Jubilee was the ancient war beast of a cruise ship, the last of it’s kind, literally. I had the awesome opportunity of spending time on this floating roach motel on a cruise to Mexico. I still had fun though, if you call projectile vomit, hysterical crying, and almost getting your finger bit off by a lizard fun. I dont know about you guys, but I had one hell of a time…
That was our first mistake… Carnival cruise lines had just started offering cruises out of (near) Galveston, Tx. My girlfriend (Mikey) and I decided it would be a good idea for a cruise vacation since neither of us had been on a cruise before. Not to mention the cruise was only 500 bucks a person for 5 days, mistake number 2. We had a friend drop us off at the boarding entrance and waited for our trip to begin.
We got on the boat after checking our luggage and boarding the ship. We went through some safety protocol and were shown to our room. Mistake number 3, we got a room with no window. If you ever take a cruise, get a room with a window… unless you want to lose all perception of time. Seriously, you could not tell when it was day or night, there was no alarm clock in the room and it was about 10′x12′… wow. After we settled in we began exploring the ship. That took all of about 15 minutes because this ship was so fucking small… I’m getting pissed thinking about it, lol. Long story short, this ship was the oldest, smallest, most fucked up ship in the entire carnival cruise line. I’m almost certain it was actually a retired ghost ship that we somehow boarded. There was a plaque that we found on a wall that said “Thank you Jubilee, New York City 1988″.
The ships amenities and entertainment included:
• A Roach Motel Pool – I’m not joking, you know that scene you see in all the vegas movies with the old scuzzy pool with tiles missing and falling off, large enough to fit about 15 people? Yea, I’m not exaggerating… that was our pool on the boat and it had a little bootleg ass water slide lol.
• One cafeteria - That served free pizza, that was usually void of most flavors.
• Fine Dining… – ehhh-hem… We ate dinner at 9pm, the dining area was over the motors, so the entire room shook. You could hear silverware clanking on plates and glasses, again… I’m not making this shit up. The food was pretty good though, and our waiter Augustus was cool as hell, I asked him to hang out with us but it was against the “rules”… more reason to believe this was a ghost ship. He probably died in the dining area and was destine to spend eternity in that room.
• Bingo – After Dinner Bingo in the auditorium – Yes, I’m fucking serious.
• Few Bars – About 5 or 6 walkup bars, 95-99% of which closed at 10pm.
• A Casino – I can do this in Louisiana.. why waste my time here.
• 1 Karoke bar – That closed if there were not enough people occupying it. It was closed half the nights we were there. The two nights we went there, we saw this guy sing purple rain… probably better than prince does. He did sing it both nights, so i guess thats the only one he was good at lol.
• 1 Club – that stayed open until 2am, but it was a teen club (for all 30 of them) from 9pm to midnight. Seriously, no fucking adults.
Let me cut in here and put this together for you. We ate dinner at 9pm, got out around 10pm. 95% of the walk up bars were closed, you could not enter the club because it was “teen” time, the karaoke bar was hit or miss if it was even open… so what the fuck was there to do, BINGO? They should have kept shotguns in our rooms so we could end the trip early.
There were a few other things, little bootleg mall with bootleg stores. During the day they had ping pong tournaments!!!!, or you could sit by the pool and watch the two butch lesbians love on one another . If thats not entertaining enough there was some 13 year old whore in the making dropping it like it’s hot and working it like a stripper right in front of her grand parents in her skimpy bathing suite.
Let me say though… Mikey and I can have a good time pretty much anywhere, anytime. We always find ways to entertain ourselves and meet some great people along the way. So dont get me wrong, we made it a good time… but if we were some boring ass people this trip would have been a nightmare.
Even though the ship was horrible, we got a chance to take a few excursions off the boat. The story below is my favorite of the trip.
And this was just the first days excursion!
The first day on the cruise we met 4 really cool people that we’d come to spend a lot of time with on the cruise. Amir, who Mikey had gone to high school with and his wife Tina just happened to be on the same cruise, we bumped into them the first day. We met our other two friends, Mariza and her friend (cant remember her name) at dinner.
The following morning we woke up in Playa Del Carmen, got in a cab and headed to town for some shopping. Before we left the cruise area this woman from the cruse comes running over and asks to share a cab with us because she has left her boarding pass in town from an earlier trip. We didn’t mind helping her out until we realized that she left her pass and wallet too. Not only that, on the way to town she informs the cab driver that it was just a little ways from the town, wtf… So now we’re driving out of the way for this woman who cannot even pay her cab fee if she doesn’t get her wallet back. We get to this place after a minimal drive in which there were check stations armed with guards carrying machine guns and riffles, joy! The woman goes to look for her stuff and we’re just sitting there with the meter running. At this point me, Mikey and the cab driver are all getting annoyed. The woman comes back and informs us that she has to wait for something… I tell her we need to go and cannot wait anylonger and she’s leaving us with a running cab tab. She tells us to wait and runs off again. After about another 10 minutes the cab driver is super pissed and i’m pretty irritated. We decide to leave her and head into town. The cab driver drops us off on some side street in town, grumbles a few cuss words in spanish and takes off. The town was nothing like i’d expected. We were told it was nice, with great shopping and dining. All I saw was a huge ass flea market style shopping area…?
We’d made it back from shopping, cleaned up and got ready to meet Mariza and her friend for a night out. We hailed another cab and told them to take us to a nice restaurant in town. This is where we realized the cab driver from the afternoon TOTALY FUCKED US. That asshole dropped us off right outside of town. The REAL town, had all kinds of really cool bars, restaurants, clubs and stores. It was really nice and surprising after what we witnessed earlier in the day. As we were walking around we had all kinds of people enticing us to come eat in their establishments. Many had buy one get two margaritas free or unlimited margaritas with meal… The resturant that we finally chose was really nice, but there were no free margaritas. Mariza quickly handled this situation, she was fluent in spanish and had spent a lot of time in Mexico while growing up. She told us that pretty much everything is negotiable… even the margaritas.
We sat in the courtyard outside, serenaded by mariachis playing in the background and a cool summer breeze coming off the water. It couldn’t have gotten much better than this, then I remembered the free margaritas! The first one came out in a typical margarita glass and it tasted pretty good, you could tell there was a lot of booze in it. At one point the mariachis came over to our table, with my buzz in full effect now I was really feeling it. I gave the guys a 10 dollar bill and they almost shit themselves. They were so thankfull and stayed at our table for almost the remainder of dinner. With each passing margarita the glasses got larger and larger. By the end of dinner I was sitting with a martini looking glass that must have been a foot wide at the opening, no joke. Needless to say I got pretty shitty. From dinner, the four of us went and met Amir and Tina over at Senior Frogs. We proceeded to take shot after shot while drinking pretty much anything else we could get our hands on… you can see more of the pics here. Eventually we got a cab to head back to the ship. Most of the cabs (at least several years ago) were all old and beat up, this cab we hailed was a brand new honda. One of those little ones, but new and pretty nice none the less. I sat in the passengers seat and the girls got in the back. At this point I was totally shitfaced… I struck up a conversation with the cab driver and told him how much I liked his cab. He was super proud of his car, and I was super proud of him for having it. I dont really recall the conversation, but I do remember spilling my drink and drooling on myself while trying to hold a conversation with this guy…we all died laughing. By the time we got back to the ship, the cab driver was my new best friend. We actually took a picture with him and I handed him a 200% tip. Yes, i’m generous with my money when i’m hammered and after all, this was Mexico, it’s not expensive. We got on the boat and proceeded to drink until I started seeing double, at which point mikey brought me back and put me to bed. Side note here… I think this is one of 4 times in our 8 year relationship that she’s had to put me to bed first.
The next thing I know, I woke up spinning. I ran to the bathroom and spent the next hour puking my guts out. At this point my memory goes in and out. But the way I remember it is honestly like one of those over the top movies where someone is screaming to god on their knees staring up in the sky while it’s raining on them… “WHY ME LORD, WHYYYYYYYY”. I have memories of hugging that toilet and crying like a damn bitch. I’m not talking about a sniffle, I’m talking about trying to catch my breath and screaming. Why was I crying? Beats the shit out of me… people do crazy shit when they are wasted, this was no exception.
I woke up the next morning on the far side of the bed next to the wall, mikey was on the open side towards the bathroom. I looked down and there was vomit on sheets, over mikey, onto the floor, past the vanity mirror, past the bathroom, to the door on the other side of the room. Now I know this is really more sad than funny… but I wish I had that on tape… that had to be one of the most hillatious projectile vomits in history… I’m talking 12′ here. Anyhow, we got up, mikey was grossed out, I cleaned the puke up and experienced one of the worst hangovers of my life… oh and I fogot to mention it was like 5:30 or 6am. We had a party boat and beach excursion that day. So after all that I boarded a party barge at like 7am and had to try and drink off my hangover…
I was seriously sick, but I made the best of it and when we arrived at the island Playa Del Sol, it was so awesomely beautiful the site of it and the clear water totally cleansed me of my hangover. No bullshit. The white sand beaches that are little granuals of white pebbles, water you could see to the bottom for a mile out and perfect weather… I’ll save the story of almost getting my finger bit off by a lizard for another time…
Until then, keep it sleazy…
-Timulator
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This is so good it makes me want to turn jewish and eat my own foreskin.
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