1,000 Strangers and a Countdown: My Surreal NYE at Sea

I'm not usually the type to do anything remotely close to mainstream travel experiences. Give me a quiet beach cabin or a remote hiking trail, and I'm good. So when my sister convinced me to spend New Year's Eve on the Oasis of the Seas with what felt like half of Florida's population, I was skeptical. Make that deeply skeptical. But here I am, still processing what might've been the weirdest, most unexpectedly magical night of my life. The first sign that this wasn't going to be your typical New Year's Eve came when we were boarding in Fort Lauderdale. The ship is absolutely massive—I'd heard it was the size of a small city, but nothing really prepares you for that reality when you're standing in front of it. The Oasis of the Seas towers over the port like some kind of floating skyscraper, all gleaming metal and glass. My sister nudged me and grinned. "This is it. No backing out now." I rolled my eyes but felt my stomach flip with something I couldn't quite identify. Excitement? Terror? Probably both. Once onboard, we navigated the maze of hallways and discovered our cabin on Deck 8, a modest interior room that I'd expected to be depressing but was actually kind of cozy in its ow…