A while ago, a newsletter started appearing in my inbox. I can’t remember subscribing to it, but I quickly realized that I didn’t care: I’m captivated by The Discoverer.

The Discoverer’s newsletter features lists like these:

• The Coolest Castles in Europe
• 9 Super Unique Airbnbs in the U.S.
• 7 Spectacular Clifftop Experiences
• 10 Must-See Spots on New Zealand’s South Island

As you can tell, it’s a travel newsletter (and accompanying website). For me, it’s the perfect daily dose of escapism. I don’t travel much, and even less during the pandemic, but the lists–which include visuals and descriptions–make me eager to venture across the world.

If you want to add to your list of far-off “someday” travel experiences, I’d highly recommend subscribing to The Discoverer. There aren’t many e-newsletters I’m genuinely excited to see–and there aren’t any other daily newsletters in that category–but I really enjoy the wanderlust I feel when I receive the newest Discoverer. Which makes me think I need to find some great travel Instagrams to follow. Any recommendations?

I spent the last few days with 20 friends at a place called the Gamers Ranch in the middle of Missouri (a two-hour drive west of St. Louis), and I’m here to highly recommend it to anyone looking for a geeky large-group vacation.

The Gamers Ranch is built from the ground up for people who want to spend a few days simply playing games with friends and family. It features a huge gaming area and a massive collection of board games (the BoardGameGeek top 100 shelf is just a fraction of the total games available at the ranch). This was great for packing, as almost any game that we would have brought was already at the ranch.

Really, it’s 4 different gaming areas: The huge living room, another tabletop game room, a pinball, digital, and VR room, and a room for video games and miniatures painting. I’m probably forgetting something, as there’s just so much–I spent most of my time in the main room, as it has plenty of space and a view of the pond.

A pond, you say? This is where I think the Gamers Ranch elevates itself beyond the already amazing place that it is. It isn’t just a great place to play games–it’s a beautiful place to play games. And one of those games is an 18-hole disc golf course. It was great to be able to step outside for 9 hot baskets, come back inside for a break, and then go back outside for more (or just stay inside, because it was 100 degrees). Watch out for ticks if you’re disc golfing there in the summer!

The Gamers Ranch sleeps 20 comfortably (mostly queen or king beds, but also a set of 2 bunk beds). There are no nearby amenities, but there’s a huge kitchen and a grill–we coordinated meals in advance and had more than enough food.

I had a wonderful time with friends (and the wonderful hosts, David and Min) at the Gamers Ranch, and I’d recommend it to any gaming group within a reasonable drive of mid-Missouri. Let me know about your experience if you give it a try!

Every 2 years (with 2020 the exception) for the last 26 years or so, I’ve spent a week at the Outer Banks in North Carolina with my extended family. It’s usually somewhere around 25-40 people sitting on the beach, playing games, chatting, relaxing, playing games, and eating great food.

Despite not being much of a water person (I greatly prefer the joys of land), in my 30s and now 40s I’ve found that I look forward to the ocean waters for healing and rejuvenation. Now, this may entirely be a made-up placebo effect in my mind, but I’m curious if you feel the same way, so I’ll share it here.

For the most part, I’ve always found the salty ocean water to be really good for my skin. My skin always feels fantastic for weeks after spending time in the ocean. It seems to dry out and reduce blemishes while also refreshing and rejuvenating. It’s amazing.

I turned to the ocean for something else this year. Because of some aggressive disc golf backhand play, I’m pretty sure I’ve slowly been tearing (or at least severely aggravating) the muscle in front of my right shoulder over the last few months. I was looking forward to using the ocean as an ice bath of sorts, just as professional pitchers do after a game.

So at least twice a day over the last week, I’d wander into the ocean when the waters were calm, and I would simply let my right arm soak for 15-20 minutes. The water was never warm, but some days it was more bearable than others.

Without fail, my arm felt so much better after each soak. It still needs time and rest, but I’m convinced the ocean helped.

What do you think? Do you feel better–physically, mentally, or emotionally–after spending time in the ocean? The photo below shows me and my mom waiting for a break in the waves last week.

It feels like the vast majority of my vacations over the last few years have been focused on people: Seeing family for the holidays, spending time with my parents during my dad’s battle against cancer, playing games with friends and strangers, and most recently, attending a family reunion at the beach with 35 people.

Ironically, I’m an introvert. I love spending time with my family and friends, but I’m more energized in general by time alone.

So I tried something–organically, not by plan–at the family reunion this year. I see these people all together every other year, so usually at the family reunion I feel like I should always be where the most people are. Maximize the time together!

But then I get home at the end of the week and I’m completely wiped out. Perhaps you’ve felt that way after a vacation, whether it’s for family, an event, or a specific destination.

To counter that possibility, this year I simply relaxed. I didn’t hunt down the most populated activity at any given time. Sometimes I worked for hours; there was an evening when Megan and I just watched a TV show instead of playing a big party game.

It was amazing–for once, it really felt like a vacation (yes, working to me when I wasn’t expecting to work is a vacation for me!). And I still had plenty of quality time with my family. Except for our big nightly dinners, more of that time was in smaller groups. I returned to St. Louis feeling refreshed.

Have you ever tweaked your vacation methods to better fit your personality and to ensure that you weren’t utterly exhausted at the end? Let me know what you’ve tried!

My father passed away in January, so this has been a year of firsts without him, which has been particularly hard on my mom (they were married for over 40 years and spent nearly every day together). So with Thanksgiving approaching, one of my mom’s brothers–a very successful architect–asked if she would like to get out of the house for the holiday week and travel around Key West on his yacht. Yes, an actual, massive yacht, the type you see in the movies or Succession.

My mom accepted this generous offer and invited her kids (me and my siblings, plus some kids and significant others–10 total people) to join her. This was all very last minute, but this was the only chance any of us will ever have to hang out on a yacht for a week, so we made it work.

A lot happened over the yacht week, so I’m going to break down some of the highlights into multiple blog posts. I’ll start off with an overview of sorts about the vehicle itself. Here’s the yacht:

The boat is 151 long and is 4 stories tall. It’s so big that the boat includes 4 other boats (2 of which are technically jet skis, but they float!) It sleeps 18 people (10 guests and 8 crew). It’s essentially a floating, moving, private hotel. For example, here was our room–and this wasn’t even the nicest room:

It was photos like this that made me drop everything and say yes to this surprise vacation. This was a once-in-a-lifetime extravagance.

To prepare for the trip, Megan watched a few seasons of a show called Below Deck on Netflix. It’s a reality show focusing on the crew of a yacht and the guests who rent it. As it turns out, the show is a pretty good reflection of reality, from the themed dinners to the incredible crew and the variety of experiences the yacht and its various toys can provide.

I honestly didn’t even know that people could rent yachts–I thought the owners were the only people to use them. But apparently there’s a decent market for people who can afford incredibly expensive vacations but don’t want to own a giant boat.

I also learned that there are a few different types of people who work on yachts. Typically there are a few salaried crewmembers whose job is to work on the yacht whether or not there are guests (it requires quite a bit of maintenance even when idle). There are also some key crewmembers who are linked to a small number of yachts, and there are temporary crewmembers who travel around to a variety of yachts for different voyages.

I’ve never even been on a cruise, so I can’t compare this experience to anything. I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent the last week on this incredibly vessel with an amazing crew. I’ll soon talk about many of the big things that happened–Hemmingway House, seasickness, Dry Tortuga, jet skis, 5-star meals, snorkeling, etc–but I have to say that one of the best things about a yacht is simply hanging out with people you care about on the top deck while the boat moves across the open sea.

If there’s anything you want to know about the experience or the yacht, let me know in the comments below! What’s the biggest boat you’ve ever been on?

Yesterday I talked about how I had the good fortune of spending Thanksgiving week on a large yacht with my family. I didn’t mention that most of the week was actually spent in Key West, which turned out to be a lot of fun.

Key West is at the tail end of a string of tiny islands at the bottom tip of Florida. You can actually drive into almost all of these islands from the mainland, and I learned last week that you can also fly there. The view from the plane is absolutely spectacular, especially the different depths and channels of the ocean and some tiny, disconnected island communities.

As far as we could tell, the weather was beautiful the entire week. However, a bright, sunny day doesn’t necessarily make for smooth sailing. So we spent the first two nights in Key West, half a day sailing to Dry Tortuga, one night anchored there, then half a day sailing back to Key West, where we remained for the rest of the week. The captain said that Key West really isn’t the best departure point for a boat, as there aren’t any island coves in the area where you can anchor the yacht and protect it from the elements (unlike the Bahamas).

I’ll talk about the journey away from Key West in another post, but there were plenty of things to do in the keys, and we barely even went into town. Our only excursion was to go to Hemmingway House, which was absolutely worth the price of admission thanks to the 58 cats that live in and around the house. You can also pet them, but be aware: Many of them have 6 claws per paw. This little bugger took a nibble on my finger before I took the hint that he just wanted to nap.

The Hemmingway tour guide kept mentioning a place called Sloppy Joes, apparently a bar that Ernest frequented. We later noticed that the current version of the bar was in our marina.

One of the most unexpected highlights are the 4+ hours we spent on jet skis just outside our marina and in the mangroves, where the smooth water allowed us to jet at speeds of 60 mph and more. I kept it around 20 mph, but with Megan at the helm, we went quite fast. My brother and brother-in-law also had a blast.

But the biggest highlight for me was snorkeling. We actually tried to snorkel twice, taking the largest non-yacht boat 30 minutes outside of Key West to a small reef that just didn’t turn out to be all that nice.

So we tried again the next day in a different area with calmer waters, and it was truly one of the highlights of my life. Just a few feet underwater was a vast range of coral and fish just going about their business. I joined schools of zebra fish, stared down 3 barracuda, and marveled at dozens of other species for which I don’t know their names. I stayed in the water for so long that my entire body was one big grape by the time I got out.

I didn’t take any photos of the snorkeling, as I just had a phone camera, and I wanted to stay in the moment rather than capture it. All I can say is that it was absolutely worth the experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Have you ever visited Key West, jet skied, or snorkeled?

In yesterday’s post about our unexpected Thanksgiving vacation, I shared some of the highlights from our time in Key West. But a few memorable days were spent on the open water.

I had never even been on a cruise before last week, so the experience of being out on the open water was new to me. The captain pulled out of the harbor early in the morning of November 6 and set a course to Dry Tortuga.

I went up to the top deck that morning, and all I could see for miles around was water. I also got lucky: I happened to look down at the right moment to see what I thought was a flock of birds emerging from near the boat and flying low over the water for around 100 feet. I quickly realized just before they dove under the water that they weren’t birds–they were flying fish. I had always pictured them only briefly taking flight, but the reality of their flying abilities is far more amazing.

We spent around 7 hours moving across slightly choppy waters, and it was probably the most difficult 7 hours of the entire trip, as most everyone experienced some form of seasickness. We had each taken different forms of medication the night before or that morning, but it wasn’t enough. There’s just something about the motion of the ocean that throws off our inner ear. I played a full game of Ticket to Ride Europe during the worst of it, and it was one of the most difficult gaming sessions I’ve ever endured. I somehow won the game and didn’t throw up!

Finally we anchored outside Dry Tortuga, a historical island fort. We took the tinder ashore–everyone grateful for dry land–and spent a few hours wandering around a remarkable place. It’s a massive, long-deserted fort well south of the Keys.

We walked around for a long time, even going up on the walls of the fort for photos like the one below. We then went down and got in the water for the first time during the trip–it felt amazing.

We spent that night being rocked back and forth by the boat, and that’s when the captain decided that everyone would be more comfortable if we were back at port in Key West. So we spent Wednesday traveling back north, and this is when we learned that seasickness is significantly aided by hanging out on the top deck as much as possible. I’m not entirely sure why, but we spent hours up there chatting, reading, and relaxing, and the crew was very kind to deliver fun drinks to us up there while we sailed. It was a rather beautiful way to spend the day.

Over the weekend we watched a 2022 movie called Ticket to Paradise; it stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts. It’s a cute rom-com about a former couple who had a kid but whose marriage didn’t work out, and they’re forced into the incredibly difficult situation of spending time together in one of the most beautiful places on earth. So, so difficult.

The movie is fun and funny, but the setting steals the show. The film is set in Bali, switching back and forth between a fancy resort and a small coastal village. Both are beautiful in their own way, and both made us look at Bali as a potential vacation destination after the movie ended.

Now, there’s a twist: While writing this, I learned that the movie wasn’t actually filmed in Bali due to COVID issues. Instead, it was filmed in Australia. Either way, there’s a beautiful place somewhere out there that I’d like to visit someday thanks to Ticket to Paradise. Whether or not we actually act on it remains to be seen.

Have you ever seen a place in a movie and quickly added it to your bucket list? The closest I can think of in recent memory is visiting Middle Earth (aka New Zealand) because of its depiction in the Lord of the Rings movies. Of course, there are many elements in the movies that are embellished and CGIed, but it’s still neat to see specific, visually memorable places from the movies in person. I also love the idea of eating in restaurants owned by Top Chef alums. Plus, I definitely want to go to Fiji someday, as that’s where Survivor is filmed.

Yesterday I explained the core concept of the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser experience in Orlando, along with highlights like the set design, the cast, and my friends and fellow guests. Today I’ll share some other highlights from the experience, focusing on the megagame itself.

In addition to being a beautiful, thematic hotel, the 2-day experience is also a big, cinematic game in which you can participate as much or as little as you’d like. I’ll separate the levels of participation into each section below.

Level 1: Watch the story unfold whenever there are big moments in the main storyline. This is essentially a play in a theater built specifically for one play. The cast is excellent, and the story works particularly well because of how it includes the guests–it’s a linear story, but it’s happening on our ship, not on a separate stage.

Level 2: Participate in scheduled events that appear on your datapad (a phone app), like bridge training and lightsaber training. These are particularly well designed, as they prepare you for plot-driven events that may happen later on the cruise. The lightsaber training feels amazing, and the bridge features a massive screen on which you get to control droids and blasters, as well as a number of tactile buttons and nobs that actually do things.

Level 3: Participate in non-story events that further immerse you in the Star Wars world. They’re all very short (10-15 minutes), like a quick Sabaac tournament and a Force-guided meditation.

Level 4: Pay attention to the prompts on the app. Characters will “message” you, asking you to go to different rooms to help them solve problems on the ship. This also extends to your visit to Galaxy’s Edge. The more you engage with specific characters, the more options you have and the more you advance your own storylines (which end up being unique to you).

Level 5: When we arrived at the Starcruiser, we were encouraged to drift over to the main cast members, particularly if a group is forming. As great as the other levels are, I think I had the most fun with this, as it felt the most real. I’d see a group forming around Raithe or Saja Kir, and I’d drift over to learn something new and join them for a mini-mission.

Level 6: If you actively, vocally, and even privately engage with the cast members, they will include you in secret missions and meetings. I didn’t quite go this deep (though I wish I had), but several people in my group did, and the things they did sounded awesome.

Six levels of gameplay–that’s amazing! It sounds like a lot, and it definitely was intense, but it was also really easy to participate in the metagame. The app is easy to use, the tactile games are satisfying but not difficult, and every step of the way there was someone to help you (if you wanted help).

They even did something I admire in narrative game design in that after you did something, the app would summarize what you just did (and remind you of it later) so you didn’t have to retain much of the increasingly complex web of storylines.

The entire experience was a testament to the sheer amount of joy that games can bring to all types of people: adults, kids, families, older people, younger people, people from different countries, big groups, couples, vegetarians, pescatarians, people of different abilities (several people were in wheelchairs, and they could go anywhere), people in costume, people not in costume.

I don’t know the stories of these people, but it was so special to see such a wide variety of participants–I think the one that touched me the most (I wish I had talked to them, but I kept getting distracted) was a man around my age who was there with his mom (who is around my mom’s age). It seemed like they had a connection to each other through Star Wars, and I hope they had a great experience on the Starcruiser.

Which level of participation seems like the right fit for you? Have you ever done anything like this? This is far from the only metagame, but most metagames don’t quite have Disney’s resources to make everything so immersive!

Happy May the 4th! It’s really a nice coincidence that we experienced the Starcruiser just a few days before Star Wars Day. Here are Part 1 (setting, cast, and friends) and Part 2 (the megagame).

As I conclude this 3-part series, I’ll share a few random elements from the weekend. These posts just barely touch the surface of the experience, and I hope you someday have the chance to go on the Starcruiser.

I’ve talked about the depth of the immersion on the Starcruiser, and it extends to the food and drinks. All of the food is crafted as if it were from planets around the galaxy. Each dish is familiar-yet-otherworldly, and almost everything was delicious. My mouth is watering at the gumbo dish on this plate. I really liked that each dish was small, as we wanted to try everything without wasting food.

Breakfast and lunch were cafeteria style (with unlimited green milk), and dinner was served to us at the table by the amazing Emma. Every dish had a story, including the memorable blue shrimp cocktail. They offered a wide variety of vegetarian and pescatarian options.

There were tons of themed drinks, including mocktails, green milk, and blue milk. We tried everything the Starcruiser had to offer, and then we still had 9 more drinks to taste at Oga’s Cantina on Galaxy’s Edge. I actually think the Porg drink may be my favorite, and it’s available with or without alcohol. Plus, you get to keep the adorable mug!

The Starcruiser “lands” on Batuu for while on the second day, giving us the opportunity to explore Galaxy’s Edge in costume (which apparently isn’t typically allowed). We had lots of quests to pursue while we were there, some of them leading to the two rides, Smuggler’s Run and Rise of the Resistance. Both were fun, though Rise of the Resistance was the highlight for me.

Other than the aforementioned Oga’s Cantina, we also reserved slots at Savi’s Workshop to make lightsabers. You choose a kyber crystal color, a themed set of parts, options within the set, and decide where to put them on your lightsaber. The weight of the hilt is quite heavy. As you can tell, I took this process quite seriously. If possible, I’d recommend scheduling your Savi’s visit around 1:30 or 2:00 and then head back to the Starcruiser, as the carrying case is awkward and uncomfortable.

Overall, I’m blown away by how good the Starcruiser experience was. I’ve avoided plot spoilers so you can experience them yourself, but hopefully these posts have given you a rough idea of the level of immersion.

I have to say, in addition to being in awe of how fully I was transported to this Starcruiser world, it pulled at my heartstrings in unexpected ways. There’s a character who appeared on the Starcruiser who brought out the child in me–it was like meeting a real-life hero. The way Saja Kir talked about the Force made me want to believe and hope for something magical in the world. And the way the cast made everything so welcoming, accessible, and inclusive was truly inspiring–they made me want to include the guests around me and be of service to people in general.

If you’re curious to dive even deeper, I will have a long-form video on our YouTube channel about the experience in the near future. Let me know if you have any questions, and if you are someone–or you know someone–who was there with me from April 29-May 1, please share this with them so they can share their thoughts in the comments below.