DT reader Matt didn't go--this time--but he pointed to an extended discussion on the fanboards about whether it was appropriate or advisable to bring kids along on Ships & Dip, the Barenaked Ladies fan cruise. I mean, there's Camp Carnival, and cheap babysitting service available for the later concerts--the ones the kids absolutely can't stay up for, that is:
hotchocolate - was your little guy wearing red headphones at Tuesday's concert? If so, he is a cutie! I was standing maybe 2 people back and didn't find him disruptive at all. I wish my daughter could have seen the main concert, but she refused to nap that day and then fell asleep before the show, so we did not take her. She did get to see the first acoustic show and loved it b/c they sang Maybe Katie her all time favorite song (her name happens to be Katie!). She wanted to see "my ladies" at the second acoustic show, but started to fade after waiting so long for the show to start (it was almost an hour late), so my husband took her back to the room for awhile and then came back up to the pool area and sat at a table with her (where she promptly fell asleep!).And I didn't see any kids running around wild without parents around. A couple times I may have heard a little whining in the cafe, but it was no more annoying than the loud mouth drunks in the elevator who thought it was great fun to push the buttons for every single floor!
The debate becomes pretty heated, at least by BnL fan/polite Canadian standards, but it'd take several years at sea before these folks'd be tough enough to survive a kids-vs-haters thread in Park Slope, or even Urbanbaby [which is nominally all parents].
As for me, my view of cruises has been forever altered by two things: David Foster Wallace's hilarious takedown of the Cruise Experience on ship he called the Nadir, and the report of the first reader cruise for The Nation, where a boatload of crotchety leftists complained that the panel discussions weren't going on long enough, and then they tried to unionize the crew.
Barenaked Ladies Cruise: who brought kids? how did it go? [barenaked.net]
Ships & Dip: The Barenaked Ladies/Sixthman Cruise Experience [shipsanddip.com]
