Will someone please explain cruises to me?

Because I’m over 55, I qualify for a modest discount on the humongous new cruise ship, “Oasis of the Seas.” It’s the world’s largest. This thing was just finished and weighs 220,000 tons. It carries 2,100 crew members and can accommodate 5,400 passengers.

Oasis of the Seas offers a casino, two rock climbing walls, a movie theater, and 1,900 cabins with verandas (there are almost 3,000 more cabins without verandas…for the poor people). Oh, and there’s a chapel, too. Huh?

Oasis of the Seas is too big for the majority of ports in the Caribbean. This means it sails around a lot and never lands anywhere. You can hop on this ship for seven days and stop at only one beach: Labadee, on the coast of Haiti. This beach is isolated and surrounded by barbed wire in order to keep out the Haitians.

You don’t want poverty-stricken Haitians destroying your vacation, do you?

Oh, there is one other stop. It’s a fake port created just for tourists. It’s called Casta Maya, just north of Belize. You will never have to worry about bumping into any indigenous people here, or foreigners, or riff-raff that beg for money or rob you. It’s sanitary, like Disneyland.

Just think. You can spend seven days on the world’s largest cruise ship, swim near barbed wire and shop in a fake tourist city. And never have to meet anyone different from yourself! You’ll never have to see how the Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Haitians really live.

Oasis of the Seas is truly an oasis!

Now, will someone please explain cruises to me? Am I missing something?
--Brad