Cruise Ship Arcades

I am currently writing this post from somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I’m not trying to be secretive about my location or anything; that’s literally all I know. Our cruise ship left left Spain yesterday and we’re on route to Portugal. I don’t know exactly where we are. I don’t even know what time it is due to the fact that we’re tracking “home” time (central time zone back in the States), Spanish time (the last time our phones and watches synched to anything) and ship time, which doesn’t match either of those times but is super important to keep track of if you don’t want to miss Bingo.

For all the things I don’t know, one thing I do know is that this cruise ship has an arcade. Kind of.

I’m a child of the 80s and grew up with (and to some extent, “in”) arcades. My little suburb of 25,000 people had no less than three “stand alone” arcades, which doesn’t include all the games at the bowling alley and the skating rink. Even grocery stores, convenience stores, and gas stations had a few games. Leaving the house without a few quarters in my pocket would be like leaving the house without your cellphone today.

Except for the skating rink, all the places I just mentioned are long gone. There are no arcade machines at the supermarket or gas station and all those dedicated arcades closed decades ago. With new business models like “all you can play” for a single price or by combining food and drinks (mostly drinks) with games, some arcades has returned.

The Carnival cruise ship we’re on is like a floating city. You would think after a week or so you would haven’t seen every square inch of the ship, but we’re constantly finding new things. One of the things we found this morning was the arcade.

When I was young my mom was part of a bowling league. Once a week my sister and I would ride with her and hang out with all the other kids. Sometimes we drew pictures and sometimes we played with LEGOs but we always, always played arcade games. The bowling alley had three pinball machines, half a dozen arcade games, two pool tables and a jukebox. Each week we arrived with a limited number of quarters — maybe four, maybe eight — so there was no way to kill two hours with so few coins. Sometimes we would play billiards with kids guarding every pocket, making sure any balls that went in were “saved” so that we could prolong our time at the table.

But right outside the billiards area was this little chicken and egg machine. If you put a quarter inside the plastic chicken would spin around a couple of times while the machine played music and clucked before dropping a plastic egg down the chute. Each egg contained a price, none of which were worth a quarter. It was the biggest rip-off at the arcade. None of us ever put money in that thing.

The arcade on the cruise ship mostly consists of those egg machines — not literally, but figuratively. Save for a couple of big screen, sit-down games, almost everything in the arcade is just a box that hands out crap to kids.

I don’t know how most of the games work. With some you could win watches and one promised an iPhone as a prize. One had a giant stuffed bear inside.

I suppose it didn’t matter much because I was the only one in the arcade. There aren’t many children on this particular cruise for some reason and I’m guessing the ones that are here are either upstairs riding the water slide or in one of the “kid zone” areas that offer activities (and video game consoles).

The arcade on this ship is a strange juxtaposition of new and old. It’s an old idea filled with new games, a combination that in theory should attract two crowds but, based on the amount of people here, is of no interest to anyone.