What We’d Do to See Our Favorite Bands

by Alicia Thompson

When I first saw the announcement about Parahoy, the 2014 cruise hosted by Paramore, I immediately texted my husband: “Cruising with one of my favorite bands right before my birthday! It’s perfect!”

He came back with: “Except, it’s a cruise.”

It’s true. I don’t consider myself a big cruise person, since I don’t drink, have a self-imposed $20 limit for gambling, and could take or leave swimming with dolphins. But this was different. This was Parahoy, and it was going to feature concerts with not only Paramore, but with one of my other favorite bands, Tegan and Sara. In 2014, my Spotify “year in review” told me that I listened solely to alt-rock and Canadian indie, and it was because those were the two bands I had in heavy rotation at all times.

My mother had to front me the initial deposit, which I wanted to put down to reserve our cabin since I worried the tickets would sell out. Luckily, my mother and sister are huge fans of both Paramore and Tegan and Sara, so it was a foregone conclusion that we would all go on the trip together. I didn’t even realize what an advantage this gave me until I started to talk to other Paramore fans about their journeys to get on the cruise.

There’s a Facebook group devoted to Parahoy — those who’ve gone on the cruise before, those who want to go on the next one, and those who want to live vicariously through those who have gone or want to keep track of photos and stories. Once the next Parahoy was announced for March 2016, the group filled up with posts from people requesting roommates for quads and triples to try to defray the cost. For the first Parahoy, for example, Annie came all the way from Germany and roomed with people she’d met on Twitter from Philadelphia, California, and New Jersey in order to get a cheaper quad room rate. Rachel from Canada, only 16 at the time of the first cruise, had to find a random roommate who was at least 21 and willing to sign a form to be her “guardian on board.”

One of the coolest stories I heard of was about a woman named Linda from Norway, who desperately wanted to go on the cruise but figured it was a lost cause since she had no one to go with. She then got tagged in an Instagram photo from a fellow Norwegian fan; they’d met at a Paramore concert when both were pulled on stage during “Anklebiters” and had the requisite freakout fest afterward. “Are you going to Parahoy?” the other fan asked her, and that’s how Linda found herself roommates for the cruise (appropriately, in this case, offered through Norwegian Cruise Lines).

That was another advantage that I had, and one that I hadn’t even fully appreciated until I got on the ship. Display screens everywhere showed a map of all the different countries fans had traveled from, and for some of those fans, this cruise was their first opportunity to even see Paramore since a tour might not have come to their home country. I, on the other hand, live in Central Florida, and so it was only a four-hour drive to Miami to meet the boat. My mother, sister, and I left the morning we were supposed to set sail, and with no working tape deck adapter, we tried to rig a Solo cup to amplify our phones so we could sing along to Paramore and Tegan and Sara the entire trip down.

But for people coming from farther away, the drive was more arduous. Valerie from Texas commented on the Facebook group that she “traveled through a tornado, drove 19 hours, had two flat tires, and slept in [the] car to get to Miami.” And Rachel, who came all the way from Winnipeg at 16 years old, met up with her random roommate the night before setting sail to stay in a “gloriously sketchy” hotel. Perhaps one of the farthest distances traveled was by Jodie, the only fan from New Zealand on the cruise, who confirmed that the flight to Los Angeles alone would cost over a thousand dollars, and that didn’t even include travel to Miami, hotels, and the cruise itself.

When asked how she saved up for such a huge trip, Jodie said, “There were lots of sacrifices — coffees, movie dates, no unnecessary shopping or little food purchases. Everything went on my credit cards and I topped up my personal loan, which is pretty much my travel expenses.” For the first Parahoy, Linda sold jackets and T-shirts, jewelry, a pair of shoes, even camera equipment, to mitigate the $700 minimum cost for the cruise, and then relied on her grandmother in much the way I’d leaned on my mother to loan her money for the flight. Linda actually bumped into Hayley Williams, Paramore’s lead singer on the cruise, and she said the band wanted to make the cruise a tradition, and so Linda started saving for that potential as soon as she’d paid her grandmother back. “This time around, I’m selling a kidney,” she said before adding, “Just kidding! … But there’s no way I’m not going.”

Clare from Massachusetts was a high school senior at the time the first Parahoy was announced, and she juggled school and college applications with working nights to save up. She even spent $70 to dye her hair back to her natural color for a new job, and she said that the hardest part was trying to pay college application fees while also trying to make her periodic payments for the cruise. When she mentioned in passing to her guidance counselor that she was excited about the cruise in March, the guidance counselor dropped a bomb: If Clare missed those days of school, she might not graduate. Clare cried when she heard the news, but ultimately she decided that she’d risk taking summer school courses “all day every day” if it only meant she could be on the cruise with her favorite band.

Luckily for Clare, it didn’t come to that. But that sentiment — that the expense and the stress and the sacrifices were worth it for the chance to sail the Caribbean with Paramore — was shared by everyone I spoke to. Linda said that she was “never as happy” as when she was on the cruise, Jodie said that she “made friends for life,” and Clare said that “for those four days, nothing in the world could ruin [her] perfect happiness.”

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy experiences, and many studies have shown that those have a higher correlation with happiness than buying material items. Cornell psychology professor Thomas Gilovich has explored this phenomenon in his research. In one study published in a 2014 issue of Psychological Science, it’s the anticipation of an experiential purchase that accounts for some of this difference. A consumer is more likely to feel the giddy excitement of waiting for a vacation, a date night at a restaurant, or a baseball game, whereas that same consumer reports more impatience when waiting for a package to come in the mail.

The incessant activity on the Parahoy Facebook group supports this theory: fans post videos of favorite Paramore live performances, stories about times they’ve met the band, and inside references to the neverending soft-serve and infamous “Washy Washy” woman on the first cruise, all in the name of anticipating the epic promise of the next Parahoy. Presale opened four days ago, the full line-up of bands hasn’t even been announced yet, and already many of the rooms are sold out.

My mom, sister, and I booked a triple very similar to the one we got last time, eager to repeat our experiences and have some new ones on this second trip. I had planned on saving up for an academic conference that many people in my job attend, one that I’ve never been to. It would most assuredly be the better, smarter decision for me to make in my career. But then I remember the way it felt on that ship, the moment when Hayley Williams’ mic went out during “Now” and she climbed the stage scaffold, shouting out toward the crowd to sing along, and I felt this sense of unity and beauty that I don’t even know that I could explain.

I remember the first Tegan and Sara show on a surprisingly windy night with rough seas, where Sara was stumbling on the stage as she got her sea legs, and my mother, sister, and I were huddled together on deck chairs. I remember that drive to Miami, buzzing with anticipation as we tried to hold our iPhones up to blast the music as loud as we could. I’m not much of a cruise person. I don’t choose to spend my money on alcohol or gambling or swimming with dolphins, because those things don’t represent fun to me. But we all have these experiences. For me, it may be Parahoy, and for others, it’s Disney or a ComicCon or a chance to drive a NASCAR car, it doesn’t matter; it’s worth it to spend money on those things when they come around — even if it means you’ll be eating Top Ramen for the next year to get there.

This story is part of our Travel Month series.

Alicia Thompson is the author of the YA novel PSYCH MAJOR SYNDROME and the co-author of the children’s series GO-FOR-GOLD GYMNASTS, all published by Disney Hyperion. Her work has appeared in GIRLS’ LIFE and NARRATIVELY. You can find her on Twitter @aliciabooks.

Photo: Laurence Dion

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