As TV shows and movies are prone to do, they make traveling through time look so exciting, don’t they? Hop in a machine or jump through a portal, and you whirl ahead or backward in time effortlessly.
Wrong!
Time travel is hard!
I mean, it’s easy enough. You don’t even need a fancy sci-fi gadget or fantasy gateway to do it. Heck, like me, you’re probably already a time traveler and don’t even know it. Especially if you live in a state that recognizes daylight savings time. Or if you’ve ever traveled between time zones. Shifting hours forward or back is a form of time travel for sure.
But there’s one place on Earth where you can literally travel a whole day ahead or back. I’m talking about the international date line, and crossing it isn’t as easy as it seems.
Time Travel, International Date Line-Style
Okay, sure. Crossing the international date line (IDL) isn’t as glamorous as traveling backward or forward decades or centuries. As Live Science put it, “there’s no physics-defying magic going on here.”
All you’re really doing is crossing an imaginary line in the Pacific Ocean to make the leap between days. One that’s “based on a rational, practical system of universal timekeeping that considers Earth’s movement around the sun.”
Sounds pretty simple and straightforward, right? But have you ever gained or lost an entire day? If you have, especially via a ship, then you know what I’m talking about. It’s both exhilarating and exhausting.
Basically, if you think falling back or springing ahead a measly hour is the pits, try multiplying that by 24. It’s hard enough doing it all at once when you fly over, but doing it gradually day by day by ship is even worse. Or it was for me.
We’ll get to why. First, let’s explore why crossing via a cruise ship is so exciting.
Crossing the IDL by Cruise Ship
Cunard is among the cruise lines that offer itineraries that cross the IDL.
“There’s no experience quite like crossing the International Date Line on an ocean voyage,” they explain. “Savor the chance to sail the open seas as your ship literally jumps through time.”
With such poetic wordsmithery, you may better appreciate why, as they put it, “a cruise crossing The International Date Line is high on many travelers’ wish lists.”
In addition to Cunard, other cruise lines that offer international date line itineraries include:
- Celebrity, which invites you to “cross ‘time travel’ off your bucket list when you embark” on one of their IDL cruises.
- Holland America, which describes it as “the only-one-place-in-the-world feeling of adding or losing a day within the span of a second.”
- Disney Cruise Lines, which offers guests who pick one of their IDL cruises the opportunity to “join the exclusive club of people who have either skipped or gained a day.”
It sounds so magical, right? Real-life time travel! How exciting!
It is. But I’m here to tell you the secret I wish someone had shared with me before I embarked on such an adventure via ship.
The Brutal Reality of Time Travel
The first time we crossed the IDL was when we flew to Singapore. People had warned me that jetlag might be brutal. It was. I tried to brace for it as best as possible, but I never adjusted. Coming back home was even worse. It took me a month to get back in sync.
So when we embarked on an adventure to Japan via a cruise ship that crossed the IDL, I wondered what that would be like. How would the time change be handled? Would it be easier than by plane?
Turned out they did it gradually. Pretty much every night for a week, we set the clocks back an hour. And then one day, the day we actually crossed the IDL, we lost an entire day. We went to bed on Sunday, September 1. When we woke up, it was Tuesday, September 3. We completely skipped Monday! (Which, in this case, was Labor Day.)
I took a picture of the time changes they gave us when we first boarded. They ended up being a little different than what was listed, though.
Losing an hour so many nights resulted in a lot of confusion for everyone’s bodies. My husband and I found ourselves waking up ready to go at 1 a.m. as if it were 7 a.m.
A lot of times, we’d get up at 3 a.m. and head up to Lido to get water. To our surprise, half the ship would be up doing the same. (Well, maybe not getting something to drink, but hanging out in Lido, either talking with other sleepless souls, or playing games, or reading at a table alone in an effort not to disturb their sleeping cabin mates .)
Anyway, it shattered my illusions of time travel. If just one day was so rough, I can’t imagine how exhausting traveling years and years through time might be. That’s why I think Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day may be more my speed.
Check-In
Did you ever think time travel might be so taxing?
Courtney Mroch is a globe-trotting restless spirit who’s both possessed by wanderlust and the spirit of adventure, and obsessed with true crime, horror, the paranormal, and weird days. Perhaps it has something to do with her genes? She is related to occult royalty, after all. Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo practitioner of New Orleans, is one of her ancestors. (Yes, really! As explained here.) That could also explain her infatuation with skeletons.
Speaking of mystical, to learn how Courtney channeled her battle with cancer to conjure up this site, check out HJ’s Origin Story.
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Yes, I’d rather celebrate Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day than actually time traveling. I imagine taking a wee bit of car (or sea) sickness then multiplying it like crazy, ick! And I’m sure my phone wouldn’t automatically update, so I’d have to deal with that, too!
Fascinating. Sounds actually a bit worse than just flying to someplace in Europe and being so many hours ahead.
In Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, Phineas Fogg gained a whole day because he went counter clockwise around the world.
Oh, Priscilla, I have been waiting to respond to this. I was out of town and didn’t have time before I lost internet connection when I first read it, but your “And I’m sure my phone wouldn’t automatically update…” comment just CRACKED me up!!!! THANK YOU for the comment AND chuckle!!!
It was WAY worse than just flying to Europe and sucking up the time difference. At least that way if I can keep myself up after we land and just go to bed early, I can pretty much adapt to the time change. But this gradual way…ooomf! Too hard!
And I don’t think I knew that about the Around the World book! In some ways, what Fogg experienced is the idea of the International Date Line. I wonder if the IDL kind of was inspired by that? Your comment got me curious when the book was pubbed vs the date line created. Book came first (1872) vs IDL (1884). So it’s possible that influenced the concept of it!!!!