the better part of the year and it didn’t disappoint in the slightest.

As your humble humorist embarked on this adventure, however, I made the decision to chronicle the entire voyage so you would have the benefit of all my wonderful opinions and observations should you choose to follow in my footsteps.

You’re welcome. I’m noble and humble like that.

Anyway, let’s begin with the stop every cruise passenger must take: the PORT!

Our journey began at Port Canaveral, Florida after a day’s driving and a night in a local hotel. Knoxville is approximately ten hours from this destination, so with two children it turned into twelve. By the time we made it to Cape Canaveral we were ready for sleep.

For those wondering, Port Canaveral is basically the same thing as Cape Canaveral but with a port where ships sail weekly. You can watch space shuttles launch, marvel at the Floridian offices of Blue Origin and SpaceX, and take in the numerous vape shops and check-cashing establishments on the main drag.

If you’re like my family and want to avail yourself of parking spaces while in Port Canaveral, do yourself a favor and inquire about local “park and cruise” packages offered by hotels. All of them will quote you what they say are “unbeatable” rates to leave your car at their establishment for a week and have a morbidly obese shuttle driver ferry you to port and back. Most of these establishments are lying to your face. I’m not going to tell you which one I used, but I will tell you their complimentary continental breakfast buffet the morning of our embarkation was subpar.

After breakfast, you and yours will make your way into the cruise shuttle dispatch room. This is where you verbally prostrate yourself before a morbidly obese person with a laptop and a headset who takes ten seconds to acknowledge your presence before directing you to sit in a room the size of a cattle car. You will wait here until the dispatcher calls your name out and directs you to a morbidly obese shuttle driver. This person you will follow to your shuttle, which then takes you to the port.

If you can, spring for luggage tags and luggage delivery to your stateroom. This will prevent you from hauling your bags all over the public areas of your ship while your stateroom stewards put the finishing touches on your magical boat ride experience.

Port Canaveral itself is pretty nice. Getting through the terminal and onto the cruise ship was a breeze because the workers do this all the time. I’ve only got experience with one other port—Seattle—and the efficiency here was understandably marred by the amount of communists and ANTIFA goons that work the port terminals. Florida does not concern itself with such people, however, so the only folks you’ll be stopped by are the cruise photographers who want to take pictures of you smiling as you board your luxury ship!

It is advisable to check with your place of lodging and see if they can arrange a return shuttle for you on disembarkation day. Otherwise you’ll test the mercies of those who drive Ubers near the port and that’s not great for your wallet.

Scuttlebutt around the port terminal is those fuckers are pretty finicky too, so make sure you sweeten the rideshare pot with some goodies like mints, hotel bibles or anything you can swipe from the breakfast buffet that will last longer than a week.

Anyway, that’s all for now folks! Come back next week when we’ll talk about the first big day of the cruise: a day at sea!