Reliving the '90s in the Gulf of Whatever

I spent five days at sea on the maiden voyage of The 90s Cruise, and I’m not sure I'll ever recover

- DAVE HOLMES

HAVE YOU EVER TAKEN ONE OF THOSE naps from which you wake up with no idea where you are? Maybe you've only been conked out for ten minutes, but on the other side of it, you're like a soap-opera amnesiac in distress: Where am I? Who am I? Eventually you see something-your rug, your coffee table, your spouse—that draws you slowly back into the real world. Ah, you sigh, I am in my home. This is my life. I recognize this.

I had one of those naps in late January, and when I woke up, I was in my stateroom on The 90s Cruise, featuring Blues Traveler, Gin Blossoms, Digital Underground, and more. I was somewhere between Tampa and Cozumel, on a body of water still mostly called the Gulf of Mexico, and if I didn’t get out the door in a hurry, I was going to miss Cupcake Decorating with Lisa Loeb.

I’m here to tell you that life hasn’t felt normal since.

THIS IS THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE 90S Cruise, and I am cohosting it with Loeb, Sirius-XM's Kat Corbett, and my distant cousin in the MTV VJ family Downtown Julie Brown. I was in my 20s during the ’90s, living in New York and working at MTV for much of it, so I have a natural affinity for the decade. My first reaction upon getting the offer was an enthusiastic, minute-long YES, but then I got to wondering: Who will show up for it? Who is in the center of the Venn diagram of “would spend five days at sea with Collective Soul” and “can spend five days at sea with Collective Soul?” Cruise people have always been a mystery to me, 90s Cruise people all the more so. Will we get along? Will we get jiggy, or will we get norovirus?