Last time I wrote about our cruis on Royal Caribbean. But occasionally we got off the boat. Those stories are below:

Nassau Atlantis

Yeah, if you’re looking for a recap of beautiful downtown Nassau, y’aint gonna find it here. Wife stayed on the boat, having done Nassau a number of times and not being particularly enamored with it. Daughter and I hightailed it straight to the Atlantis resort for waterslides.

I don’t understand why every damn boat stops in Nassau, the Ensenada of the East. In Ensenada’s defense, though, there aren’t a lot of other options within close cruising distance of Los Angeles. Nassau doesn’t have that excuse.

But in the case of Nassau, there are other places close by, I mean, Freeport and Bimini are vacation destinations, right? Maybe the richies at Bimini don’t want the cruise riffraff near their fancy resort, but isn’t it richies at Atlantis, too? I couldn’t tell you for sure, because I’ve been there three times and still have never seen Sean Connery. Technically, this trip he has a better excuse for ditching my calls, being dead and all.

Anyway, it seemed a little lackluster to pair “Hey Daughter, it’s your first time in a foreign country” with “Let’s get the fuck out of Dodge ASAP.” Or maybe that’s fitting. We had to at least walk past the pharmacy that was all of one foot off the boat. What true international travel is about: cheap Adderall and Ozempic.

Last time I was in Nassau, we found a water taxi that took us across to Atlantis Island. This time I couldn’t find it, so after we walked a few blocks. we doubled back to the port where we’d seen a bunch of fast talking cabbie guys.  Yeah, father of the year here traipsing my daughter around a foreign city without any clue where we were going.

I figured there’d be a ton of haggling and that the price would double as soon as I was halfway there, but it seemed five dollars each direction was pretty standard. I got the price both directions and nobody haggled shit. That being said, they tried to pack as many random strangers into each taxi ride as possible.

It ended up not being the driver but the other customers who tried to haggle while we were already halfway there. I couldn’t quite tell what was being discussed because they were French and the driver was speaking pidgin English. I think the customers were asking either if the driver took Euros or if he would take credit card or Apple Pay or whatever. I think they were asking Euros first, and either he said no or they realized they didn’t actually have any cash, European or not. 

I get it. We’re living in a cashless society. But come on, dude, you really think some random cabbie in Nassau’s gonna have a QR code? Okay, maybe the cabbie does for tip purposes, but you can’t expect the company to be on board. I almost never have cash, but I got some before the cruise for this very purpose. Not only did I not expect every business in Nassau to be up on their cashless options, but I also didn’t really want to give them access to my credit card info.

As we were going over the bridge from downtown to Atlantis Island, Euro Dude turns around and asks if I have cash. Uh, yeah dude, but not for you. I honestly couldn’t figure out if he was asking me in the hopes I’d agree with him that nobody carries cash or if he was hoping I’d cover his ride. Fortunately the cabbie dropped us off before driving the Frenchies off to their destination, where they could negotiate further. 

When I gave the cabbie a $20 bill, I assumed he’d play the “I don’t have any American money for change,” but dude busted two fives straight out of his fanny pack.  Daughter asked why I tipped him because “he drove really bad.” I told her I gave him the tip because a) he was honest about having change, and b) if he didn’t drive fifty mph in between bumper to bumper traffic and crossing five lanes of traffic to make a left turn, we’d still be idling at the port. 

If she thought driving in Bahamas was bad, wait’ll she visits a true third-world country like Italy.

On the way back, we had a “nicer” taxi driver who took twenty minutes to drive the same stretch of land that the “bad” driver covered in five. But Daughter’s right, he was super nice. When the taxi was full up, he said one of us would have to ride in front. I volunteered and walked up to what in America would be the passenger seat. Of course, in Nassau, it’s the driver’s seat. He laughed and asked if I wanted to drive. In reality, he was probably just rolling his eyes and thinking, “Every fucking time.”

The main purpose of going to Atlantis, really the initial selling point of this cruise to Daughter in the first place, was their world-famous water slides. Last summer, while at Wild Rivers in Southern California, someone told Daughter about Leap of Faith and Daughter became singularly focused on making it there at some point in her life, preferably soon. 

The Leap of Faith, if you haven’t heard of it, is one of those vertical drop water slides. I always call them “Dropout” rides because the first one I ever encountered was named that, but also because it’s an accurate description. It isn’t one of those new trapdoor rides, which technically drop you faster, but it’s where you lie down and push yourself over the edge into a more-or-less vertical drop.

The real selling point of Leap of Faith, though, is that it ends by going through a shark tank. Raging Waters ain’t got nothing that includes aquatic carnivores. Stupid American regulations!

Fortunately, there was another slide that went through the shark tank, so Daughter didn’t have to start with a vertical drop. 

Unfortunately, the sharks weren’t really worth the hour in line.

You’re in a tube, and that tube isn’t exactly pristine. Very smoky, as you can imagine, and the sharks aren’t always in the best viewing spot. The only thing we could see clearly was a scuba diver scrubbing the tube like an underwater window washer. Although it must be a union job, because he didn’t seem to be keeping them very clean.

One of the things I liked the most about this waterpark was that a fair number of the innertube slides (the ones not around the shark tank) end in the lazy river. More waterpark should do this, even if it makes the innertubes scarce as hell. We stupidly let our first ones go, then spent a half-hour trying to fish out other ones. Once we had those, we made sure we rode every damn innertube ride, a couple twice, before we were willing to release them into the wild. 

Although calling that thing a lazy river is a disservice. It had multiple batches of rapids, some of which were long and legit. It was a blast and we ended up going around the entire length multiple times. Near the end of the day, I made Daughter decide between going on the one slide we hadn’t been on yet or going around the rapids one more time and she opted for the latter. Atlantis Aquaventure: Come for the sharks, stay for the not-so-lazy river!

Speaking of Leap of Faith, she worked her way up and finally did it. For most of the day, it seemed like she was going to chicken out. Hell, I wanted to chicken out. I’ve been riding those damn rides since I was ten and every damn time, I sit myself down and look over the edge into the nothingness of open-air and think, “What the fuck am I doing?!?” They aren’t even fun, really, because by the time you’re able to enjoy it, the ride is over.

This time, I didn’t even have the option of chickening out, because Daughter went first. Sure, I could’ve walked back down the long way, but considering how she went down, I thought I had to get there quickly to make sure she was, you know, still alive.

Let me back up. She wasn’t the first child set to go down the slide. A couple groups in front of us was a girl around her own age who had that Nietzsche “staring into the abyss” moment and, acting like a normal human being who enjoys being alive, freaked the fuck out. Her father pulled her off to the side and let some people go in front of them. People are very accommodating at that point because a) she’s young, and b) we’re all going through it, too, we’ve just learned to swallow our existential dread.

Daughter and I tried to talk them in to doing the Challenger, which was on the same platform as Leap of Faith and was the ride we’d just finished to “work up to” this one.  If Leap of Faith drops at a 70-75 degree angle (90-degrees being straight down), Challenger was maybe at a 60-percent with a “speed bump” on the way down so you can at least see the rest of the slide beneath you. 

But this other girl didn’t listen and, when we were next, she was ready to try again. We let them in and she freaked out again. 

We’re up.

Except now this other father wants his son to try it. “Do you mind?” he asks. “They weren’t going to let him ride it, but now they’re going to.”

Okay, fine. Let me just wallow in my anxiety for another minute.

This new kid is small. Like, if I had to guess, I’d say he was five, maybe six. The reason they “weren’t going to let him ride” was because he was barely touching that 48-inch height limit. The father had brought the kid over from the Challenger ride and said the the woman on that ride said he was big enough. 

So the kid sits down and immediately backs away. If the ten-year-old girl was exhibiting fear at, say, an eight on a scale of ten, this kid was exponential. It wasn’t the typical “part of me wants to, part of me doesn’t.” More like a “Nope! The world ends a foot in front of me! Why does Dad want me to go over a cliff?”

This father, meanwhile, isn’t trying to understand or work through his kid’s terror. He then mentions (I don’t remember if this was to his kid or to us) that this was his only chance. They weren’t letting him on any other rides today. This operator was the first one allowing it.

Cue giant record-scratching sound.

Wait a second, dude, this kid hasn’t gone on ANY water slides before? You think Leap of Faith is a great starter ride? I mean, tI’m usually not on the Father of the Year nominee list, but holy hells, man! This is generational trauma type shit.

This also begs the question of why they bother having a minimum height. I can’t imagine what 49-inch tall kid is raring to go on this ride. Daughter is pretty gung-ho when it comes to rides. She did Hulk Coaster and Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind a couple days earlier, and not a single ride at Magic Mountain put a dent in her enthusiasm. Yet she needed to work her way up to Leap of Faith, and if she hadn’t been telling herself that this was the ride she was most interested in for six months, she probably would’ve passed. And she’s 56 inches!

Anyway, by the time the freakout girl and Father of the Year had both gone up to the ride and pulled back, everyone in line was kinda getting restless. When the ride operator, exasperated, said, “Okay, are you ready?”, it came in a desperation to please get things moving again. Maybe that was good for Daughter, who didn’t have time to think about it. She just didn’t want to be the third kid in a row to go up and freak out. The green light’s been on for a couple minutes now.

So she goes up, plops herself down and, with nary a thought, pushes herself forward. 

Unfortunately, she was sitting upright. Without all the tumult, she’d forgotten what we’d talked about in the line, that this ain’t a sitting up ride, cause that gravity thing can be a bitch when your center of gravity is pushing forward.  If anything, she was leaning her chest forward, something that’s going to help with momentum on other rides, but will only send you ass over teakettle for a ninety-foot tumble on this one.

“Lie down!” I yelled. The others around me in line helped out by shouting or variations on “Lie down! Lean back! Oh shit!” as Daughter disappeared over the precipice. 

Then came purgatory. I kept waiting for the red light to turn green, which I assumed would mean she’d made it to the bottom of the slide in one piece. Although I suppose it could also mean she’d flown completely off the slide, maybe into the shark tank, thus making the slide clear. Come to think of it, there was only one red light and one green light. Slide is clear, slide is not. What’s the “Oh, shit” light? 

On the plus side, the employee didn’t seem overly concerned. Then again, he hadn’t seemed concerned when a 47.5″ kid with no experience was damn near being put into a Niagara Falls barrel by his father.

The good news is that, like her, I didn’t really have the time or option to freak out about the ride or the sudden realization that I was in my twenties and fifty or more pounds lighter the last time I did one of these things. As soon as that green light went on, I was out the chute.

She was fine. She said she heard us shouting and remembered to lay down right as she was going over. I then asked her how it was and she had the more-or-less universal reaction. Fun. Glad she did it. No desire to do it again. 

My only real complaint about the Atlantis Aquaventure was that three of their slides (out of maybe nine or ten total) were closed. It was Spring Break and there were six ships in port that day, to say nothing of the hotel itself. Schedule your maintenance for January, peeps.

Private Island

Not much to say about CocoCay, Royal Caribbean’s private island. They’re all more or less the same. In fact, the Carnival private island was visible maybe a mile away. We totally coulda gone to war with them.

It was overcast, which was nice because I hadn’t done a thorough job sunscreening at Atlantis the day before. 

We opted for the zipline instead of the water slides as our “shore excursion.” Aan odd misnomer, since they’re ten feet from the pier. Shore, sure. Excursion?

My thinking when we booked this in advance (along with that damn coffee card) was that we would have just done water slides in Nassau the day before, and once Daughter saw others ziplining literally over the lagoon, we’d be marching right over and not getting the 10% or 15% discount. Plus the waterslides would no doubt pale in comparison to Atlantis.

Want to know what paled in comparison to its brethren? The zipline. Sure, the length of it was cool, but it caters to first timers. Most ziplines give you a bit of control while zipping. In Maui, you can do spins and flips and lay straight on your back. First time I ever zipped was in Fiji, where you have to control your own speed by pulling down on the line behind you.

The one at CocoCay was the opposite end of the spectrum. They had us in a harness that was damn near a chair. You couldn’t lean forward, you could barely lean back to slow down. At one point the wind was blowing me sideways and I spent the whole length trying to twirl myself back forward to no avail. You couldn’t even control when you started. They strapped you in and hung you in midair until they unclasped you from behind. Then at the bottom, you again hovered in midair until they came over with a ladder to get you down. Daughter and I were going at the same time, so I always had to wait till they finished with her before they brought the ladder over to me.

The waterslides, meanwhile, looked legit. Although for the price we’d have to do nothing but ride the slides all day. No breaking for lunch! 

Maybe next time we’ll skip the zipline and do the slides. Then I can do the 007 excursion in Nassau. It better feature Sean Connery’s mummified corpse!

Oh, and maybe we’ll snorkel. I didn’t realize they had it, so I didn’t prebook it. They didn’t have any spots available by the time we found them. Didn’t look like there were many fish to see, though.

Kennedy Space Center

Finally, we booked Cape Canaveral with an airport transfer afterward. Incredibly useful to not have to book another shuttle for ourselves. What was less useful was needing to book a flight after 5:00 pm. We booked a 7:00 pm flight that didn’t get back into California until after 3:00 am Eastern Time after waking up at 6:00 am. Oh, and they dropped us off around 2:00. Nothing’s more fun than spending five hours in an airport. Did you know they won’t let you check bags until the three-hour mark?

But the Kennedy Space Center was friggin’ cool. You start by taking a bus out to where the Apollo missions launched from. There are some videos of the Apollo I crash and some of its repercussions. Then they take you through some of the trials and tribulations to get from exploding on the launch pad to orbiting the moon. Then you go into a mission control room that they said was authentic, but I think was a replica, where you witness all the various lights and commands as it counts down from three minutes to liftoff. The room shakes to simulate if the rocket was actually taking off that close to us.

I made sure to inform Daughter that if you added up the computing power of every single console in that room, it wouldn’t come close to her phone. Crazy that we got to the moon with less technology than Flappy Bird.

We then returned to the main campus, where they had a space shuttle exhibit. As a 1980s kid, that’s the one I was more looking forward to. It was fine, but not as cool as the Apollo stuff. They had one of the space shuttles, Atlantis, on display and some various panels and “astronaut trainings,” but it was clear they treated as more of a “and then there was this.” Apollo I got a full video treatment. Challenger and Columbia got a little corner. 

The third exhibit was even more lackluster. Its focus was current and future space flights. I thought maybe there’d be stuff about manned flights to Mars, which is allegedly something they’re working toward, but instead it was a mishmash of commercial endeavors with sci fi (someday we’ll live in Cloud City). Not surprising considering NASA has given up on going to space and is also disdainful of others doing it. 

Speaking of NASA, when the shuttle driver asked if any of us knew what it stood for, I had to bite my tongue. 

As any good 1980s kid can tell you, it’s “Need Another Seven Astronauts.”

Sorry, I’ll see myself out now.