It is late July, the Gulf is doing its best impression of hot soup, and Margaritaville at Sea would like to talk to you about Halloween. Respect the hustle.

The line is bringing back “Sail the Haunted Seas,” its fall Halloween program, aboard two ships: Paradise out of the Port of Palm Beach and Islander out of Port Tampa Bay. It runs September 15 through November 1 — so the spooky season officially outlasts actual Halloween by a full day, a bold scheduling flex.

New for 2026, guests get an interactive Ghostly Game Show, a Halloween Bar Crawl, and themed guest entertainers on select sailings. Returning favorites include the Spooktacular Murder Mystery Game Show, White Hot Neon Nightmares, the Monster Bash Family Disco, and a Trick-or-Treat Trail for the kids. Expect haunted venue takeovers, costumed characters, and — the part that matters — seasonal cocktails and menus.

That last bit is where I lose a certain co-host of ours entirely. A themed menu is catnip to a man who will debate breakfast burritos versus French toast until the ship reaches port. Put a pumpkin-spice anything on a Margaritaville buffet and we may never get him back to the microphone.

Is Margaritaville the biggest name at sea? No. But it's a short, cheap, low-commitment cruise out of Florida, which makes it a genuinely reasonable first sail for anyone who wants to test-drive the whole boat-vacation concept with a frozen drink in hand and zero pretense. Doing it in costume, in October, with a murder mystery on the schedule? That's not a bad way to take your very first cruise.

Start planning the costume now. The bar crawl waits for no one.