I used his signup code to thank him for encouraging me to go :) If you like this report and it inspires you to go, or to go again, you can use my signup code for a discount of up to $200: "ledtranceguy"
As I write this, barely a week after the cruise is over, the 2026 cruise is close to being sold out (it felt weird that it went on sale before the 2025 one even left, but now I know why). If you are interested in going, don't delay :)
This looks like the canonical page to sign up for 2026.
Wait, after it being around 20 years, you only went on groovecruise this year for the first time?
Yes, Groove Cruise has been around for a long time (20-ish years), but I had never been so far, because:
I'm on a boat... I'm on a boat... Take a good look at me, I'm on a motherf'ing boat :)
Now that this is out of the way, and you probably think I'm a killjoy :) I did obviously end up going this year and had a fantastic time. Yes, I would have had just as much as a good time if the cruise ship (Alure of the Sea) had been sitting in the middle of a parking lot somehwere for those 4 days, since it's really a small city with all the fun happening inside and the mere 3.5h in Labadee were fun but didn't seem essential. That said it's a cruise ship, so it's somehow supposed to boat somewhere, and it did :)
The ship was the 4th largest in existence as of today if I read right, and was pretty impressive. It did lack waterslides, and the kart racing track I saw on some ship commercial ;) but it had:
I'm not that great at it, but I tried :)
good food and presentation
yes, it was legit :)
This is a good time to point out that the Groovecruise team did an amazing job decking out the place and turning a cruiseship into a small city with nightclubs and festival areas. They really went all out, all the way to confetti that had to be cleaned carefully afterwards and even balloon drops. Multiple stages had lasers and cool lighting and overall the sound was good. Given the location and that it had to be installed and torn down in record time because the ship was used for regular cruises just before, and just after, was nothing short of amazing.
The crew was very amused by the GC crowds (who wouldn't), and put up with the decorations people brought from LED walls to a wall of hanging dicks you had to walk through to cross the corridor :)
cabins with view on the promenade
this display was fun to read :)
Boat Policies/security
The boat rules were of course geared towards the normal cruises they had the rest of the year, but ultimately they worked well for GC too, and they were pretty lenient with the many things people brought it for the party. Department of immigration somehow brought sniffing dogs to do their own scan of people getting in, but outside of that, the rules were mostly reasonable:I was worried about the lack of plugs, but with 2 big multichannel USB chargers (10 and 8 outputs) plus a 4 port one, I was ok :) This also answers the question of how many batteries I use and have to charge (a bit too many, haha):
People
Ok, so I've been to many festivals (over 50 in 20+ years), and I like the costume aspect of those who encourage them, like most insomniac festivals in the US including EDC Vegas, Beyond Wonderland, and Dreamstate Socal. But I have to say that Groovecruise won as "best vibes and most costumes" by a good amount. I was positively impressed and it was loads of fun:
bringing a full LED wall, great job!
and let's not forget the dick wall from deck 14
Kudos to this couple for the fantastic LED costumes:
the same folks again
And then this guy, impressive tech but it must have been fragile and with inadequate batteries because I only saw it once for 20mn or so:
A good amount of nice LED outfits, well done!
Of course, I had fun taking pictures with existing friends and new ones:
as odds are, Daxson was the first person I ran into :)
anjunafam
Nadine and Robert Nickson
of course Thorgodofbass was there, and I was ready for him :)
also ready for Nilsix :)
and great to see Maddix, he said 'you again' :)
had fun with my new hat :)
Groovecruise Days 1-2: Strong Warmup
The arrival was not that great. They gave us arrival slots just to ignore them and round robin people between 5 lines independently on when people arrived. That was a very bad move. The poor line management and respect of peoole's time (ignoring when they arrived and their timeslot) caused a completely needless 2H+ wait before being able to enter and get ID verified and scanned :(
even when you got inside, and that was after more than 1H wait already, it still took another hour or so
finally upstairs, ready for security and luggage scan
once up things were finally good, but it sucked to have arrived 2h30 early just to wait 2h30 in a slow line to get in
finally!
welcome!
Aqua Theatre
Promenade
Eric Prydz/Pryda
crossdresser lunch
it started raining on day 2, it was nice for lights and lasers
it got pretty
poor Mark Sixma got rained out as the rain became more severe
Labadee, Haiti
Yes, the boat did go somewhere, I mapped it and checked :)
While I will note that it felt a bit weird to boat an entire 2 days to get to Labadee, Haiti a mere 4H before the boat had to leave and boat 2 days back to Miami, at the same time I'm sure it would also have been weird at least for some, to be on a boat that went nowhere (it would have been fine by me, haha).
Haiti is a troubled country that is kind on the "do not travel" list, but we went on a private beach in a way that we never really entered the country (so no need for passports and so forth, which was nice). They did a good job sheltering us from all of this, and making it a welcoming party island with some fun rides when we came to visit.
I'll admit that getting up to make it to the island was a tad challenging when you had been partying all night the night before, but we made it :)
welcome!
they had a market but the sellers were way too aggressive, that was a turn off
Zipline:
Rollercoaster:
Beach Party:
The beach party was fun, but way too short (barely 4H)
Groovecruise Days 3-4: Peak Partying
Back to the ship, for lots of partying and a very long night until sunrise:
When 6 lions is not enough, and 8 lions is clearly too many, seven lions!
Abraxis with Dimibo and Blastoyz!
then Blastoyz took over
great job with the decors, confetti, lights and pyro!
After good times at Amber Theatre, went to see Daxson on the 8th floor until sunrise. Not much of a trance set, but lots of energy:
Then it was try for sunrise, although it was cloudy:
Day4 started a bit later when you go to bed around 07:30 :) Going to catch lunch somewhere before lunch closed, was work enough :) After that, trance night was by the swimming pool on deck 15, but it was pretty cold and windy as the boat was sailing back towards Miami:
Then back to Amber theatre for some lovely base, DnB, psytrance, and epic B2Bs:
Groovecruise Days 5: Rough Trip Back to Reality
By then, it was far enough in the night that it was really Day 5 already. While the party was still going strong at 03:00, knowing that we'd be rudely woken up around 07:xx and kicked off the boat, made it less appealing to stay much longer (even as is, and as fantastic as the entire experience was, monday morning was very rough).Sadly it didn't matter whether you stayed on the boat (some booked the next cruise to stay), everyone got woken up by a "good morning Vietnam" message from I believe John, who runs GC, and as lovely as the message was, I was so not awake and shaken by the wakeup that I struggled to find any way to turn the room speaker off, and didn't find any.
From there, it was a suite of announcements on how to get off the boat, as soon as possible, while I was struggling to pack and vacate said room as quickly as possible (as it had to be cleaned and made ready for the next trip leaving later that afternoon).
The line out was long but not as bad as the way in (maybe 30mn?) but it was challenging since I opted to drag my full luggage since it was simply not going to be ready that previous night by 22:00, deadline for luggage pickup. On the way out, we had to go through US immigration again, but since they have our IDs and pictures, it was a quick glance at a face recognition camera before being waved through.
I was able to find Adam Scott/Adam Levine to thank him for the great music just before leaving
Thoughts and Conclusions
I'll start with a few random things as a first timer, aka virgin:
Should you go? Would I go Back?
While I don't have official numbers, it looks like the return rate for Groove Cruise is very high, and that's for good reason. I was impressed by how many things the crew did right, and things I was worried about were not much of an issue.
And you're going to ask: Isn't it expensive?
So, yes, it's not cheap, around $1500 to $2000 per person, but it includes:
To me, this is not that much more than what I would spend at EDC with VIP tickets + hotel + food and I felt the experience was close enough to VIP like. The crowds were also more mature and more PLUR than the average festival, and that was a good thing to me. Ok, the stages are not to the level of a real EDC or Beyond Wonderland-like festival, but they were good enough for me to have lots of fun.
All in all, I was very satisfied and felt it was well worth the price. Clearly plenty of people seem to agree as more people are going every year and they keep having to migrate to a bigger ship (another bigger one even for next year and this year's was already one of the biggest on the market).
I will leave you with a few links:
See You Next Year?
While groovecruise was not in the cards for me for a bunch of prior years due to conflicting events and priorities, I also regret not having gone sooner, it's a pretty awesome event. If you already have been, you know. If you have not, take my word for it, it is cool and unique (and has lots of styles of music, most I didn't have time to go see).
If you'd like to sign up for next year: canonical page to sign up for 2026. And you get a small extra discount with ledtranceguy
