10 THINGS I LEARNED ON THE FIRST 90s CRUISE

May 21, 2025

By Dave Holmes

This year’s 90s Cruise was not just any 90s Cruise, it was the first-ever 90s Cruise. And it was not only the first-ever 90s Cruise, it was my first-ever cruise, period.

So Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas did not just carry artists like Blues Traveler, Gin Blossoms, Collective Soul, Lit, Digital Underground, and Sophie B. Hawkins across the Gulf of Mexico – along with a couple thousand fun-loving fans – it also held my curiosity and low-key trepidation about cruises in general.

• Would I get claustrophobic in a floating hotel?
• Would the boat rock – like rock rock, from waves and stuff – and what effect would that have on my dancing? 
• How do boats work? 

The 90s Cruise answered all my questions except the last one. I walked onboard a newbie, but when my new friends and I disembarked five days later – like Smash Mouth on the Shrek 2 soundtrack – I was a believer. Here are a few things I learned at sea.

I know this because he had the cabin just next to mine. I won’t get into the content of the dad jokes I heard from the next cabin over, because I respect the man’s privacy, and also because a lot of them were really dirty. But I will say this: I had a one-hour Q&A scheduled with Blues Traveler, and once I figured out that it was John Popper making all those jokes next door, I stopped worrying about whether we’d be able to fill the time. Dude can talk.

Sure, there were proper sit-down, waiter-waits-on-you meals on The 90s Cruise, but I preferred to snack on my own schedule and get back to mingling. So for me, it was all about the buffet. At just about any time of the day or night, I could leave my room, walk up the flight of stairs to the Windjammer Cafe, and eat like a teenager whose parents are out of town.

The thing to remember on a cruise is that you are in international waters. The rules do not apply. You are free to go nuts.

It was Lisa Loeb who told me about her favorite bespoke meal, the Pizza Burger: you grab a burger patty, put it between two slices of pizza, and eat it like a sandwich. I could not decide what was harder to believe: that I was just finding out about this, or that I was finding out about it from Lisa Loeb.

Like anyone else who was sentient in 1994, I fell in love with Lisa Loeb at first sight. That video for “Stay (I Missed You)” captured her soulful quirkiness, and since it was released at the exact moment when I got my heart good and broken for the first time, I thought: Lisa Loeb gets me. And now, three decades and several subsequent heartbreaks later, she is as funny and friendly and fiercely talented as I’d hoped.

She will not only captivate an audience, she will teach a cupcake-decorating class, and she will sell it out. On the last night of the cruise, she sat in with Fastball to sing lead on David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” and neither the 1994 version of me nor the 2025 version could believe their good luck.

At 3pm each day of the cruise, out by the pool, there was an official Power Hour. Do you remember a Power Hour? It’s the thing where you drink one shot of beer every minute for 60 minutes. It’s a thing I remember doing in college, and the thing I remember most about it is that I don’t remember much about it. T

he 90s Cruise daily Power Hours were packed, and most of the participants were around my age, which means that for all of us, college was a while ago. I did not take part myself, but even as a spectator, I had concerns. I need not have worried. DJ Travis Bell switched up the songs every 60 seconds to keep the drinkers on schedule, and afterwards, everyone was still on their feet. A little looser and louder, maybe, but still impressively coherent.

The 1990s taught these people well.

The night before we docked in Costa Mesa, Mexico I ran into the guys from Lit at the Windjammer Cafe.

He said he’d be meeting his bandmates and their guests by the door at 10 the next morning, and that they’d all hop in cabs and go to his place. He invited me along. “Great,” I said, and then I told approximately everyone I had met on the cruise up until that point. The handful of people who were going to go to Jeremy’s secret spot became…just about a shipful.

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Nightly shows in the main theater, sunset all-star jam sessions out by the pool, DJ sets in the club, karaoke and dueling pianos – there was music everywhere, all day and into the night and then way past my bedtime. And once I was in bed, I could just barely feel the motion of the ocean (really the Gulf, but that doesn’t rhyme). There is a gentle listing, but you have to stop and concentrate to really feel it.

Drifting off to sleep in my cabin with my balcony door open and the sound of the water outside, I felt like I was in a very large bassinet with a very good white noise machine. You don’t come on The 90s Cruise to sleep, but…it’s good sleepin’.

I think it was day two when Robin hosted his all-star all-covers acoustic set out by the pool, and I think day two is when I decided I didn’t want this cruise to end.

I’m a Gin Blossoms fan, and I’d get all the Gin Blossoms I wanted at their headlining set on night four. But out here, Robin and friends from Fastball and Blues Traveler tore through a set that sounded like a mixtape I would have made you in 1994: The Smiths, World Party, Radiohead, Madonna and Skid Row, and John Denver.

We 90s kids contain multitudes. And now he’s our musical host in 2026!

Like anyone my age who grew up in front of MTV, I consider Downtown Julie Brown a friend. My most fashionable, enthusiastic, sophisticated friend. I am happy to report that in real life, what you have seen is what you get.

Julie and I hit the ground running, catching up, busting one another’s chops, to the degree that it was probably day three before I realized she and I hadn’t actually met one another until The 90s Cruise. Over and over, I watched guest after guest have the same experience with her. Downtown Julie Brown is the real deal.

I was a last-minute addition to the maiden voyage of The 90s Cruise, so I went solo, and in the days leading up to departure, I had that “walking into the junior-high mixer by myself” feeling. What if nobody talked to me? And what about the artists on board? Would they get along? Do Collective Soul have a longstanding grudge with Gin Blossoms? Does anyone have color me beeff with Color Me Badd?

I need not have worried. The passengers came not only to see their favorite artists, but to make new friends. The bands came to play their own shows, and to catch up with their peers, and to do shows with them. It was sweet harmony on the Gulf of Mexico, and before the sun was down on day one it was clear that– like Elton in Clueless– I was rollin’ with my homies.