Meet Your Cruise Director, James Andrews.

This is Part 2 of a travelogue about a cruise I took aboard Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas in 2004. Read Part 1.

We’ve missed all the welcome aboard food, and I’ve signed us up for the late dinner seating at 8:30—because the main seating is at 6, and who’s ever ready to eat dinner at 6? Certainly not me. Unless, of course, I’m jet-lagged and over-caffeinated, in which case I’m starving at 3:30. But this is a cruise ship, isn’t it? Aren’t they, like, notorious for an overabundance of food? Not so much when they’re expecting you to be mustering and learning how to put on your life vest. We inspect the room to kill time. I take the sleeping area; BF checks the bathroom.

Bed bolted to the floor? Check.
Gratuitous tropically-flowered bed covering? Check.
Chocolate on the pillow…accompanied by some sort of informational brochure that—
Hey, what’s this?
“Cruise Compass”.
Apparently, some sort of daily schedule.
They print a daily schedule?
Well, duh.
If they’re telling you to “get out there”, they’re gonna tell you where to go, right?

Notwithstanding my inclination to converse with myself, I’m a pretty savvy traveler. So why the publication surprises me, I have no idea. Except maybe that I’ve left my brain at the Accademia, gawking at Michelangelo’s David. (Now that is one fine specimen of manhood. Albeit made of marble. And a bit unproportional where it counts. And now, across the ocean.)

I begin reading: welcomes and activities and showtimes and…is this really necessary? An insert with key staff bios? Sure, glad to know that the Captain has extensive experience in the Norwegian Navy, but do cruise-goers typically wonder about this stuff? I peruse the sheet with all the twisted fascination I usually reserve for published writing with deplorable grammar, other people’s journals, and cereal boxes.

I can’t. stop. reading. I become more and more convinced that we’ve unwittingly infiltrated some microcosmic galaxy that manufactures celebrity regardless of the place’s insignificance in relation to the rest of the universe.

Like Disney World.

No, worse.

Rather than trying to convince us that we’re being hosted by a human-sized mouse costume, the people behind the Compass actually assume we’ve come on vacation to talk to other humans. And not only do they expect us to keep up civil dinner conversation with people we haven’t pre-screened, but they urge—nay, insist—that we get to know Your Cruise Director.

And that’s how they refer to him, on every page, in every announcement. “Your Cruise Director, James Andrews.” Apparently all activities are brought to you by Your Cruise Director, James Andrews—in case you remain sober enough to wonder who to thank for the daily over-abundance of fun and sun-frolic. I wonder: when he (Your Cruise Director, James Andrews) returns home after a long stretch at sea, does he forget he’s no longer at work and automatically type “Your Cruise Director” on his email?

Or leaves notes to his family:
Out to run some errands. Be home by 6.
~Your Cruise Director

Maybe he just signs them “YCD.”

I turn my attention to his headshot. Broad smile. Relatively young. Rather thin. Possibly naïve? Blandly eager to please. Not really what I expect. Then again, Ricardo Montalban probably isn’t in the market for a second job at his age.

Yes, I know he was on Fantasy Island. But, take note: Cruise Director = smarmy. Love Boat’s Julie McCoy—way too cool. Besides, I’d always pretended I was her. I am nothing if not un-smarmy. At some point, my idolization of Julie must have become disjointed from my image of a Cruise Director, and I’d subconsciously inserted Montalban in there instead.

James Andrews doesn’t appear to be anywhere near Fantasy Island… But Julie? I don’t think so. She was a (fictional) Cruise Director when kitsch was cool. He is working on a floating epicenter of sincere American kitsch in a decade dripping with irony. How cool can he be?

*****

BF emerges from his inspection of the closet-sized bathroom and miniscule shower. “Bigger than I expected,” he half-approves, “but I don’t know how they expect you to wash your feet.”

My eyes dart to his lightweight cargos and slightly worn Adidas that I had, at some point, spent a good deal more time at the mall picking out than I really should have.

“I didn’t turn it on!” Apparently my eyes darted in too accusatory a manner.

He does look dry.

“There’s just no room to bend over,” he continues, then smoothly changes the subject. “So when can we get some food?”

The onboard Johnny Rocket’s opens at 6, so we forego the dining room and gorge on burgers and cheese fries. It is only after my coffee buzz wears off that I realize it has been my first fast food in over a month. But it’s too late now: I am jet-lagged, lethargic, and delirious—with indigestion. We return to the room. I swear off French fries and caffeine, and toss myself on the bed. When the BF suggested alone time, this probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

*****


Note to all of you arriving here via web-search for Royal Caribbean and/or Cruise Director James Andrews: Though I have not yet finished publishing this serial, I will state that I have nothing but the best things to say about my cruise experience and only the highest praise for James and the job that he does. My sarcasm is strictly for entertainment purposes.