HOW GOTHCRUISE WORKS.

(TL;DR This is stuff you may or may not know about GothCruise. We are a group of friends who travel together. We are crappy at self-promotion. Ever since GothCruise 5, we have only had 30-50 people on a cruise. We aren’t travel agents, but Cruises Only is. GothCruise Organizers do stuff to make the cruise fun, but at the end of the day, it’s our vacation, too. We love you and miss you.) 

Hey Cruisers!

Since we have folks joining the group constantly, I think it’s important for us to say some things about how GothCruise is organized (or not organized as the case may be) so that there are no false impressions of what we do and who we are. Much of this is known by long-time cruisers and some of this is scattered in various places around this website, but I felt it needed to be all in one place. This is a lot, but it all needs to be said.

  1. First and foremost: GothCruise is a group of friends and friends to be who mostly know each other from ancient online communities such as alt.gothic on usenet, CorpGoth e-groups, and other pre-facebook entities. GothCruise was started almost on a dare. It was the answer to the question, “Where is the least likely place for Goths to be found?”  It was modeled on other “by the scene, for the scene” events like Convergence and ContemptNYC. GothCruise is not our job and we are not doing this to make money. We are doing this so that members of our Goth family can travel together, have fun together, hang out with friends, and not feel like they are the only Goths on a boat filled with people who likely don’t know what Goth is and have never heard of Peter Murphy. It is very much a side-gig or hobby for us GothCruise Organizers.  
       
  2. That said, we don’t go too far out of our way to attract new cruisers. We are frankly amazed every time a new person finds us. If you found us, it was most likely a friend or partner who told you, or you might have seen a post on a friend’s social media somewhere, y’know, “word of mouth”. We don’t pay Google to be on the top of search results. We don’t have promoters or “influencers” working for us. We don’t pay attention to, know, nor do we really care one little bit about what other “music genre” cruises are doing. We only have a website, a twitter account, and a couple of facebook pages. We might on very rare occasions take out a print ad in a gothic event’s program booklet or hand out business cards or put up GothCruise stickers in weird places, but that’s pretty much it.
       
  3. The upshot of all this lack of self-promotion is that we haven’t attracted hundreds of cruisers. In fact, since GothCruise 5, we get anywhere from 25 to 50 people traveling in our group on any given voyage. (Check out the History page on the website for the exact numbers.) The early cruises had over 100 GothCruisers, but frankly that was a lot of people and we are fine with the number of folks who join us now. We are here to have fun and travel with our friends. Which brings me to our next point.
       
  4. As you may have noticed, we don’t have bands play on the cruise. While many of us are here because of our common interest in the music we love to hear and the musicians we love to see, GothCruise is not about live music. GothCruise is about you and your vacation. Having bands on the cruise would take the focus away from that. Plus this is a vacation for us organizers, too. We want to enjoy our vacation and organizing space, time, and equipment for bands and musicians to play would take a lot more work and distraction than we’re prepared to take on.  Never say never, but for these reasons we don’t envision GothCruise ever having bands perform. It’s simply not what GothCruise is about.
       
  5. Speaking of work we don’t want to do, GothCruise is not a travel agency. We tried it at one point, but being a travel agent and trying to hold down a full-time job sucks. I mean really, really sucks. When I took over GothCruise, starting with GC6, I made the strategic decision not to make this something I hate doing. There are other people who love this travel agent stuff, y’know, like real travel agents. Which is why we have the folks at Cruises Only do all the heavy lifting for us.
       
  6. Of course, all of this begs the question. What the hell do you GothCruise guys do? Well, we work with Cruises Only to find the itineraries for our upcoming voyages. We put up the website to let you know where and when we’re sailing. We reserve the event space on the ship. We schedule the dance events and any other group events that might be happening before, during, or after the cruise. We design (or pay someone to design) the GothCruise tee shirts and other souvenirs. While on the cruise, we’re your liaison between the group and the ship’s group coordinator. We try to help maintain friendly relations with the ship and fellow passengers. We respond to questions, valid criticism, and complaints. Other stuff, too, but this list is getting long, so I’ll stop here.
       
  7. Anyway, we told you what we do and what we don’t do, and what Cruises Only does. The rest is up to you. You are personally responsible for all other facets of your vacation. Travel, lodging, having the proper documents, understanding the requirements of being a passenger on a cruise ship, booking your excursions, knowing where to be and when, and having fun. We can’t do these things for you. We’ll help, by gathering the kind of information we think you might need to make your choices smoother, or by preparing you for something unusual or different from last time, but the actual choices and execution are yours.

So I hope you made it to this far in this “manifesto.” THANK YOU to everyone who has ever sailed with us and those who will be sailing with us in the future. We are so excited for our next voyages and we look forward to finally getting back on the boat. It’s been too long and we miss all of you. 

Bob Westphal
(TheOneBob)

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