I Went on a Cruise with the Backstreet Boys, and It Isn't 1999

I consider myself pretty normal when it comes to the wide majority of things in life, but when it comes to my love of the Backstreet Boys...I am unabashed.  Most everyone knows this (and if you've read this blog for awhile, you know it).  I can't rightly explain it, but while most people got over them around the end of 2001, I continue my love affair up until this day (and yes, they still release new albums).

This is why I recruited my (wonderfully amazing and generous) friend Rachel to spend three glorious days on a gigantic boat with me and BSB.  This is our story.

Our adventure truly began with a shuttle ride from the hotel to the port, in a 16-passenger van filled with other people headed for the BSB Cruise as well.  This is an incrediblly accurate portrayal of how we felt once we arrived at the port:

It was evident that regardless of how much I thought I loved the Backstreet Boys...I did not love them 1/10th the amount that the other girls in that van did.  We knew things were going to get interesting/terrifying.

As this would be my first ever personal encounter with the Backstreet Boys (besides the time I went to their concert in 2003 with my college roommate Charisse and I made her stalk their tour buses with me so that I could briefly touch Kevin's hand through a chain link fence) as well as my first ever cruise, my excitement was pretty extreme.

Good-bye, Miami!  Little did we know that we would be returning to you as changed individuals.  Ones who had seen Nick Carter feed girls marshmallows out of his own mouth. <--Not a joke

After checking in, boarding, exploring, finding our stateroom, marveling at the size of our stateroom, eating a cruise buffet lunch consisting mostly of carbs, and attempting to count the total number of males on the ship, we all gathered on the deck as the ship headed out to sea, in anxious anticipation of our first glance at our Boys.

And there they were.  I'm sure you can imagine the screaming.  We're all 25- to 40-year-old grown women now, but we know how to scream with the best of the Beliebers.

After this initial greeting of the men of all of our dreams, Rachel and I headed back to the room to change for dinner.  And then to snap some pics with Fake BSB.  Because why get a picture with the real thing when you can get a picture with a cardboard cutout of the Backstreet Boys and a TINY ADORABLE PUPPY?!

This night we got to attend a game show, In It to Win It (which is like Minute to Win It...but named something slightly different). Basically all the Boys played silly games for us with members of the audience and we all cheered and had some good laughs.

Also, a game called "Junk in the Trunk" happened.  All the players had boxes strapped to their lower backs that were full of ping pong balls.  Your goal was to shake your rear enough to get them to all bounce out.  Please watch this video up until 0:38 and watch a real professional (Nick Carter):

The theme this night on the ship was "80's Night."  Rachel and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to relive one of our more memorable nights in college when we attended an 80's-themed date party not as people wearing 80's clothing, but as people who were IN their 80's.  You know.  80-year-old women.  (I still maintain that this is one of the most hilarious ideas I have ever heard in my entire life.  Rachel is a genius).

So, we walked around the ship that night dressed like this:

No one thought we were funny.  And I mean no one.  They were all dressed more like AJ:

We did, however, manage to accidentally stalk Howie on a trip to the bathroom and take a picture with him.  His response when we informed him, "We're dressed like we're in our 80's!  Isn't that funny?!" was "That's...great."  You know what?  It was great.  Great enough to take a self-portrait picture of us (with white powdered hair and reading glasses on a chain) and a Backstreet Boy dressed like a member of Guns N Roses.  I'll take it.

The next day we were in the Bahamas - another first for me!  We took tiny buses with unstable seating to a resort and hung out on the beach all day.  When the sun was behind the clouds, we were all freezing.  When the sun was out, I could feel my skin burning off my bones.  It was a weird day.

Also, the ocean was shockingly cold.  Yet people were swimming in it.  It was hard to understand.

After a few hours of waiting (a recurring theme for this trip), all the Boys graced us with their presence.  Even Kevin!  This is a big deal because Kevin hasn't been with the group since 2006.  It is also a big deal because he has, somehow, increased his Dad-hotness over the past 5 years and also he was wearing white linen pants.

Here he is saying "Yessssssss! I love how great I look in white linen pants."

As we basked in the sun, we got to be entertained by the Boys playing various beach games with some lucky fans.  My favorite was musical chairs.  Kevin has the old-man-two-step down to a serious art:

And of course, they appeased us all by singing a tiny bit of a capella, all five of them, together again!  (They would have had a serious riot on their hands had they not indulged us.)

Sometime later that afternoon, the Boys tried to walk along the beach to do various activities, such as jet ski and play beach volleyball.  This is what it looked like anytime they tried to walk somewhere:

Complete bombardment. And this is 2011, 12 years after "I Want It That Way." Can you imagine if they had tried to have this cruise back then?!?!! They would have been pulled limb from limb.  And we still got a front row seat to the beach volleyball game.

On our way back to the boat, we took some singlet pictures.  It's really almost unbelievable how cool we are.

Later that night, we skipped the prom-themed party (that's right, I didn't get to wear my gold dress!  It is now officially an NYE dress) to instead watch Oklahoma State completely destroy OU in football.  This happens...almost never, so it was more than worth it.

The next day we got to take our GROUP PICTURE with the Backstreet Boys.  This was really the only time you were guaranteed to be face-to-face with them on this cruise, and people went all out.  Girls went in there wearing headdresses, cocktail dresses, bikinis, ball gowns.  It was kind of intense.  Rachel and I wore shirts and shorts.  Yay for us normal (boring) people!  The rest of our fun little group was pretty normal too. 

That afternoon, they chose people to sing karaoke with them on the deck.  Example:

We didn't get picked to sing, and then it rained.  But we didn't care!  Because the Cowboys beat the Sooners!  And also we were finally going to our concert that night!

Before our concert, however, we had one last formal dinner to go to.  Not only was it the greatest dinner we had on the boat, because we had a really fun group of people, but one of our fellow diners was a STRAIGHT MALE who was on a Backstreet Boys cruise BY HIMSELF.  He is basically the smartest man on the planet to go on a cruise where the ratio of women to men is probably 300:1, and he looks very similar to the men that those women all came to see.  Genius.

We spent the last night on the boat in the absolute best possible way:  at a Backstreet Boys concert.  On top of that, we were wearing robes because it was Pajama Party night.  On top of that, we were in the front row of the balcony (my favorite seats in any venue).  On top of that, they played for 2 hours straight.  Could it get any better?!  Answer:  NOPE.

WRONG ANSWER.  It did get better.  Because they sang a song no one has heard live since 1998, and it slays the girls every time.  A little ditty called "If You Want It To Be Good, Girl, Get Yourself a Bad Boy."

Even the cruise workers had to stop and take pics.  They are the luckiest cruise workers of all time to be on this boat.

The last night of the cruise continued in pajama party style.  Yes, even grown-up Backstreet boys like to wear Ninja Turtle and Elmo pajamas.  Well played, sirs.

If you really want to get a big ego, how about getting an entire cruise boat of women to fawn over you?  Here are six balconies of adoring fans singing "Larger Than Life" at the top of their lungs:

And that's it.  The last night.  The next day we disembarked? debarked? unboarded? the ship and returned back to our regular lives.  But not before we saw and talked to AJ in line for Starbuck's at the airport.

Also, let's take one more look at this:

Rachel, you are the greatest friend.  You are such a trooper, don't judge me in my BSB fantasies, and just make it so easy to have a great time with you, no matter where we are.  Thank you for taking this trip with me.  Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah.

Readers, thank you for indulging me!  Back to regularly scheduled, non-BSB-related blogging for at least another year!