AS-related article I read on a cruise site; very interesting

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I'm afraid of deep water but I do love floating on a float in a swimming pool or the shallow part of the lake. I can do that for hours and just zone right out. I also used to have a full wave waterbed and I'd just lay on it and listen to music and move every so often to make the bed start moving. I would do that for hours. It's really calming and that kind of motion does seem to release happy endorphins in my brain. I get really happy for no reason at all in those situations.

The only boats I've been on were speed boats, and they obviously are not soothing. It's choppy and bumpy, but if you get it at a certain speed, just zipping around on the lake, not pulling a skiier, then it can be kind of nice although I'm preoccupied with what if we wreck and I drown.

We have gone on family cruises and both my son and I are aspies. Since I tend to get seasick significant rocking of the boat is not a good thing for me. However, we have found it to be a fantastic vacation for us. Cruise lines are very accommodating when you let them know ahead of time what your needs are. With a balcony cabin we can easily get away from the crowds and enjoy some quiet time. My son loved the room service too. I did not notice a change in AS behavior, but we always had such a nice time that it did not matter.

I've never been on a cruise before, but I did spend a week on a fishing boat in Alaska once. I didn't get seasick, but I definitely didn't become "more NT". I didn't say a word the whole time. I didn't particularly like or dislike the rocking.

I just realized that I didn't fully respond to your post about this. The main cause of anxiety about my cruise in the past was how I will get treated by other passengers, not issues related to the cruise or the ship. Carnival will go out of their way to accommodate things like standing in lines, embarkation and debarkation, allergies, noise sensitivity, etc; so I felt safe about that part. But the passengers' treatment of each other is very hard to police. Other than intervening in blatant crimes, like assault and battery, it's kind of weird to be telling cruise passengers to "be nice"; it's not kindergarten. And even in cases of crimes, I still worried that the perps would sweet-talk the security guard into believing I started the whole thing.

None of the stuff even remotely came true. I'm at the age where I can mix equally well with the fresh-out-of-college party crowd and the more serious middle-aged crowd. Even the people I was most worried about (socially-skilled guys with hot girlfriends) were not only civil to me, but invited me to join them in their Mafia game* in the Lido pool. But again, none of those things were within Carnival's control. It was all done through passengers socializing amongst themselves. For example, they could make my mashed potatoes without garlic and not put Bearnaise sauce on my steak "because I can't handle sharp tastes" (to use one example), but how will they accommodate someone who's at risk of being a bully magnet, or worries that he is?
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Mafia - it's a game where you have to separate out mafia members and innocents, before all the innocents get "killed" by the mafia. I had hell of a time catching on to the rules, but since we were all drunk, no one really cared.