Inside Bliss Cruise: The Man Leading the World’s Largest Swingers Voyage

Transcript

Speaker1: This podcast is intended for adult audiences. Over the age of 18, it contains adult language and situations. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to us, and not of any employer, organization, committee, or other group or individuals. This podcast is not intended to be taken as professional advice. Welcome to the Swing Nation podcast, a podcast by swingers for swingers, where we look to educate others and push back on the negative stigmas and misconceptions associated with our lifestyle. Come with us and share our pineapple journey as we travel the globe. Interview the experts, learn and grow together. Join the nation. So Lacey, people are asking, how do they get to go to a party or an event with us? They check out swingersociety.net, you create a profile, you sign up for an event, and you come hang out with us. Super easy. That's right. If you want to party with us and the other faces and names that you know from social media and TikTok, head on over to swingersociety.net. Can't wait to see you there. Hey there, Pineapple people, and welcome to the Swing Nation podcast. We are your hosts, Northern Guy. And Southern Girl. And we have a special episode for you. We do. Today, we are sitting down in the studio, well, virtually in the studio, with Russell, who is the, I guess I'd say new, but we've been in the seat for a while. He's the new CEO of Bliss Cruise. Yeah. Which, if you don't know, is, I would say the largest, it's probably safe to say, complete cruise ship takeover for the lifestyle. Yeah. Is that how you'd word it, Russell? Yeah. So I would argue that we're the largest full charter lifestyle takeover company. That would be a good sort of simple phrase for what we do. But yeah, I'd argue that we're the largest in the industry. And yeah, we try and So I would say that we're the largest. Well, cruises are like a hot topic on any social media. You see any cruise, then you put swingers on a cruise or like a nude cruise. It keeps circulating in the news, swingers on cruise, anything like that. People just gravitate towards it and love it. But Bliss has been around for like 10 plus years, correct? Yeah, it has. Exactly. It's been The first cruise that it charted was in 2015. It was on Celebrity Silhouette, which is actually a very appropriate ship for our cruisers. There's certain ships that really work for our cruisers and certain ships that don't. It's been around since 2015. It's only done full ship takeovers. There's some cruisers that do partial ship takeovers. This has only been a full ship takeover. It expanded to two charters in 2016, I believe. One in fall and one in spring. Its full charters are really its flagship charters. You know, they're typically seven days, whereas the spring charters are around five to six days. The company was originally formed by four different other companies, three of which were Traveling. And the fourth partner was Brian from SLS. So I think everyone's familiar with SLS, SDC, etc. So that was the sort of makeup of who formed the company back in 2015. The company's always sold out its ships. It's kind of been the sort of staple for the industry, I believe. In fact, it typically sells out its ships 6 to 12 months before they sail. And I think the reason that it does is the product is really compelling. And the previous partners were actually, they were very good in creating the brand and building the brand and sort of sticking to what the product they offered their clients. They knew that their clients were primarily in the swinger world and in the lifestyle. And they sort of catered for that part of the industry. For example, they never allowed singles on the ship. That was just something that, you know, they stuck by. They, you know, the products that they would provide or the experiences that would provide were sort of primarily a lifestyle swinger-based experience. And, you know, they didn't sort of change from that. And I would say that a good percentage of the guests that come on the ships are lifestyle I'll swing our guests so yeah that's that's a little bit of the history of the of the company you know when did you take uh the ranks so to speak so we so the actual day we bought the company we closed the company was the 14th of February last year so it's actually Valentine's Day I remember that because it was Valentine's Day what you know what do you know yeah almost a year it was almost a yeah exactly so um it it's we didn't intentionally make it Valentine's Day but I suppose it's it's kind of fun that it is Valentine's Day. But we did a due diligence from November 24. And I was actually on the symphony cruise. And we did a due diligence from November 24 through to, well, just about when we were closed, about halfway through January. And it's a small group of investors. All the investors that have invested in this venture is swingers. They've all been on They're all very familiar with the product. There's only five of us that have invested in this. And we felt that the business was just, it had a really good brand. It had good inertia. It had a really good future. And we felt that we could really improve the brand and we could really improve the guest experience. And we've done quite a lot in the last sort of 11 months, let's call it 12 months for the sake of the conversation. By the time this podcast comes out, I think it'll be 12 months. You know, to try and maintain the experience that people sort of loved and were used to, but really just make it better and spicier. So yeah, about a year, Dan, we've owned the company. And it's been a fun ride so far, actually. Yeah, so I think we wanted to start this with getting to know you a little bit better. Usually when we have people on the podcast, we kind of like to start the conversation the way we start most lifestyle conversations is kind of like, tell us a little bit about you so i think you know most people are have heard or bliss or a little bit familiar with it but i'm not sure how many people even realize that you know the company has changed ownership and it sounds like from what you just said there's now a an investment group it just you know it was owned by the travel agents and now there's a an investment group that uh owns it and you're kind of spearheading this this new uh you know the the brand now yeah so let's let's learn a little bit about you tell us something yeah sure sure um so uh So it's some vanilla facts. My wife and I, Vicky, yeah, we always got to like, okay, vanilla facts. Yeah, there it is. My wife and I, Vicky, have been together for, geez, about 27 years now. So it's kind of giving away my age, I guess. We have two kids. They're young adults, really good kids. Love them. We're originally from South Africa, as you may have gathered from my accent. I've really owned businesses all my life, you know, mostly in South Africa, of course, and actually have a business in South Africa that I still own. So it's, it's, you know, something that I set up, geez, what was it? 18, 20 years ago, and it's still in existence today. And I don't obviously run the business, but I own the business and I go back and forth, back and forth to South Africa, you know, every so often. We've been in the lifestyle for 25 years. And like most people, some years have been more active than others. You know, it's, the community tickled our fancy six months into our relationship. So we're in our 20s. I was going to say, I think you said you've been married for 25 years. So then when you said you've been in the lifestyle for 20, 27, lifestyle 25. So it didn't take long. No, it didn't take long. And as I said, you know, we've been and you go through these sort of ebbs and flows in life, you know, like you have little babies or whatever. and you get out of it and then you get back into it. And, you know, and I, we've actually been on 12 bliss cruises since, and literally the very first one we were on and, you know, we went on many of the, we love the company so much we bought it, I guess, you know. I love that. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I suppose that's, I mean, if there's more you'd like to know about me, but that's, that's kind of, you know, my, you know, me, Vicky, where we've come from the, you know, a little bit of our vanilla background, a little of our, you know, swinger background, I guess. So who's idea was it to, we get that question. That's like the number one. Yeah. Everybody always says whose idea was it? I think everybody usually thinks it's the guy. A lot of times it's the girl though. Yeah. So it was kind of, I think we were just super spicy in bed and we kind of like edged each other on. And the more we kind of spoke about it, the more this became somewhat obvious. It was sort of both our fantasies, I guess. And it was just, it organically just like, okay, I think, and I suppose there's a tipping point where you say something and your partner responds and says, did you just say that? What did you just say? Because I was thinking the same thing, you know, and I guess that's, so, you know, I think, you know, some of the, these sort of discussions which happen in the bedroom are just organically happen or one partner is sort of leaning towards it more than another. But both of us kind of came together in a kind of interesting way when, you know, we spoke about it. So, yeah, I mean, and, you know, he has a thing and people talk to me about this that I can speak openly about. And they say, well, you know, how does, you know, how does this work? and what's the story. And what vanilla people don't know is that we're just absolutely normal people. We've got moms and dads and grannies and gramps and we've got children and we're professionals and we do stuff and we work and we're just normal people. We're not these crazy fuckers that every minute of the day we're shagging and going crazy. People really think that though. I've just recently started doing like day in the life videos because I really think that people think we just walk around nude and hang from the And just fuck all the time. And I'm like, we're just normal people. Like we just, we do get away and have spicy fun, but we're just like you. Like we do, we cook dinner. We, you know, we go to the doctor, we live live. We, we work. It's no different. We just somehow spice it up. Well, Lacey just started testosterone. And so she is trying to fuck all the time now, but, but that's a new, that's a new thing. That's a new thing. Yeah. You know, good. Well done. Yeah. But I'm not nude. I'm not swinging from the chandelier. I'm just... Probably only because your mom lives with us. Yeah. I'm just... So interestingly, vanilla friends of ours are like, oh, you know, they ask us, okay, so how does this work? Yeah. What do you, you know, tell us about this? And really the answer is we have normal lives just like everyone else and we have a little bit of, you know, we have a little bit of fun in the bedroom and, you know, it's really spicy and we enjoy it. And for most... You know, for most swingers, it's a journey. It's not a destination. You actually are on the journey with your partner, your spouse, whatever. You're walking this road. And it's a real fun journey. And don't try and make it into a destination. It's not like, okay, now we've achieved this. No, it's, you know, you go through ebbs and flows and, you know, have fun along the way. And it's a journey. And some of our best friends are in the lifestyle. They're just the coolest people. Same. And they're so genuine. We can speak to people on a bliss cruise. And this is when we were a guest. It's somewhat different now. But we can speak to people on a bliss cruise. And literally, they would become our best of friends within half an hour. You can talk to them about really deep conversations about really interesting stuff. And immediately, they're on your page. And they generally don't have a lot of baggage. And they're just awesome people. And we love this community. We call it our tribe. This is our tribe. This is our people. And this is part of the reason why I wanted to buy this business. I just love this. I love the industry. I love the people. I love this business. And I just want to make people so happy. And one of the biggest joys that I have as part of now that I own the business or part of in the business is, you know, I'll go on the pool deck on one of our cruises and I'm just seeing people just laughing and having a great time and just talking shit and laughing from the bottom of their stomach and being naughty and playful with each other. And that just gives me such joy. Like that's really the essence of what a Bliss cruise is. It's about people and it's about connections and it's about creating friendships and just being authentic and, you know, just real. and people just having a great time. So that's, I suppose, some of the sort of really positive parts about, you know, having this business. And people come up to me and they're just so sort of grateful. They're like, oh, my God, this, you know, what you've done to the cruise and, you know, the experience has improved. It's this and they just love it. And they're very complimentary. And, you know, there's some guests that are like, you know, saying, hey, listen, can you do it this way? And why did you do this? there's always those yeah no no and that's acceptable of course there is and and a lot of honestly 99% of the time when people you know when guests are giving me feedback they're really doing it in in a good spirit and they're not trying to be you know just assholes or anything they're just like hey listen you did this why don't you do it this way and and I'm like all right cool I think I think you got a point there like yes sure you know so I take it in you know in my stride I'm like okay sure and I try and listen to that sort of feedback. And I'm like, oh, sure, of course, let's try and, you know, just try and make it better. We'll always just try and make it better. So I think that's important. I think it's important that people realize that one, that you are in the lifestyle and then hearing like, hey, the CEO that's behind this brand that people, you know, quite frankly, there's people that are very attached and to this brand and feel some kind of ownership of it. I think that have been, you know, going to cruises for 10 years and they've been on every one and they got to a certain cabin they stay in every time. So, you know, I think hearing that you are somebody that's a member of the community, and then hearing the authentic way that you care about the community, I think that's important. And, you know, I don't know the inner workings of Bliss Cruise, but I would guess that there's probably better ways to make money in the world than to take a bunch of swingers on a cruise ship. You know, me and Lacey throw lifestyle events, and we do lifestyle stuff, and there are so many roadblocks, and it's so much harder in this industry than it is in a lot of other industries. I could only imagine other industries. Right. But I think you have to have a little bit of love for the game to even want to go down that road. And, you know, like in life and like in business, you know, successful business, a lot of successful business sort of are underpinned by just people that have a passion for what it is. You know, like they really just love that type of thing. And honestly, I truly just love this business. It's the people that I love. It's the product that we deliver to people. It's the happy faces. It's, you know, if I can give, if, and these, let me back up a bit. So I've got memories of times on bliss cruise that will last for a lifetime for me. They're memories that will just be there for, for till I, you know, till I die. And if I can give those memories to people and be part of that, Oh my God, what, what better, you know, um, in life, which you want, right? I mean, you making people's lives better. And that, that's, I think that's pretty noble. I think that's something that, you know, people should sort of, you know, that's something that I would be prepared to work for. And, and I mean, do I want to make profit and do, you know, do we want to run a business? I mean, money is required, you know, we've got to make profit and we've got, we've got to, um, you know, we're running a business here that, that goes without saying, but, um, but, providing the product that gives absolute joy and just happiness to people is is really this sort of cherry on the cake so yeah it's it's a nice thing to do one thing that i want to mention we actually talked about this when we did our november recap i think we talked about it several times you make yourself very available on the cruise pretty much every day i see you like several times you always speak to me you're like hey lacy i mean you're on the pool decks you're in you know dancing You're always there Yeah And I don't think every business is like that I mean, so if anybody I mean, that's pretty awesome That if you have a problem or an issue I know I could just go up to you and be like Hey, Russell, you know, you're always available And I think that like speaks volumes To like how much you care about this And we see it as, you know, guests of the ship You know, as paying customers of the ship We see it, we appreciate it So I just felt like you deserved a little bit Of hanging on the back for that And you can tell that if something's going wrong, you're right there in it. You know, you're like, let's get this fixed, you know, or whatever. And like, we can see that and you can see the heart and that you care about it. Thank you. Yeah, no. And just circling back to what I was saying earlier, it really is, you know, I actually just love it. And by the end of the cruise, I'm so exhausted. I'm like walking, you know, I do 35,000 steps a day. So like, I go to bed at say three in the morning and I have to get up at like seven. because, you know, like I have meetings, you know, with the ship people in the morning and whatnot. And my legs are just exhausted. But honestly, I just love it. I love talking to people. I'm a very sociable person. And I love, you know, people coming up to me and talking to me. And obviously, I really care about the product and the guest experience. And if things are going wrong, I want to be there. I want to solve the problem. I want to, you know, I want to be in the thick of it. And I want to, you know, and I just want people to have fun. That's really the key objective here. But yeah, thank you for noticing that and pointing that out. It is a pleasure for me to do it. I love doing it. It's great. All right. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, we've kind of talked around what Bliss Cruise is. But for people that maybe don't know or haven't been on a cruise, you know, what's different about going on a Bliss Cruise as opposed to going on a normal Royal Caribbean or Celebrity Cruise? Like a vanilla cruise and you throw your pineapple on the door. Well, I'm sure you guys know the answer to this. We do, but we're going to let you answer. Yeah, of course. Literally everything. I mean, okay, so let's talk about the elements of the vanilla cruise that guests will experience on a bliss cruise. So, you know, like key elements are just sort of accommodations, the servers, the food and dining, the bars, the beverages. I mean there's certain entertainment and ports and excursions that you're going to get on a bliss cruise that you would get on a vanilla cruise you know so so you know and obviously the the ship staff and the personnel on those cruises are are you know the same people that you would be on a vanilla cruise so these aspects of a vanilla cruise that is the same as a bliss cruise outside of that almost everything else is different you know so so I guess I so Before I say, you know, all the various things that we do on a Bliss Cruise to make a difference, I think more important is what is our key objectives and what do we consider the most important role that we have as a company? And I would categorize that as connecting people. You know, like everything that we try and do is to try and connect people. So we built an app and a core functionality of the app was to connect people both on and off the ship with people with with Wi-Fi, not Wi-Fi. So these are sort of aspects of the thing that we want to keep. Think of Facebook. Facebook would be nothing without the people who participate in Facebook. And it's the same type of role we have. You don't come on a bliss cruise for this awesome entertainment or this amazing DJ or whatever, which all adds to the flavor of the cruise, of course. You know, that goes without saying. But the main core element of why you're on the cruise is really to connect with other people and to create relationships and to have fun with them and to play with them. And, you know, find your magic and live out your fantasies. That's sort of like the core fundamental element of it. And a lot of what we do sort of feeds into that core objective is that, okay, you know, you're, you know, what we do on the app, what we do on meet and greets, what we do on seminars, what we do with pool parties, you know, even, you know, hosted events or, you know, just the music events. We're trying to connect people all the time in the playrooms, however. And I think, you know, and that is the complete opposite to a Vanilla Cruise. A Vanilla Cruise, everyone is trying to disassociate with other people. I mean, you know, you're going to go on a Vanilla Cruise and you might talk to the guy at the bar and say, hey, you know, hey, what's your name, whatever. But really, you're not there to connect with people. And that would be sort of like the core fundamental difference between a Bliss Cruise and a Vanilla Cruise. In terms of just sort of spicy fun, I mean, there's obviously the playrooms. the type of stuff that we have worked on over the last year is just improving all these things. So what we've got now is we've got at least four playrooms per cruise. There'll be a couples only playroom. Generally, we try and make that the most beautiful playroom. So that's in the solarium. So the solarium on a ship for people that don't know, it's a beautiful space. It's sort of tranquil. It's generally got a pool and hot tubs and it's the sort of quiet space. But we turn this into a playroom. And it's such a beautiful place. to sort of have a playroom. The Solarium playrooms are by far our favorite playrooms that we've ever experienced in the lifestyle. Yeah, we love the Solarium. Lacey's done actually a tour video. Yeah, I've done several tours. You can find that on TikTok and stuff. Yeah, and I know that because our team has said to you, please do sort of a thing on the playrooms. And we've really spent a lot of time and effort and money to make these playrooms as beautiful and as and, you know, nice and safe and relaxing and just stimulating a sort of, you know, sexual energy, if you like, as possible. Then we have a sort of the all-passenger playroom, which is, you know, and a lot of the time we've got to do what we can with the ship that we have, you know. These ships were not built for bliss cruise. I mean, unfortunately, they were built for vanilla cruises, so you've got to work with, in the confines of what the ship is and what the ship is. and the venues on the ship and what the ship can do. But we have generally an all-passenger playroom, which is a lot of the time in a conference room. We have a dungeon, and a lot of the time we'll take a venue in the ship, like an entertainment venue, and we'll turn that into a dungeon. And then we have an outdoor playroom. So, you know, we're also trying to make the outdoor playrooms as sort of inviting and as sexy as possible. For example, on this last cruise, which is the Reflection Cruise, which we're going to be doing on the April cruise as well as this actual real lawn on the cruise ship. So, you know, we looked at this and we thought, well, let's use this space and let's use it. We used it. All right. Yeah. Does squirt kill grass? Is that a problem? They gave us blankets. You're supposed to keep it on the blanket. You didn't hear any complaints about the grass in the last minute. I'm sure there was. Funny you said that. So, so on the, so we have a pre-cruise. We actually have three cruises per cruise. Like it's, it's an inspection. which generally takes place three months before the actual cruise. Then we have an inspection, the pre-cruise, which is this cruise literally before our actual charter. And I actually found the groundsman of this particular ship. And I said, can we use this space? And he was like, yeah, yeah. They've done yoga and that type of stuff on this. It's a little different. It's sort of like yoga. That's exactly it. We actually really loved the, I don't know with the correct term, But I would say fucking on the grass. We called it Six Under the Stars. Okay, Six Under the Stars. That sounds better. We loved it so much that we planned a night. We went to dinner. We didn't even go and dance or anything. We went straight. I think we had five or six couples maybe. It was so much fun. What's funny is we're going on the February cruise. We did a Zoom call last night of all the people that booked with us. We were talking about some of our fantasy see what people want to do and that was a lot of people were talking about they wanted to like have sex under the stars and stuff like that so it's really neat that people listen to us and like heard how fun it was and now they like want to do it so it's it's definitely a bucket list thing if you if you end up going on a bliss cruise it's a lot of fun so i mean it's it we don't have grass on every ship so the actual february ship unfortunately does not have grass so that's okay i'm i'm sorry for the people that are on the february they'll have to go on april they're The airport cruise has got grass. We've got six hundred of the stars there. And so we kind of, you know, and I'll get into all the other experiences that we do on the cruise. But I just want to say this. When I bought the company and, you know, we as a team and a management team, I kind of said, listen, I want to create a culture of creativity that we need to just think about. Yes, we've got a core guest experience that we give everyone. But how do we make this better? Let's think outside the box. So we looked at this piece of grass and we're like, okay, this is almost ideal. Like, for example, the grass, one of our theme nights on the April cruise is like a 60s hippies. So we're going to do like a Woodstock, we're going to do a Woodstock party on the grass. Oh, how fun. Yeah, so it's going to be like a band. You've got like a whole bunch of like blankets and you can like lie on the grass. And then just like Woodstock after the show, you can fuck if you want. I love that. Just stay there and shag if you're into that. So anyway, so we're really trying to jazz up our playrooms. Circling back to what is different on a Bliss Cruise to Vanilla Cruise, we have super fun pool parties. A big part of the day activities on board the ship is just literally thousands of people at the pool and it's just naked bodies and people mingling and laughing and talking shit. We have, you know, obviously goofy parties that, you know, some people like them, some people don't. Some people like listening to music and, you know, we're trying to give a sort of variety of things that people can enjoy. We've introduced dance and play events, which has, for the most part, I think people has really liked. For people who don't know, it's essentially, we go, we use the playroom or even some of the main, the other playrooms at night, but if we did it in the day, we use the playroom and you know there's a DJ and you can dance and then if you want to fuck you just go right there and you start fucking and it's and it's it's kind of weird for some but it's it's kind of just really fun and it's we like it I think it's a good opportunity I think there are people that are intimidated by the playroom yeah normally and so I think that when you do the dance and play it almost like gives them an excuse to go in there and not feel like you know yeah playrooms at night sometimes you have to you have to take your clothes off before you go in and all that exactly so this is a much more like less intimidating So it actually was born out of that. So, you know, just as someone in the lifestyle as a swinger, I know as a man, you know, you can, you can, it can be intimidating. You're like, okay, let's, you know, now it's time to go play. And like, off we go. And, you know, in the playroom and like, all right, start performing. It's like, you know, things don't work. But if you can grind on each other and then just very easily like transition to the bed, that makes it, because I do feel like you lose people when you're like, okay, this is hot and sexy, but we got to Yeah, go to your room, change, drop your clothes, get your... So that was the idea around dance and play is that, you know, it's a sort of sexually charged environment. Everyone's kind of grinding on each other. And that's a more natural environment where people can be like, okay, I'm starting to get in the mood now. And now let's just, we don't have to, you know, put a towel around us, walk through the, you know, the passages of the ship, meet other people and bump into other people. And now we get into a cold room that we've now got to get the spice on. It's like, this is a little hard. Whereas if you're in an environment where people are playing and you're kind of jamming there, you know, there and then, and people can, and you can just go to a bed and play. It's people really like it. And so we're introducing, so actually for February are introducing foam. We wanted to introduce foam for, uh, for reflection. And then at the 11th hour, the ship byboshed us and we're like, ah, you know, They just didn't want to do it in the playroom. They didn't really give us a reason, but they were just, they said, you can do it on the pool deck. And this was like four hours before the event took place. We had arranged it well in advance and they gave us all the sort of green lights. And then at the 11th hour, they did. And it's like, okay, whatever. So, and I guess I don't think we're too disappointed in this. They were like, all right. Yeah, I think we were, because it said like foam dance and play. And I think then the foam party was before. So I think people were, we were a little confused about the schedule, but it hearing that they changed it on your last minute. I think you might have actually told me that while we were standing out there. But we were fine. We're kind of happy to be there. We just sort of roll with it. So it was fine for us. It wasn't a big deal. But it does sound fun, to be honest with you. Listen, at the end of the day, and I honestly try and be honest to everyone. If someone came up to you and says, you said foam and it wasn't, I said, this is what happened. I don't know what to say to you. And, you know, we do our best with the cruise lines. And, you know, they're really cooperative. 99% of the time, they're very cooperative with us. And for some technical reason, they just didn't want to do this. And I'm like, all right, whatever. So let's just do what we can. And I think for the most part, the guests are like, all right, whatever. Let's just move on. Yeah, we're just happy to be there. Yeah. So we're going to continue with the dance and play. People really love it. We're actually going to do a dance and play for February, And the one in the serum has been confirmed for foam. I've reiterated, please don't let me down again. And they're like, no, we've got this. It's also, it's, this is Royal Caribbean, the previous one, a celebrity. They are sister brands, but, but they, you know, they do make different decisions based on whatever, you know, whatever it is that they make decisions on, but that's, that's what it is. Then we, you know, we really try to spice up the entertainment, particularly sort of bring more adult entertainment. So you'll find that what we did for Explorer and Reflection, we've got just more spicy entertainment. So we've got like male review shows, we've got burlesque shows, sort of adult comedy, you know, trying to get more adult comedy as much as we can. We're also doing some aerial and lighting shows, which I think are pretty fun. Entertainment is important to a lot of folks, but it's not the main reason that people are there. We just want to make the entertainment as good and as spicy. It's funny. We always go on Bliss Cruise and it's like the first half of the week we're partying and fucking all the time. And then it's like towards the end of the cruise, we start getting tired and we're like, okay, tonight let's just go sit down and like watch a show and have a chill night. I think the November cruise we went to like two shows and that was it. Towards the end though. Yeah, towards the end because we were exhausted. Yeah, so I, you know, the, the, that's actually a good, I like that advice, Dan. I'm going to, I'm going to put on the best shows towards the end. Yeah. Well, it's like a nice, you know, to be honest with you, when people ask us about bliss, my advice is it's whatever you want to make of it. You know, if you don't want to see naked bodies, but you're there for education and want to take classes and want to just like meet and mingle and not super sexual, you can do that. You can go to a piano bar, have a glass of wine, chat. You don't, if you're partiers, you could go and party all night long, you know. If you want to fuck, you can fuck all day long. You can fuck all day. So it's really whatever you make of it. We're opposed to some things like Secrets and Hedo where it's like very much in your face. That's fun. We enjoy that. But if you're newer and you're unsure, I think a bliss cruise is a nice way. Is there always a playroom open? I feel like you could almost be in an orgy 24-7. There is, except when, well, at Port, we can have the sort of conference center playroom open. Okay. We can bend the rules there. But whilst we're actually at sea, there is always a pay room open. Yeah. Which I love. We love some daytime play. Some people don't like staying up half the night, so you prefer to play during the day. I want to see who's in there at like 4 or 5 a.m. Those are the hardcore people. Those are the hardcore people, yeah. So Lacey, you nailed it. It is exactly, exactly that. You make this cruise whatever you want it to be. If you're a newbie, and this is just a little intimidating for you, or the communities that are intimidating, going to Hedo or maybe even Secret to be like, whoa, this is like in my face. Whereas a bliss cruise, you could literally make it a vanilla cruise if you wanted to. You could go sit in this bar. You could go to this restaurant. You could meet people. You could meet other non-swingers if you wanted. There's a lot of them on our cruise that are just, they just want adult entertainment or adult environment. We see a lot of nudists. We've talked to a lot of nudists on the cruises. Yeah, people that just love a sexy, that don't necessarily want to swing, but they just enjoy the, like, openness of it. Something about having their tits out on that pool deck. They really, yeah. Some people just love that. And you know what? It's, as I said earlier, it's a journey. So someone that's sort of new to it, they're going to get their groove. They'll be like, oh, okay. You know, like, now I'm getting a little bit more adventurous. Let's go to the, you know, perhaps they didn't want to go in the playroom sort of the first two nights. Now the third night, they're like, let's actually go play with each other in the playroom. Yeah, last night on our Zoom call, we went through and asked how many people had been on Bliss, and very few had actually been on Bliss, maybe three or four. So everybody else was new. And a piece of advice we gave to everyone is if you're intimidated by the playroom, just go with your partner. You don't have to swap. You don't have to find a corner, just the two of you. Just take a lap. Just walk through. You don't even have to stop. Just do a little lap around it and come back out. And it might get you juices flowing. It might get you excited. You'll probably go back and have hot sex with your spouse just thinking about all those sounds and things you sing. You fucking better believe it. That is exactly what happens. You're going to get a lot of people that come on the cruise that they just want to watch their voyage. They're taking it all in and it's just getting their juices going and they're going back to that room and they're having a fucking awesome time. They've had the best sex they've ever had. I had in the last five years. But I really love the fact that you said, you just make it whatever you want it to be. You want hot, sexy, 24-hour sex, you've got that. If you want entertainment, you've got that. If you want music, you've got that. If you want socializing, you've got that. If you want to chill, go to the spa, go to a quiet part of the ship, go to wherever. There is chill-out areas. There's all sorts of entertainment, You know, options, activities, vanilla rock activities as well. You know, if you're into like rock climbing, fuck it, go and climb the side of the ship. Or, you know, flow rider, you want to go and surf, there's that. So it's just so much sort of opportunities that people can have when they're doing this. Anyway, getting back to, you asked the original question was, what is different from a Bliss cruise to a vanilla cruise? So we've also introduced a lot more DJs with a a lot more variety of music um so sort of we love that we love that and and so so this this was sort of born out of of folks just we had looking at all the surveys and just just general talking to people people's like oh the music sucks and you know we don't want this music we like that music and you know it's it's hard for us because there is a there's sort of quite a uh age range of people 20s to 90s Yeah, not quite in the 90s. I'm going to go that bad. Maybe 89, but not 90s. Fuck it. We have a friend who was on... We have a friend that fucked a 92-year-old on Bliskers. On Bliskers. And she's in her 40s. No, she's in her 40s. She had dinner, and he was like, well, I haven't had sex. And she was like, well, let's go. He was a World War II vet. And she took him to the playoffs. And I think this was on the last Bliskers? Or two Bliskers ago? Maybe two. Okay. That's cool, but also... Yeah, and he got it hard. So he did good. Listen, I got to tell you, if I'm 92, I want to be that dude. Same. That's my man. I know. But no, you're right about the music. We've had that issue just in our small circle of things. What one person likes, another person doesn't. So I really like where Bliss used to just have one main area for music. I feel like you've broken it up. You have to find what you like. You have to look at the schedule. You can't just assume it's in one room. So you have to find it. But I really have enjoyed that. Well, and the good part about that is when you find the music you like, you usually find your people. Yeah. You know what I mean? Actually, inadvertently, it is exactly what happens. And so just talking about age, sort of age and music, you know, and music tastes, there's correlation there. Like it's like if you, you know, if you grew up in the 80s, you probably like 80s music. If you know, if you're a 92 year old, well, you're probably like Frank Sinatra or fuck, I don't know what you like. So, you know, we have this sort of bell curve of people. It's sort of 45 to 55 is sort of the core group of people. And then it sort of dips off on one side and dips off on the other. So actually for February cruise, we've got a higher cohort of people is 35 to 45. So it's a younger crowd. So I think it's just cheaper and it's easier and whatnot. But anyway, so you have this sort of very broad brushstrokes of sort of generations that you've got to kind of deal with and and the best way of doing it is it's just increasing the amount of music options and the music variety so and and it requires us to to be kind of creative we've got to look at venues and say okay we can make this a venue so for example um on reflection and what we're going to be doing on on silhouette which is the april cruise um there's a there's a sunset bar right at the after the ship it's it's right at the back of the ship and it's not really a music venue we loved it oh awesome great yeah fantastic in fact i may have said I've seen you there once or twice. We liked it because it wasn't hot because the wind, it was like the perfect temperature up there. So we very much enjoyed the sunset bar. So it's not really a music venue, but it's a beautiful space. It's outdoor. It's also the art of the ship, which has less wind. Like if you do something right in the front of the ship, you're typically going to have a lot more wind. So it's like at the back of the ship and it's got this really cool bar that's right in the center. And we kind of put the DJ right at the edge. So, you know, everyone was looking. out towards the ocean, if you like. And so we turned that into, so we did a night which is called Sunrise at the Sunset, which is, the idea would be sort of like an EDM night that people can go there at midnight and they can go through the night and watch the sunrise, which is kind of cool. And then we mix it up with, we also, we kind of in two minds, do we want to change the venues around with the various music genres or just keep the same venue at the same place? And we kind of pivoted when we discussed it enough between, you know, sort of all of us, our team. Well, yeah, I think guests would prefer to be at this venue and then get a change of scenery, go to that venue. So that's what we did. So we, you know, we'd have one night as EDM, you know, at the Sunset Bar. And then we have another night where, you know, we had country at another thing. And then the Sky Lounge, which is the main sort of nightclub, we'd kind of do a particular theme of music or whatever the case is. And I really think it worked well. So for most of our ships, we're going to be having five different venues with music selection. So there's going to be sort of EDM and country. But for whatever reason, people love country and we're like, all right, we've got to give everyone country. So, you know, and people get kind of raunchy on country. I don't know what it is. You know, maybe it's the lyrics or whatever. I'm not, you know, Vicky's a big country fan. I'm not, I'm just like, I'm more of an EDM guy. And so people love country. So we said, all right, every night we'll do country. And then every night we do EDM because I think there's a cohort of people that just love that. And then we'll mix it up with the main venue. So we'll do sort of, you know, popular hits or rock and roll or 80s, 90s, 2000s, disco, whatever. Then we have a Latin band every night. So, you know, there's a sort of quite a large group of, you know, Latin American folks that are our guests. So, you know, that's also very popular. And in general, we have like a bar on the Salsa Squad ship. It's Ensemble Lounge on the Radiance. It's called Schooner Bar. And that we have dueling pianos and, you know, pianos, you know, sing-along kind of guitar stuff and, you know, that kind of thing. So we're kind of mixing it up. We also, for Radiance, the ship in February, we're actually going to do more nights on the pool deck. We don't actually have a sunset bar on that particular ship. So we're just going to use the pool deck as that, you know. And then, like I said, we're going to use the lawn where we've got the lawn. And we kind of just, you know, for Wanda, we've got so many options with Wanda. We're going to have, you know, maybe eight or nine different types of music for Wanda. We've got multiple venues that we can use there with different genres of music and, you know, pool decks and all sorts of fun stuff. So this is a change that we made when we bought the company and people love it. It just gives them variety. One of the concerns we had when we did this was, Are we splitting up the party too much? And that actually hasn't been the case. You know, there's people find their groove and they find their place that they like. And if a particular party sort of dies down, there's always the option of going to another one. And you'll inevitably see that if this party dies, then people just migrate to that party and everyone's, you know, like that's all, you know, humming and everyone's having a great time there. It also depends on what DJ we have at that particular venue. So we introduced some new DJs and we're going to introduce more new DJs as we're going forward. So we've got like Prisky Business and we've got Tumbles. Tumbles was such a hit. We love Tumbles. She was so good. Yeah. How cool is that? She was so cool. Now she's got a Netflix show. Yeah, she's so cool. Yeah. She said to me, are you going to watch my Netflix show? I'm like, oh, I watched it. I'm like, I don't know if I want to watch this. We went to watch this. Yeah, I want to, but no, we talked about her when we did our recap. We loved her immediately. Like I took, she had her business card. I took it and sent it to our team. I was like, we, we love her for the first time we seen her. She had this like little say, like pleather sailor girl outfit and this like little hat. I was like, Oh my God, she is so perfect for bliss cruise. She's got, she's got awesome energy. She kept the energy going. And she, so she's, um, she said, listen, I, I probably can't do the February. cruise, but I can do the April cruise. And then she phoned us literally two days ago and said, listen, I can do the February cruise. And I'm like, all right, maybe we can try and get you on there. Let's see what we can do. If we've got a room for it, we'll try and get her on. That's awesome. No promises, but I'm going to try and get her on. She's such a gravitational force. Yeah. And she's adorable, you know, and she's a girl up there, like killing it. I just loved it. We all, like everybody in our group, we're just like, oh, we love her so much. She was so cute. Yeah, she's just fantastic. And she lives down the road from us in South Florida. She's close to us. But anyway, so that was the sort of music side of it, you know, like things that we're doing with music. We also, so what we're doing with the theme nights is, or actually, let me back up a little. We actually decided to create just a variety of the different types of experiences with Bliss and the cruises. is we're actually going to be theming the whole cruise, the whole ship. Um, and we started this loosely in 26. So like the beach party cruise, but in 27, we doubled up, you know, we basically doubling down on this. I'm not going to, I'm not going to tell you what the themes are at this stage. Cause we, no, no, I can't. Cause it's, it's a reveal that we're having in March. So we're just going to, you know, we're going to keep it as a bit of a surprise. So there's like a little bit of stuff. If I told you my marketing, you're like, what the fuck did you just do? Dan does that all the time. He like really says stuff and I'm like, are you going to get in trouble for saying that yeah like yeah so yeah yeah i don't i don't release the themes just yet so um but anyway so the idea is is that the whole theme of the ship there's a theme for the whole ship and all the themes are relative to that theme so you know when we have decor and how are we gonna you know how are we going the type of entertainment and music we have on the ship all of that is relative to the theme and theme of the whole ship obviously we want to try and keep it still you know uh consistent with our sort of types of music, idiom, country, popular, whatever. But we're going to be theming the whole ship and all the themes for the night will be relative to that theme. And it just kind of makes it sort of fun, you know, just a little bit of twist to it. Let me try to figure it out. So let's say the theme of the ship could be like a jungle cruise and then like the themes within it would be like Animal Kingdom. Well, kind of like how we do our weekends at like Secrets. Well, because we host at Secrets and we usually have like a theme of the and then individual things for each night so like is it something like that yeah it's it's something like that but we put a little bit more thought in it yeah so that was two seconds of thought which is which is perfectly understandable but um so it's it's a so it's like we put quite a lot of energy into and thought into this to make it obviously it has to be sexy it has to be fun it has to be you know you've got to um you don't want the themes to be too complicated for people. And we also fall in, you know, like I suppose all lifestyle companies, you know, brands fall into the trap of just becoming monotonous. It's like the same old themes. And I think Bliss was sort of guilty of that in the past. It's like, okay, let's, there's a list of, you know, 50 themes. Let's pick whichever one. Throw a dart on the wall and hit one. Yeah, picking themes is a lot harder than people realize because we have to pick themes a lot and it's quite difficult. Yeah. And no matter how hard you try, people are still going to hate it. So it doesn't matter. Well, yeah. So, and what's really cool about the Bliss Cruise that, you know, some guests that, or some of your listeners that haven't been on the Bliss Cruise world would want to know is that people are really, they really participate in the themes. They go into it. They kind of, you know, really make a big effort. And, and I'd say that 70, 80% of the people participate, you know, maybe, maybe, 30% don't participate, but that's okay. If you don't participate, like who cares? Nobody cares. Yeah. I remember like last year I did a play where there was a bunny night and like halfway through the night, my outfit was driving me crazy. So I just changed and it was totally fine. Like I just went about my night. It wasn't like the end of the world. It was totally fine. I still had a great time. So it's whatever you want to do with it. If you want to embrace it, go for it. If you don't, that's okay too. Yeah. It just, it adds to the, it adds to the whole fun of the thing. And so we, so we, to just try and ramp it up a little bit more and we're sort of putting a bit more effort into the whole theme of the ship and the theme in general and how the themes relate to that theme. We've actually worked quite hard on the meet and greets. Meet and greets, you know, folks like you and I, I don't know, you know, we didn't participate in meet and greets very much, Vicky and I, when we were guests on Bliss. We've never been to one. We went to, did we go to a 40s and under one? Maybe. Yeah, we've done a few here or there. But yeah, we're not big on it either. But I do think there is like for people that are new or need like a little help kind of getting out of their box, like if they're a little bit shy, I think it's a great thing for people to have. We're hosting our first meet and greet. We're hosting our very first meet and greet this time. Yeah. I like messaged the Bliss team and I was like, hey, can I please, you know, and like, and they were wonderful to help us. Cool, cool. Yeah, so we're excited. So we have one for our podcast in the next week. Did Tanya reach out to you? Yes. It was Janice. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. So, all right. So, and they, they put you on, they put you on the. Yes. We're on the schedule. We're on it. Yeah. We're on the app. Cool. You're on the app. So there you go. Yeah. You're official. Official Bliss. Our first time. Official Bliss. Oh, cool, cool. It is funny because when I did, you know, I sent the email. I was nervous because I was like, what if they say no, which wouldn't have been the end of the world. And I was like, you know, and I was talking about it on TikTok. And then, then I got to tell everybody, like, they said yes and everybody was like of course they said yeah but I was like nervous you know because like like what did they say no but they were they were wonderful Janice was like why didn't you ask why don't you just call me and ask me I was like well I didn't know she was cute they were all wonderful awesome yeah well you're an official bliss host yeah we got 30 couples on the next 32 couples on February yeah so the app is really good with that Dan it's it like and that's the problem we've had on on bliss cruises before the ship is so big. We'll go around and meet everybody. We usually do the topless travel meet and greet the first night. Then sometimes we won't see our people for the rest of the cruise because they just get lost in the ship amongst all the people. I really love the app. Even last night, you could do group chats on the app. I did a group chat and added all of our people so we can very easily communicate, tell everybody where we are. It's been great. You would automatically become the host of your meet and greet, and we encourage you to, like, if people start chatting about your meet and greet, then you just chime in and just tell them. Oh, okay, cool. I'll have to go look. Yeah, yeah. So if you actually look on, if you go into your event, you'll see that there's a chat group there. Oh, I didn't even think about it. Yeah, so people might actually be chatting already on there, and you don't even know about it. So go, you know, I encourage you to go on there and just start a chat, and just, like, get people getting engaged. Because the idea really is to, as I I said earlier, our core objective is to connect people and we want to connect them before the cruise and during the cruise. And the app is a really good tool to be able to do that. And, you know, so the events and meet and greets are a good tool to do that. So anyway, so what we're doing with the meet and greets is we obviously have to think about them and we change them up a bit. Some, you know, we look at the data and we see, okay, this meet and greet wasn't well attended and people didn't really like it. And, you know, we'd also look at the surveys. This one was like hectically attended. It was like a hundred people there and the venue was too small. So we obviously curate it and change it up all the time to keep it, you know, sort of interesting and fun, but also, you know, do meet and greets that people really like. So, like, for example, hall pass meet and greets is just like insanely hectic. It's like people love hall pass. But what we're also doing is we're attaching playtime just slightly after the start of the meet and greet. So, for example, on the Radiance Cruise coming up now, we've got a hall pass meet and greet in the colony club. which is one of our main playrooms. But there's a bar right at the end of the Colleen Club. So we're doing the meet and greet at that bar. And then the playroom is right there. There's like these beds and whatnot. And you can basically just, if you find someone that you really like and you're having fun with, then there you go, you know, straight there. And that's kind of the sort of mission and the connection that we're trying to make. So, you know, like, hey, go and meet new friends, people. If you make connections, well, you know, have fun with it. Now, we can't do that for every meet and greet because it's just not, It's not practical. Swing nation playroom time. We could probably direct them. We can direct them. That's at midnight every night. So here you go. I'll make a decision on the fly. I don't know what's happening in the playroom slightly after your meet and greet, but your meet and greet, I think, is in the schooner bar. It is. Yeah, it is. This colony club is right next to the schooner bar. Okay, people, there we go. Right. I love it. I love it. So there you go. So Russell said, just go straight from the schooner bar into the colony club. Have fun. Just knock yourself out. All right. So, and then we've got a whole bunch of new sort of, we're starting getting new presenters and, and folks that just sort of do the seminars and workshops and play shops and they well attended and people love them. So we, about half of our seminars and workshops are free and the other half are paid for. And, and a lot of that money actually goes to the presenter themselves. You know, it's, it's, you know, we make, we obviously make a little bit of money. the cruise line makes a little bit of money on it, but the sort of core revenue goes to the folks that are actually doing the presentation, which is rightly so. You know, this is, this is, you know, they, you know, we, and we have no problem sort of vendors and people that are on the cruise also making some money. So, you know, we've got our guys that do body painting, Avi and Cheryl Ann, and we've got people that do the fairy hair and we've got Vijay that does the shop and all of this stuff. So, you know, there's, you know, everyone kind of feeds a little bit at the trough. like, you know, and we're cool with that. The other big thing that we're working on, which is, which is, it takes a huge amount of effort and energy, particularly on my part, is just adult excursions. And it's really, really hard because you're going into countries and you're going into places which they're not overly excited about having nudity and certainly not overly excited about lewdness and sexuality, you know, like that's, But, you know, we've worked really hard on trying to get adult excursions, full clothing, optional excursions. So for the April cruise, as you know, we've got two of them. We've got the one in Montego Bay. And it's a really little, cool little beach that we'd be taking over. And it's a full inclusive thing that we're doing. So it's transportation, all your food, your beverage, entertainment. And this particular one, we've got a playroom. And we've got a foam pit right next to the playroom. So the playroom is going to be sort of decorated into like an Arabian tent, like a Bedouin tent type of thing. So we're going to have carpets down and sort of mattresses. And the foam pit is going to be right next to that. So people can sort of migrate from the foam pit into the playroom. There's also a dungeon. We've got a tent, which is a dungeon, which is pretty cool. We've got a bunch of DJs, a reggae band when you get there. And it's full nudity. The beach is not particularly big. It's big enough for what we're wanting to do. But yeah, we've taken a while to put this together. We've actually gone in partnership with a company called Kinky Cruise. And they're co-sponsoring this with us. And that's why we're actually doing free seminars on kinks. and BDSM and all sorts of stuff at this excursion. So we're really excited about this. This is the first time Bliss is doing something sort of this on the edges, if you like, if that's a term that we're, you know, we actually got a playroom on an excursion, which, you know, that was quite a big feat to do. And then the second beach party we've got is in Cozumel. And it's a cute little place called Roots Beach Club. It's just started. And I actually went there two weeks ago and I met the owner. And he's a really, really cool guy. He's just this, he's like, hey, whatever you want to do, we can do it. But it's the way he's, the design of the beach club, it's almost like a, like Tulum. It's got this sort of very rustic, earthy kind of look about it. And when guests go there, they're going to be like, oh my God, where are we going? And you kind of have to go down this bumpy, this bumpy dirt road to get to it. And you're going through this forest. But when you get there, it's like, oh my God, Oh, this is so cool. And it's intentionally, this is intentional because, you know, we want absolute privacy. We want to have complete nudity. So, you know, we don't get bothered. And this is more of like the Jamaica one is really more partying, you know, DJs, bands, you know, fun, playroom, blah. Whereas the Cozumel one is sort of more chilled. It's like, okay, you go there, we'll have music. We'll have a DJ, but it's not just, you know, and people can dance if they want to, but it's more like a chill day at the beach. You can have nudity. There's these beautiful little cabanas that are sort of made out of this sort of like bamboo kind of thing. And it's a beautiful, pristine beach. It's actually beautiful. It's a much bigger beach than Jamaica, but the whole sort of vibe about this excursion, the one is very different to the other. You know, the venues are very different. Whichever one's available to book, we booked just the other day. We'll be at both, but we definitely booked the one that's already available. I think that's great. What we hear from people that go on Bliss Cruise a lot is there's so many people that tell us we don't even get off the ship anymore because there's only so many times you can go zipline or go swim with the dolphins or do some of these. Some of these unique experiences that are almost like bucket list items. When else will you be able to do something, have a plan? in a foam pit you know on an island it definitely like the idea of taking the bliss cruise energy off of the ship yeah i mean so it's still a bliss cruise experience but now you're doing it off the ship and in a in an island on a beach and what you what is really cool is april's and actually not sold out correct which is very unusual so because like when people come to us and like we want to go listen like plan a year in the head like go ahead set up a payment plan be make it but for people that are here this and they're like this sounds amazing i want to go you have an actual chance to go in just a few months if you want to which is very unusual for y'all it is we don't have a huge amount of cabins left and we probably will sell out by i don't know mid-march just at the speed we're going and it is unusually a cruise for whatever reason just just people didn't gravitate maybe there's just so much inventory that's out there right now i mean it seems like there's a lot of people a lot of our friends that go on every single bliss cruise didn't do april or didn't do february did february or did february instead of april this year because it's different yeah so i mean there and we always have people reach out to us like last minute like we had somebody book february just a couple weeks ago they were able to get you know somebody had canceled a room so they were able to get in so there's a lot of people that are last minute people that are hearing this and want to go so you can definitely still get a room you can get a room yeah it'll we're probably going to be done by sort of end of february well actually probably by the end of the february cruise if it was me i'd want to book it before the february cruise i'd be afraid i'd be afraid the february cruise people will book it out if the truth be told the the april cruise is is actually just the amount of effort we've done on on the excursions and what we're going to be doing on the ship is actually going to be one that is is going to be amazing. And I'll tell you what we're doing on Wonder and just the type of thing we're going to do there. But just if you want just an amazing experience and, you know, just do, you know, experience all these beach parties that we're doing. Let me kind of give you some tidbits on April. So for the playrooms on April, so as I said, we've got the Sex Under the Stars on the lawn and we've got the solarium and all that stuff. But we've also got, so we We spoke about the outdoor, you know, outdoor playroom. So this particular cruise, this particular ship rather, unlike the reflection cruise, which has the basketball court at the front of the ship, which is kind of a weird place they put a basketball court. They've taken that basketball court out of the ship and they've turned it into like a beach club. So it's like cabanas and, and hot tubs, et cetera. And that's actually going to be our playroom. So it's just such a beautiful, beautiful space. It's, it's so cool. It's almost like a beach club that you can kind of go to. It's designed to be for the suites, but there's two levels to the suites. So we're going to allow the suites, you know, they're going to get another level, but this particular area is going to be for all passengers. So that's just one little thing that we're doing. As I said, we've got all these music venues and we've got some really, really cool speciality, like just interesting, like little events we're doing. So, for example, one of the theme nights is Western Cowboy theme night. So we're doing a speciality dinner. There's a restaurant called the Lawn Club, which is right next to the lawn, actually. Hence the name. And so we're doing like a country dinner there. And then they're sort of like making country hats and like teaching people how to line dance. That'd be cute. Yeah, just on the grass. And then, as I said, we've got the hippie party, which is like a Woodstock party. And we're going to have people, you know, you've got blankets and you can kind of listen to hippie, you know, like, you know, 60s hippie music. And then if you're in, it's like a Woodstock deal. And you can fuck outside. And then we're going to do probably two or three overnight. So midnight to sunrise like EDM parties on the sunset bar because that was really popular on the reflection cruise. And we just got a lot of just things happening on this cruise. So I'm very, very excited about this cruise and I'm fairly convinced by the end of February it's going to have sold out. For whatever reason, this particular cruise didn't sell out as early and as quick as the other. I think with you adding the February cruise, I think there's two or three other Swinger-adjacent cruises that are happening at the same time. I'd be guessing that's probably why. We also have a lot of friends that come from the West Coast and to come for like four days, it just doesn't make sense. They were like, we'll skip this one, which I get, which is fine because I think that gave room for a lot of people that because the February one is shorter. So like you said, the age, a lot of younger people, maybe kids with small children that can't be gone for seven or eight days. So I think that's it. But I mean, honestly, a lot of people don't like that. You have to book a year in advance because they don't plan things a year in advance. So this is your time to go. Yeah. So Swinger Society, go to swingercity.net and book that cruise. So we're running a little bit short on time, Russell. Actually, we're already over time, but I wanted to We'll let you touch on the November cruise real quick. And then I had a couple questions for you about kind of the future of Bliss that I wanted to get in here to before we stop. So real briefly, can you kind of just tell us a little bit about the November cruise? Well, let's talk. If you don't know about Bliss, right now there's three. February, April, and November. So we've talked a good bit about February, which is in a few weeks, and then we just talked about April. So can you just fill them in a little bit on the November one? Sure. So just some background. The original November Cruise was Symphony, which is an Oasis class ship. So I'm not going to get into the gory details of the various classes ship, but it's one of the biggest class ships in the world. It's arguably one of the biggest ships in the world. Six and a half thousand guests. So that gives you an understanding. So we had the option of chartering Oasis, which was considerably cheaper, or Wanda. Wanda is a two-year-old ship. It's a beautiful ship. And one of the main reasons why we charted is because it's got this beautiful enclosed solarium. So on Symphony, we had a lot of rain in 2024. And it had a louvered roof. It didn't have enclosed solarium. It had almost like a louvered roof. And the main playroom got quite wet, you know, like regularly. And it was just, it wasn't, it was okay. We dealt with it, but it was just one of those things. So the main reason that we charted the ship is we've got this enclosed solarium. It's 30,000 square feet of solarium. Wow. That might be like the biggest playroom ever. Was that what you were about to say? Yeah. So if we were allowed to do a sort of Guinness World Record on the biggest playroom ever, this would be it. So it is absolutely beautiful. We're going to create sort of all sorts of spaces in this playroom. You know, we're going to have beautiful lighting in it. But this particular playroom is arguably the biggest playroom that, you know, in history. on the lifestyle world, I think. So you get to go. So in the November cruise, you're on the biggest swinger party ever on the world. And then you have now a chance to participate in the largest orgy in the world. Can we make a time for that? Can we just schedule a time where it's like, if you want to participate in the largest orgy ever in the world, can we do it at like 10 p.m. on a Saturday or something? Somebody needs to reach out to Guinness Book or World Records. We need the guy there to count the people and all the things. All right. So you know what? I'm going to take you up on that day. That's what I talk about. Listen, we are breaking news right here on the Swing Nation podcast. November 2026, largest orgy in history is going down. I love it. We're contacting Guinness. We're going to schedule a time. I will be in the middle holding a flag or something. You just rally on me. There's 1,287 people participating. So far, I think you're onto something there. But just to emphasize what you just said, Ronda 26, and for that matter, Ronda 27, will be the largest lifestyle event on the planet, by far. It's the biggest concentration of swingers in one place at one time. So if you want to be participating in that, and just for the record, this cruise is really, really close to selling out. It's like, honestly, by the end of February, beginning of March, I think it's going to be sold. We're selling cabins on this cruise. It's the fastest selling cruise we've ever had. And there's a lot of inventory to sell. It's nearly 3,000 cabins, 6,500 guests. It's a lot of things. So also go to the swing nation, or I'm sorry, swingerssociety.net and book that right now. So that you can participate in the largest swingers party. In addition to the sort of playrooms, we've got an amazing amount of music choice. So we've got multiple venues, nighttime outdoor parties, sunset bar, pools. We've got what's called the Music Hall. We've got Studio B. We've got the Aqua Theater at the back of the ship. We're going to double down on just the music choice that you've got. So we can have hip hop. We can have like a rock band maybe sort of two or three times. We're going to do obviously a lot of EDM stuff. We've got the party at the back of the ship. The glow night would be just amazing. So basically everything we talked about for February and April just on a much grander scale. On a much grander scale. Seminars, we're probably going to have over 100 seminars going on. We've got, you know, in addition to the normal playroom, we've got, you know, like a dedicated dungeon. And it's a really, really cool venue. The conference area, which is very big on the ship, we're using that, you know, for all sorts of things as a but also sort of conference space and you know if you're into you know learning and conferences seminars etc this is this is a place that you can go um entertainment again we just double you know doubling down so this particular ship on the actual cruise and i think they still do it there's there's a broadway show which we will obviously keep um and then there's a show where they actually do drones in the theater so it's like this drone show which is which is really cool so you know these are i'm hoping they still have this show when we're chartering the ship, I believe there is. Then the sort of daytime fun, the ship has got three main pools. So two of the pools will be sort of party, you know, pool parties, et cetera, et cetera. And the other pool would be sort of more chilled. It's probably got the biggest spar of any cruise ship in the world, you know, like just three levels of spar and massages. And if you be kind of into that, there's also a lot of sort of vanilla activities on the ship. So there's sort of zip lining and, There's this thing called the ultimate abyss. You slide down this thing. Can you zipline topless? Because that would be fine. Probably not. He thought about it for a second. He's like, I can't promise that. But I mean, how fun would that be to say, I zipline topless? I'm all for like a good story. You know, I'm all for that good story. If I'm thinking it, half of those 6,000 people on that ship are also going to be thinking. You better believe it. Then there's a thing called the perfect storm, which I don't know what that is. I don't think what. Yeah. Anyway, it's a whole bunch of, you know, sort of stuff that they obviously have on the ship in general. And obviously everyone can do that. We've also got a, we're going to do a lot of speciality dinners. this type of stuff we're going to do sort of like a um so you know we're going to do our regular special activities which is fetish night and we take over you know a venue and we you know make it into fetish but we're going to do like a wine tasting and wine pairing thing we're also going to do um bourbon and whiskey tasting we've also got um they we're going to actually have it on all the cruises called cigars under the stars we've got sex under the stars now we've got cigars under the stars so if you're into like you know smoking cigars is like a there's an area for you So there's just so much activity that we've got. We're going to Aruba and Carousel, which is venues that we have not really visited at all, I think. Yeah, I'm excited about those doms, for sure. So Aruba, just so you know, Aruba, we're staying up until 11 o'clock at night in Aruba. So if you want to just sort of discover Aruba at night. We're also actively looking for sort of adult excursions in Aruba. Right now, we've got a guy on the ground that is trying to find it. And again, it's so difficult to find these things. You know, you've got to find the right location. There's got to be privacy. It's tough. But honestly, this is the, you know, the entertainment. There's going to be a lot of adult entertainment, all the, you know, the stuff I spoke about earlier, burlesque, male review, you know, lights, aerial shows. So it's like if you're going to go on any lifestyle vacation, you probably want to go on Wanda or actually April I must say even though it's a smaller ship we're doing just because of the beach parties we're doing so much really cool stuff on April which I'm so excited about but yeah Wanda is our flagship it's going to be sort of the biggest lifestyle party on the planet and we're going to brand it as such that's just what it is and I think we've got the rights to say that you know like you could Cap Dagg argue that they've got the biggest lifestyle party. It's not really a centralized party. It's more of a city or a village. But yeah, six and a half thousand people concentrate on a cruise ship. That's pretty cool. And with the app, it allows you to be able to connect with people. So one of the biggest sort of complaints you get for people for really big cruise ships is that I met this guy and I never saw it. I met this guy. That's always been the Bliss Cruise thing. The slut cards used to be the thing. Like, hey, give them your slut card, which gives them the their username on SDCNSLS and, you know, maybe they can message you through that. And there was ways to kind of backdoor the cruise line apps and you could somehow message each other there. But Blizz Cruise makes it so much easier. The app has been, just from an outsider looking in, probably one of the biggest improvements that I've seen. And I really like it. Yeah. Thank you. Listen, we have spent a huge amount of effort and energy and money on making that app what it is. And I think it was worth every single cent. It really is for us a game changer. Our guests have told us the app is an absolute game changer. It's so easy for guests to be able to search other guests and look it up. And it's obviously fully private because only people that are on the cruise ship have got profiles on the app. So people can put their obviously facial pictures and know that this is not going anywhere unless someone's trying to be malicious or something. But for the most part, it's this closed-knit community. You know that the people on that cruise are the people that are on that app and then have the profiles on the app. Also, it also gives you a very good insight of what's happening on the ship. You can create your own calendar and you can say, okay, I want to go to this thing and I want to go to that thing. You can see who else is going to these things or you can create group messages. Let's say you're coming on the cruise with, I don't know, 10 other couples and you can just create this group message. And, you know, you don't all have to have internet. You know, we whitelisted the app. There was a lot of negotiation that we had to do with the ship. But finally, they allowed us to whitelist the app on their internal network. So it allows people to communicate. And so if you say a group of 10 people, like, okay, let's all go to this particular venue tonight. It's going to be so useful for us. Yeah, I mean, I made a group just last night. It was super easy. No issue. I've been adding people to it all day. and we tend to do like big group dinner so like we always eat at a certain you know at a time so be like hey we're eating at eight o'clock we're going to meet on this deck you know we'll be waiting out for or hey this party was not super great we're moving to this party so just be able to quick send out like one message is is huge so we we very much appreciate that yeah and and so like we've got push notifications so people like we'll get them we'll get actually the message like it's not just you know you know you don't have to be in the app to get the message. It'll show you that this is what it is. Obviously, if you set that on your phone or if you disable on your phone, you're not going to get the message, but you know what I mean. So the app for us was a big key part of when we bought the company is this is how we want to sort of, these are sort of key elements of how we want to improve the experience. And it's been a huge, huge success. I'm super, you know, I'm very proud of our app team, what they've done. And I think, Dan, you've met Mike and the app team. Yeah, we met him on the last, yeah. He's actually, he got my number and he's actually texting me a few times and asked me a few questions about what I thought about this. And he's that kind of guy and he loves the industry, loves the community and he's super, super smart. He understands and he, and listen, we built the app in three months. The first iteration of the app before Explorer in April last year, we built the app in three months and it was, we were like on the edge. Like, geez, we were like literally the, the day, two days before, which was stressful for me, but we, you know, we got it done and it worked and there's no major hiccups and we've just improved it since. Do you guys like the new skin that we've done on the app and the new website? I do. Yeah. I've been, I've been, cause like we, I tend to be the one that responds and we've been getting a lot, especially as the February cruise has, is closer. We've been getting a ton of messages from people. So I'll go in and respond and yeah, it's, it's been great. Yeah. I booked the beach party through the app just the other night. It was super easy So yeah, I've really enjoyed it Cool, man So yeah, I mean, honestly, the wonder kind of speaks for itself And it is a reason why it's kind of selling out as fast as it is Because it has a gravitational force that comes with it And I think people, you know, there's a FOMO effect there That people just want to be part of the biggest party ever Yeah, I want to be part I want to be able to say I was there Yeah To be honest, we... I'm going to try and do that, okay? We love that. We're going to like... All right, I'm going to speak to my team and say, okay, can we do the biggest... I'll make an event on the cruise that we're going to attempt to do the biggest orgy in the history of mankind. I love that. I love that. And I love that we came up with that idea right here on the Swing Nation podcast. And it's going to be sponsored by Swing Nation. Hey, I love it. We will be there with bells on. But no, speaking of the November cruise, so not in 2020, 2024 was also a big ship. And we missed that cruise. And we've hated it ever since. And we have had, we have regret FOMO from like two years now. But like some of our friends went and then we talked to people like, oh yeah, we were on the big ship. And we're like, we missed that one. But we had like a kid's birthday that fell like in the middle. So we, we missed. And I'm like, never again. We will celebrate the birthday like before, after, like we're going. So no. I totally get the FOMO because we have it from two cruises back, so we get it. Well, I've got to tell you that Wander is a significant leap up on Symphony. There's, I think, six ships in this class, and the last two are a serious upgrade from the previous four. It's Wander and Utopia, and they're bringing out the final ship in, I think, I think a year or so I don't know what it's called but it is an absolutely beautiful vessel I was on it two or three weeks ago as just doing inspection and it is it's it's new it's it's contemporary it's sexy it's got multiple neighborhoods it's got like this the sweet neighborhood like if you if you've got the money and you can spend it on suites that you've got your own your own pool and your own sort of dining area you've got all these different areas that you can go to it's it's fucking awesome it's It's really cool. Sounds so cool. Yeah. Lacey, if you're going to be a swinger, you need to be a responsible swinger. I agree. And part of being a responsible swinger is getting tested on a regular basis. Yeah. Now, something I didn't know is, not all STI STD testing is the same. That is correct. Not every family doctor fully understands how you should be getting tested. That is correct. What one doctor thinks is a full panel, another doctor may have a completely different version of that. And being somebody in the lifestyle and engaging with multiple partners, what you should be getting tested for is probably, if you're not telling your doctor that, what you should be getting tested for is probably different than what they're thinking. thinking in their head. Yeah, because they don't know your lifestyle. Or even if they do know your lifestyle, there's a like, for instance, there is a new one called MGen. And we just recently met a doctor at a lifestyle party and said that she had never even heard about it. And so she was awesome that we had educated her on that. So a lot of these doctors don't, they don't know it all. Right. So if you are going to participate in the lifestyle, you probably need to get tested from people that are meant to do this. So we use I Know My Status. It's the same people behind Talent Testing. It's a company that tests all the porn stars. So they're used to testing people that engage with multiple partners. They know all the latest on what STIs are coming up and spreading. And they track all the stats. I mean, they know how to test people for STIs. They're the experts. They are. And if someone that you engage with, you know, if they have used I Know My Status, they can actually give you a QR code and you can scan it and you can see their results right on your phone so you can confirm everything that they're telling you. Yeah, 100%. So please, if you're getting tested, get tested the right way. We recommend using I Know My Status. You can go to theswingnation.info, recommended apps and products, scroll down to the I Know My Status icon and you can get a discount off your first test. But please, if you're being, if you're swinging, if you're engaging with people in the community, please be safe about it. Go get tested. Yeah. Yeah, because we want you to fuck like a porn star. For sure. Lacey, one thing I don't leave home without when going to a swinger event is my ED medication. That is correct. Performance anxiety is 100% a real thing. Having sex in an orgy room with 100 people in there is way different than having sex at home in your bedroom. It is. So I like to have what we call little insurance policy and have some of that ED medication in my Shameless Care is who I use for that. And they actually just came out with a new product called the Shameless Duo. Yeah. Which is a combination medicine that has Viagra and Cialis in it. So that one, you can be ready whenever, but also it's got that dose that you can take when you're, you know, as you're getting ready to go to the playroom and you need that to kick in. Yeah. So I love it. I mean, I used it at Hedo for the first time and that combination. You've kind of pretty much switched to that, haven't you? That's basically what I use all the time now. Yeah. So if you're looking for ED medication, if you're new to the lifestyle and you're going to an event, you might want to get some and have it just handy in case you need it. Yeah. And the really cool thing about Shameless Care is they don't set you up on a reoccurring plan. So you're not going to get all of this ED medication that you have in your nightstand built up. When it's time that you need more, you'll get an email from them and they'll ask you, hey, are you ready for another round? And you can respond back. Yes, please. Please refill it or no, I'm good right now. Thank you. So it's really cool because you don't end up with all these extra pills and spend a bunch of money that you're not, you know, you don't need to spend. Yeah. And my favorite part is you don't actually have to go into an office and talk to your family doctor or a military doctor. You can do it all right online from the privacy of your home. You just go to the website, you fill out some forms, the doctor reviews it, approves you, disapproves you, and you move on from there. So if you would like to get some medication, you can go to the swing nation, So in the interest of time, I think we made it to our second question, I think, on our list, Russell. That's okay. That's okay. I did want to talk a little bit about a couple things. So one I wanted to address, you know, after the last cruise ship, there was a lot of discussions on social media and people talking about recording and videos. And so if people don't know what we're talking about, on the last cruise ship, there was Bliss staff that had video cameras and stuff. But they were very well marked. So they had like vests that said, like, Blitz production or Blitz video. I don't know exactly. But they were very well marked. And so they went around the ship and they were recording a lot of these amazing things that we've been talking about. And so there was some concern that that stuff was going to get out on the Internet. And, you know, people were saying things about don't go on Blitz because they're going to out you and all this stuff. And of course, we know that's not true. And we heard it on the ship. There was definitely talk towards the end of it about it. And then coming off the ship, we saw some stuff on like Reddit and Facebook. And then there was some questions about model releases. And if you don't want to be shown, you sign a form. So there was definitely a conversation around that, which we are no strangers to because we have cameras and stuff at our parties. And we do realize the power of social media and needing those videos and needing for people to see kind of what this experience is about. But there's a way to do it safely so you protect the people that want to be protected. And then the people that don't care, they can be shown. So we just wanted to kind of give you the floor. to talk about that and address it, because that has definitely been a hot topic. Yeah. Absolutely. And listen, first off, we absolutely know how sensitive this issue is. And we went into this with the complete understanding of protecting our guest privacy. I mean, when Vicky and I started going on our first Bliss Cruises, we were, you know, there was privacy issues. We want to make sure that, you know, you weren't exposed. And I can say from, you know, honestly, from our intentions that that as a core part of why we were doing this or how we were doing this was to protect people's privacy. And, you know, we would never expose any guests publicly that did not consent to do this. That is just fundamental to what we would not do. So in everything that we've produced, we have painstaking gone through every single picture and video frame to blur all faces to make sure the single person that it you know that a single person is not publicly exposed that didn't want to be exposed so i know there was sort of concerns um you know in the community and in the industry just about what we're doing but but i want to just reiterate to the community that we we have there's no way that we would expose people that did not want to be exposed and and it's fundamental and core to to you know what we want and the comfort that we want to give guests and with that said if you look at everything that we've that we've put out there we've you know we've produced a video we've got a brand new website i'd encourage guests to go and look at that if you look at these and that's the core reason why we did this the you know the main reason was to you know to get to you know to get material that the company's never had in the 10 years of its existence it never had professional photography and the intention was And, you know, as social media influencers and as just being part of this, video is a core part of selling a message. And the videos that we produce say a thousand words. And it captures the experience that you would get on a bliss cruise that you could never capture in words. It's just not possible. But the very core part of it is that we never, ever want to expose anyone that did not want to. or did not consent to being exposed. And I can promise you that there's no one that has been exposed. And I know this because I've worked with a videographer, with the editor. This is something that we've spent a lot of time and energy on. But I can assure people that no one that did not want to be exposed is exposed. And I don't know how to say that in a more honest and respectful way. And I want to add to that because as somebody that is a content creator who does put out content in around Blizz, I like prior to going on the ship, your staff has been wonderful in allowing not only me, but other content creators, safe places to record. Right. Scheduled times. Like literally before we get on the ship, I have a schedule of times that I can be in certain places and that it's safe for me to film. And I, and for example, one of the times the playroom was, it was like one of the Solarium playroom that we were talking about. There happened to be like two couples that were in a hot tub that were just relaxing. And the, the crew hadn't, you know, made them get out, even though it was closed, they hadn't. I, even though I knew I could film in there, I did not, you know, I was like, you know, I went and got some, I even messaged Dawn, Dawn on deck. I was like, Hey, there's some couples in here. I want to be respectful. I, I paused, they got them out. And then we, Then we filmed. So your staff has been nothing but amazing. We have signed model releases. And I've, you know, watched your social media. And I was telling you before we started recording, there's one picture. And it's funny, it's Dawn on deck is in the picture. And then you can see me and everybody else's face around us is, you cannot, it's blurred. But because I signed a model release, you can see me and you can see her and nobody else. And even Dawn, because she kind of walks the film crew around, she'll come. and be like, hey, can you stand here and let them just film you for a few minutes? Because we know we can use it. And I'm like, absolutely. So just from like an outsider looking in, your staff has been nothing but amazing in like allowing us safe places to get the content, but still be respectful of all the guests that are paying to be there. Thank you, Lacey. But I just, I know I'm repeating myself, but I really want to reiterate that we have, we have gone to great lengths to make sure that no one is exposed, that we don't expose. And we went into that with, that in mind. Now, going forward, this is a one off. We're not going to be doing film cruise, you know, much in the future. If we are, it's going to be exactly like you say, it's going to be a private venue with with either models or people that consent to be there. But we really did want to try and capture some video that and footage that that captures just the essence of what a bliss cruise is. And you can't. We try to do it with AI. And it's just not the same. It's just it's just not authentic. It's just it's And I'm sure AI is going to get there at some point, but we did it all. If you look at some of our previous website, we had an AI-generated thing. It really sucked. It was just like, okay, this is not who we are. And you could see it's generated from AI. Well, and that's also not the lifestyle. AI-generated stuff is usually like a stick figure woman. And the cool thing about the lifestyle is we all look a little different. And I think having real authentic pictures with people that are more than willing to share those or allow those, I think is kind of the best way to show people because we don't all look like AI images. You know, we're real people. And to sort of double down on this. So we have guest conduct policies, which cover many things, one of which is just sort of behavior of guests and photography. So we actually ask guests as just part of the community. If you are taking, you know, we're never going to stop people from carrying a phone around and taking pictures. It's the world we live in. There's this, you know, like, forget about 20 years ago when we didn't have cell phones or whatever the case is, and you couldn't take pictures or you walk around with little snap pictures. You know, clearly we, as a society, as a species, we've moved on from that, you know, like, and so people are walking around with a phone. There's no getting around that. So how do we police this? We say to guests, we say, listen, please be respectful of your community. There's people, you know, that take privacy very seriously. We take it seriously. We have no intention of exposing anyone that does not want to to be exposed. And I can say that absolutely with my hand on my heart. That's, you know, that's the truth. But to our fellow guests, it's just, if you're going to take a picture, make sure no one's in the back of the picture. If you're going to post something on social media, and we actually create, we created the photo booths on the cruise, you may have noticed those. And, you know, this, you clearly can only take a picture of you and what's behind you, which is, you know, kind of like, you know, a starlights or, you know, a bliss logo or whatever. And, you know, you can kind of take a picture of that. So these areas that we've provided people, you know, like we've got a big sign that says bliss or sexy or whatever. And it's positioned in a way that there can't really be people behind that. Or if there is, just be, you know, just be respectful about who it is you're taking pictures of. And people sign these guest conduct policies, you know, part of, you know, it's part of a requirement that we have with the ship. And, you know, the ship wants us to, you know, and there's all sorts of other things in the guest conduct policy, such as, and, you know, consent and no equals no and, you know, common respect and, you know, just behavior and et cetera, et cetera, you know, profanity or all this type of stuff. And photography is one of them. And obviously we, as a company, must, you know, practice what we preach, you know, like we had, and I guess the mistake that we made as a company, you know, with this issue is we didn't communicate it properly before the cruise. We didn't say to people, this is what we're doing, but it's okay. Be aware that this is, we'll never expose to you, you know, your pictures, et cetera, et cetera. And we honestly went into that with that intention, never to expose anyone. Why would we? I mean, it's, it would destroy our business. If people could not trust us, they would, they would, and if they felt that they were going to be exposed, they just wouldn't, they wouldn't book our cruises and, you know, we would go bankrupt. So I think we've taken this issue, really seriously. And listen, we've honestly listened to everyone on social media. We've seen the posts. We've paid attention to it. And I guess, you know, the one thing that we should have done in hindsight was to just make people aware of, you know, this is what we're doing. This is our intention. Please bear with us. You know, we're only doing it on this cruise, et cetera, et cetera. And we didn't do that and we should have. But I can assure everyone that no one will be publicly exposed without their consent. I can say that with 100% confidence. I get that because we actually get a lot of the same criticism. One, I try really hard not to have my camera out in public. But if I do, I am 100% not going. I can't use it. There's no point in doing it. understand how you feel because we have also been there and it is not in our interest to out anyone for our business it's also like we are swingers at heart and we would never ever want to put someone through that if we happen to do that so we totally get it yeah all right uh i think in the interest of time i'm gonna ask you the last question uh i want to talk a little bit about the future of bliss cruise um is it just cruise ships are you guys gonna come come on ashore and do some Are there going to be more cruises? We get asked a lot about the West Coast people. That's a good question. East Coast, West Coast, we get those questions. People don't like coming all the way to Florida to get on the ship. When are you going to build a resort somewhere? All those kind of questions. Listen, we do have a lot of exciting plans. Some I can disclose, some I can't disclose. Obviously, there's certain things that we just can't publicly say right now. And all of these things come with a sort of very high degree of complexity. So, you know, so whatever we're doing, particularly, like, let's say we're going to start doing land-based events, which there's a lot of potential opportunities there, you know, whether it be to partner with existing resorts or, you know, just work with different event organizers or just do, you know, multiple land-based events. that we're promoting. It comes with all sorts of complexities. If we were to go sort of full out and invest in real estate and things like that, those complexities come with investors and all sorts of rates of return and where we're going to do that and obviously respecting everyone else that we work with in the industry, whether it be travel agents or other resorts, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot to think about in that space. But it's certainly what I can say to answer your question is, yes, there is ideas and thoughts and plans that we would like to execute going forward, for sure, on a land-based type of opportunity. And I just got to be careful what I say. No, we get it. As somebody that was in the military and had a security clearance, I've had a lot of conversations that sounded just like this. So, I mean, I've got investors and those investors, you know. We don't want to get you in trouble, Russell. No. And I'm being cautious. I'm trying to be cautious to what I say. And listen, I do like telling people all our plans and what we're looking to do. So, that is sort of in the works. Talking about expanding the cruise side, the cruise business. So, as you know, we've gone from a fall and spring cruise to a fall, spring and winter cruise. we are going to continue doing that. We might actually increase the size of the ships depending on how much demand that we have. But obviously, we want to keep it, you know, within reason. Are we looking to do a summer cruise? Absolutely. There's plans in the work for summer cruise. Again, we've just got to be very cautious. We don't want to extend ourselves and put too much inventory out there because we've got a great product that is that there's a demand for it. of a limited supply and that creates a certain level of FOMO and excitement. We don't want to mess with that dynamic too much. Let me say this. If we do a summer cruise, it's not going to be out of Florida. There's no need to do it out of Florida. That's smart because you need a different group of people that maybe can't get to Florida. Options on the table. without trying to, again, disclose too much, is New York or the Northeast. Something in the Northeast. Well, you'd have to leave in the summer out of there. Yeah. That's only summer. So, I mean, remember, you know, part of the entire bliss experience is people being naked, being warm, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Can we go and charter a ship to Alaska or to Antarctica? I've seen people asking that on some of the Reddit posts. Is that sexy? Being freezing outside? Probably not. And listen, let me say this about that. There is no shortage of swingers that want to discover all other parts of the world. And we completely understand that. We respect that. Vicky and I have been on many of these different cruises. We've gone to all the different resorts, Cap Dag, you know, various parts of the world in a lifestyle cruise. And they are beautiful. They're wonderful. And there's space and time for everyone. So, you know, we've got other, if we can call it competitors in that space that work really well in that space. And we work really well in our space. And we have curated a product and a guest experience that really suits, you know, we do huge big ship charter takeovers to warm places, lots of fun, lots of energy, lots of excitement. We don't curate these very, very special detail type of cruises. That's not really what our speciality is, you know. And there's companies that do this and they do it really, really well. And I think they, you know, I would suggest that guests go and explore those and do those. Of course they should. I mean, you know, we're not the only game in town, but we also know what we're really good at and what we try and what our customer, who our customer is and how we can, you know, curate a product that really suits that, what they're looking for. But a summer cruise is something that we would consider it. So one option is New York. The second is the West Coast. Having spoken about the West Coast, it's, you know, there has been a few cruises that have gone out of the West Coast. And I don't know a lot of the detail, but from what I've heard, there haven't been a financial success. And it could be all reasons for reasons. It could be all reasons why those weren't financial successes. I don't know. It might not have been the time of the year. It might have been, you know, the wrong price structure. It might have been the incorrect ship. There could be all sorts of things that one needs to consider. Then the third option is potentially something in Europe. We're trying to keep the same core base structure of what a Blizz Cruise is within this expansion, but there's a lot of planets that have to line up. Just to give you some background or peek into how the dynamics of this work. Let's say we decided we wanted to do a a cruise out of the West Coast. You'd have to consider what ships are positioned in that area at that time. What the price of those ships are, because that's a big sort of component of it. What their sort of schedule is. Are they doing a three, four, a seven? There's all sorts of sort of schedules that go with that. What time of the year this is. And then it's finding the right cruise ship from the right port going to the right destinations the right time of the year in order to to make that work so there's quite a lot of alignment of planets in order to get that right um and i'm and i'm by no means suggesting that we can't do that it's just there's a lot of thought that goes into this it's a lot more complex than one would actually think it is it's it's i can't even imagine and yes in huge money and huge money and that and that's the other thing so you know You know, we're talking about big decisions with large amounts of capital that has to be put forward. You know, we pay for these ships, you know, mostly up front. We use working capital to secure the ships going forward. And there's sort of a cash flow cycle. Not that I'm going to get into the boring details of finance, but our cash flow cycle is that we're in negative cash flow position when we charter the ship. But, you know, as the ship gets close to the sailing, it becomes into a positive cash flow cycle. So we've got to make sure that when we charter a ship that it is going to be successful, that there's a high probability that we can sell it out, that our guests want to do that. And, you know, there's a lot of risk associated with that. And these are big decisions for us. We don't take, we certainly don't take them lightly. But we do believe that there's an opportunity to do a summer cruise, and that summer cruise is not going to be out of Florida. I'm excited for that. Wherever any of those options, I'm excited. Oh, awesome. So we've got, we've at least got two customers. Yes. We are booked for all of 2026. I don't think we booked for 2027, but we'll be there. But we always get asked, like, are you going on this cruise? And I'm like, nine times out of 10. Yes, we will. We will be there if at all possible. Of course. I mean, we, we love you guys. You're, you know, you're great customers of ours. You're great ambassadors for our company. And we really appreciate it. things that we're thinking about is actually different types of ships. So more modern and more sexy ships. Again, I can't disclose too much there, but there's obviously new ships coming onto the market. And, you know, and again, it's a massive financial decision to make because these ships are more expensive. They're beautiful and they've got all the bells and whistles and they've got everything that you'd ever wish for. But they come with a price tag. And, you know, can we balance the price of the ship with what our guests are prepared to bear in terms of, you know, and make sure that the product that they receive and the offering they receive is good value for money? And so these are the sort of considerations that we need to think about around these issues. But, yeah, but essentially different ports, different types of ships, different experiences, different excursions, And just thinking outside the box on everything that we're doing from the app to the entertainment, to the music, to the presenters that we're putting on. You know, as you know, we've developed a loyalty club. This is to really honor the people that have kind of just supported this for the last 10 years. And, you know, it's something that we've put together. It took a lot of effort to put that together. We've also, you know, started a referral program, which, you know, if you refer friends, You know, there's a little incentive for you to do it. But the main sort of objective of that is to sort of get your friends on the cruise because, you know, what's better than going on a bliss cruise is going on a bliss cruise with your buddies. I mean, that's kind of the idea. I think that's why we're so excited for February because we do have such a big group of friends that are coming. It's going to be, I'm like looking. Excited to see them experience it. Yeah. I mean, excited for that for February and for April, I'm excited for all the beach, the fun beach parties. So we're excited. So last question, Russell, I wanted to ask you, where do you see the lifestyle going? Do you think this community is becoming normalized? Do you think the community is growing? Do you see your customer base growing? So, yeah, I mean, so I think that the industry is growing and has been growing exponentially since really the internet has become part of our life. So if I would look and see, if I'd look at where this community came from, like key parties and, you know, people kind of, you know, just doing this. The free love movement, right? The hippies. That's where it started. And it was very sort of secretive and it's become more and more and more accepted. I mean, I was on a, you know, Vicky and I and our family were on a cruise ship during Thanksgiving. It was a vanilla cruise. And the guy, the cruise director, was referring to Swing Us Cruises. He says, and I don't know if any of you have got any upside-down pineapples on your... And literally, that was, you know, he said it to people in the audience. And everyone's like laughing and ha-ha-ha. So it was just like, okay, well, clearly it's becoming sort of normalized. And so I would think that, you know, the stigma currently associated with the lifestyle and non-monogamy is... going to slowly subside. I would compare it to the LGBTQ community 30 years ago. Dan always says the same thing. Dan always says the same thing. And I have huge respect for that community. They're cool. I love them. I think they're just sort of free-spirited people. And who am I to judge anyone, for Christ's sakes? Think about it. So I look at that community and I'm like, this is where they were. Well, I think we are where they were sort of 20 years ago. And I think what's going to happen is that it's going to slowly become more and more normalized, that the sort of stigma that's attached to this is going to start to subside. And I think it's just going to be, you know, it's going to be say like, okay, this is your thing. This is your thing. So, you know, you're into buy and you're into this and, you know, you're into BDSM and, you know, I'm into swinging and whatever, you know. And what I said right at the beginning of the interview or the discussion is that we're just normal people. We're just this normal bunch of people that have moms and pops and grannies and gramps and uncles and aunts and kids. And, you know, we go to university, we watch sport, we do whatever it is that we love doing. And this is just part of our life. This is an aspect to our life. And we're not crazies. We're not, you know, there's nothing weird really about us. And why should it not be normalized in some form or another, you know? So, yeah, I'm hoping that's what happens. I'm positioning our company to take advantage of that and to give people that want to experience this experience. and a sort of safe and a fun and sexy environment. And it's non-judgmental. And that gives them, you know, like a platform that they can live out their fantasies and just have a great time. That's what I'm, you know, trying to achieve. No, I agree. I agree. I think it's along the same lines as really what our platform has been for the last four years. And, you know, really, we came out around COVID time and we've really seen it explode since COVID. And I think, you know, people spending a lot of time on the internet and kind of seeing more and more of this. I think, you know, seeing people on social media becoming more open about talking about it and more and more podcasts and more and more people on TikTok and Instagram, it really does seem like the word is kind of getting out there. And like you said, if it's consenting adults doing consensual adult things and nobody's being hurt by it, I don't really see why society as a whole would want to put a stop to it. Exactly. So there's another aspect to it, which is what we haven't spoken about tonight. But the one thing that one needs to consider is we're fast moving into a world of AI. Okay. And think about this for a second without getting too philosophical. But there's – I think that as a species, we're going to sort of look at this and say it's unauthentic and it's not human. What makes us human, like when I walk on a bliss cruise, I just see everything that's human, everything that is the human spirit, the laughter, the fun, the experience. You cannot get that experience no matter how good AI is. You will not get that experience with computers or an AI, you know, in the AI world that we fast leading towards. And I think we are so well positioned that people would want to pivot away from that. They'd look at this and say, I just don't want that I want I want the human touch I want the you know as I say to people many times I say we love what do we love what we love about each other is not our perfections but our imperfections you know like it's it's like what why do you love Lacey because she does this little quirky thing and she is who she is and that's makes her human it makes her you know that just a human being that that is that is perfectly made as her. And I think what we are doing as a community and as me and us as a company, we are creating a product that allows you to escape that. And that's why I think we're well positioned for this industry to grow and to become a really cool community to be part of. I can see that. I think, like you said, as we connect more and more with With computers and AI, I do think we'll crave more and more human connection as a way to kind of escape that world at times. And I think that's what Bliss Cruise has always been in some ways, is escaping the real world, you know, the work and your bosses and your kids and just letting go of all that for a week and just embracing your friends and having fun. Yeah, it's unadulterated adult fun and escapism. And it's done consensually. It's legal. It's fun. And you're going to grow old with these wonderful memories. I can say that because I have them. Yeah, same. Yeah. All right. Well, as we finish up here, anything else you'd like to share with the Swing Nation listeners? We only went a little bit over time. We only like doubled the length of our podcast. That's okay. It was all good. We don't care. We're not even cutting it. We're going to keep the whole two hours. and we're going to publish it because that's how we roll here on the swing nation podcast yeah yeah listen i mean it's obviously fabulous to talk to you guys and thank you for bringing me on your show i like that we appreciate it and and um yeah and and other than you know if you're listening to this and you're not you've never been on a swing swing cruise actually if you've never been on a swing cruise get on a swing cruise yes but if you've never if you've never been on a bliss cruise uh you know come on it i'd we'd love to have you on the cruise We'll try and make it as fun and as exciting for you for whatever it is that you're into. If you're into this thing, we respect that. However you want, as you said before, Lacey, however you want your cruise to be, it'll be that. If you want it to be quiet and relaxed, it'll be that. If you want to have fun and socialize, it'll be that. If you want a lot of sex and a lot of Playtime, you know, you've got that. So anyway, we'd love whoever's never been on a bliss cruise and obviously all our customers that have been on bliss cruises. And if you haven't actually been on a bliss cruise for a while, you know, so I'm talking folks that have, you know, that, you know, maybe went on a bliss cruise before COVID or hasn't been on a bliss cruise for the last two or three years, you know, try it out again. It's like we're doing some really nice stuff. We're mixing up the product. We're making it a lot more fun. And we'd love to have you on the cruise. That's, you know, and, you know, spread the love in this community. That's what I say. Like, yeah, let's just have everyone just have a great time and have fun. Yeah. So if they want to learn more about Bliss Cruise, what's the website they should go to? It's blisscruise.com. It's like literally that simple. And it's newly remodeled blisscruise.com. You guys got all kinds of stuff there. Like you said, the videos and stuff are out. So if you want to take a little peek into what a blisscruise looks like, blisscruise.com is definitely a great resource. But if you're going to book, you need to go to, if you're going to, you need to go to swingersaturday.net and book through us that we can kind of be your tour guide. Yeah. We do zoom calls where we can get to know each other. We have private chats where we can like, if you have a question about a theme and you're like, what the hell do I wear? I will jump in and try to Last night, I was sending housecoats to people, like the housecoat that I bought, because everybody was like, we're there to help you. We also have our own swag bags that we will bring, deliver it to your door. So definitely, if you want to come, book with us. And if you're already on the ship, you can still come and hang out with us and do all the fun things. Come to our meet and greet. Yeah, we'll be there. Come to the meet and greet. Go sign up for Swing Nation's meet and greet. And listen, and for the record, we really, We try and support all our affiliates. You know, you guys are one of our affiliates or sub-affiliate. There's sort of different structures. And we know that our affiliates can curate these sort of really personalized experience for our guests. And that's why we always want to support them. We want to be part of, you know, allow them to sell the product and for their community to come on the ship and for them to create an experience that is tailored for them and answer questions for them. So, you know, as a company, we truly want to support all our affiliates in that respect. You know, we and we will do whatever we can in order to support the affiliates. You know, we're not trying to, you know, do all the bookings ourselves. That would be foolish of us. We honestly want to support you guys as affiliates and as, you know, serious influences in the industry and people that participate in the industry. So, as Bliss, we appreciate what you guys do. Thank you. Well, we appreciate you taking the time and we look forward to seeing you and your beautiful wife here in a few weeks on the Buzz Cruise. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And thank you again for having me on your show. I love it. Of course. All right. Well, I think with that, in a world full of apples. Be the pineapple. Be the pineapple, guys. Bye. Bye. Cheers. Bye. If you've enjoyed our podcast and want to support us, we have a five-star review wherever you're listening. If you want to see more of our content, you can find links to Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, OnlyFans and more in the show notes. Come join the conversation with us and other Swinger content creators on our Swinger Society Discord server. If you have questions or feedback, email them to us at theswingnation at gmail.com. Make sure you head on over to theswingnation.net and keep up to date on all things Swing Nation. We thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time. Goodbye. That's so hot.