With the wreckage of my last relationship about a year in my rearview mirror, this fabulous Crystal cruise felt transformative.
It was the early 1990s, several years before the mid-decade revival of all things ’70s. Back then, disco was still hopelessly uncool, a tired relic of a decade-and-a-half past.
But I bought a disco collection on a whim at the local Musicland and loved it. I became an aficionado, particularly of the genre I liked to refer to as “sunset disco,” a mellow, slightly down-tempo collection that evokes the calm of the golden hour. I think it’s perhaps best exemplified by Love’s Theme by The Love Unlimited Orchestra.
While the rest of the kids in Anchorage, Alaska, were doubled down on the rap artist or grunge band of the moment, I was vibing to the likes of Fly Robin Fly, TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia), and If I Can’t Have You. I worked at the airport bookstore in those days, and it was those sunset disco beats that book browsers enjoyed overhead while I was on shift, deejaying from my platform behind the register. A coworker even went out to buy the CD for herself.
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It was an era of divas–Donna Summer, Yvonne Elliman, Vicki Sue Robinson and many others crowded my collection—but there was (in my mind) an undisputed winner: Gloria Gaynor. And I was a true fan. I wasn’t just talking my girlfriends into lip-synching for our lives to I Will Survive in the garage at the Big Lake weekend home, I was a fan of her other hits, mainly Never Can Say Goodbye and her cover of I Am What I Am from the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles, which was another mid-’90s hit in the form of the film The Birdcage.
As I grew older and read a bit more history, I began to realize what a bright flash the disco era had been. The U.S. found itself demoralized and downtrodden in the ’70s, with war, political scandal, recession, and fuel crises pummeling the populace. Disco was a form of escapism from the mire until the cultural moment turned at the end of the decade. By 1980, disco was regarded as too “urban” (read: too ethnic and too gay), and interest waned.
But not for me. I’ve clung to those Gloria Gaynor records for years, and when I found out she was headlining onboard a cruise on the luxury line Crystal on the Eastern Seaboard, I knew I had to go.
Sailing onboard Crystal would have been incentive enough. The line had a reputation for luxury over the decades but was bankrupt by 2022. It relaunched in 2023 with a new owner, who refurbished the company’s two ocean-going ships, Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony, from top-to-bottom. Perhaps the most luxurious aspect of these two ships is the space—they have an immense amount of public space for the number of passengers they carry, meaning they feel about half-full even when they’re fully committed.
This particular 13-night autumn sailing from Quebec City, Quebec, to Fort Lauderdale wasn’t fully booked, and it felt delightfully secluded. We had overnight port calls in Quebec City, Boston, New York, and Jacksonville, giving us plenty of time to explore the ports (I met up with friends for dinners in both Boston and New York).
The service onboard was also spectacular. Each room category on Crystal comes with a butler service, with services varying by which room category is booked. In my spacious Sapphire Veranda Suite, butlers will pack and unpack bags, deliver room service throughout the day, and handle laundry and dry cleaning—a set amount of which is included in the cruise fare for that category. My biggest worry those two weeks was trying to keep myself from overdoing it on the box of handmade chocolate truffles on my desk because they’d just keep refilling it.
The first night out of Quebec City, my friend nudged me between sushi courses in Umi Uma, Crystal’s award-winning Nobu Matsuhisa specialty restaurant (a set number of specialty restaurant visits is included in the fare; additional visits are available for a nominal charge). “That’s Gloria,” she whispered. I later found out that she’d be onboard for the entire sailing. Most excellent, I thought—artists need R&R.
The big night came off the coast of Nova Scotia when the ship’s company packed into the main showroom for the concert. Gloria, resplendent in a silver-sequined draped jumpsuit, had brought her ten-piece band with her and backup singers, working through her hit list. She also included a couple of other favorites from the era, including Barry White’s You Are The First, The Last, My Everything, Donna Summer’s iconic Last Dance, and Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly With His Song. She even included songs from her Grammy-winning gospel album.
There was even a surprise waiting among the backup singers—Melinda Doolittle, a finalist from season six of American Idol.
The last number, of course, was the one we’d all been waiting for. I realized as Gloria sang the opening notes that I hadn’t actually listened to the track in a while, but everybody in the room knew the song and bursted out singing along. I began to think about the wreckage of my last relationship receding in the rearview mirror and felt the literal resonance of the music in my chest. Wow, I thought, this song hits way differently now than when you’re a 15-year-old lip-synching in the garage.
It was one of those life-affirming moments, and it got better the next day during the Q&A with Gloria. She told us the story of how she was given a box of records, of which I Will Survive was on the B-side (the back of the record), and she took them to her friend who worked at Studio 54, who quickly found that putting the song on would fill the dance floor—which she said “was hard to get New Yorkers to do—they won’t dance to just anything.”
At the time, discos were also the arbiters of music trends. Disco is short for “discotheque”—a nightclub that is so named because the music comes from records instead of a live band. “People liked the song and would want to hear it on their drive to work, so they would call the radio station and request it”, she recounted, “and the record label was flooded with calls by DJs who couldn’t find the track, and the record company had to tell them it was on the B-Side.”
In addition to the inside story of I Will Survive, Gaynor also shared a particularly touching story about the first time her mother asked her to sing. Her mother was a professional singer, but Gaynor remembers that moment with emotional pride, “You see, I didn’t know she knew I could sing.” She also talked about her faith, her support of charities for children with absent fathers, and earning a degree in psychology.
When the floor opened up to questions, it was the usual spate of questions that aren’t really questions, but it was hard to mind because so many of the testimonials were from women who said they’d loved I Will Survive—that it was a source of hope and strength for them during difficult times.
There were a few moments when the song came on in the regular course of evening entertainment, like Crystal’s famous White Night, where everyone dresses in white and enjoys music and dancing in the main atrium with special white cocktails and dessert bites. I thought it must seem a bit surreal to hear your own hits when you’re out “in the wild.” And I was right–I’d followed Gloria on Instagram and saw a story where she was amused that one of her songs was played as boarding music on an Air France flight.
The rest of the cruise was memorable—fine dining that was distinctively “not cruise food,” and more life-affirming moments, like sailing into New York Harbor in the late afternoon (most cruises slip in during the wee hours, so you’ve got to get up very early to see the Statue of Liberty) and wandering through Boston’s North End in search of their famous, giant cannoli at Mike’s Pastry.
And, I’m happy to report I survived to disembark in Fort Lauderdale without getting shipwrecked on the chocolate truffles.
Well, not too badly.
