I know you’ve all been waiting for an update on the oxymoronically named Fast Ferry between Rochester and Toronto. You see, Kim and I took the posse to Toronto this past weekend for a little Canadian excitement. As the ferry was new and sounded fun, we booked passage. The kids were quite pumped about the opportunity to ride the ferry, the Toronto subway, public busses… well, let’s face it, odd things amuse kids.

Anyway, the weekend was a success and I think everyone had a good time. Although Kim is still struggling with the best answer to the surprisingly frequent question, “Are all those kids yours?”

But we were talking about the ferry. The ferry is a beautiful boat. It’s very roomy, has lots of food, drink, and entertainment aboard. It travels smooth as silk, and is undeniably a damn comfortable way to cross the lake. The question I struggle with is, once the novelty is gone, will anyone ride it? While it’s a cool way to get to Toronto, it’s slow and it’s expensive. The travel itself is just over 2 hours, but once you factor in the other logistics, it’s more like 5-6 hours. After all, this is basically like taking a plane flight. You have to travel to the port, arrive early, check-in, go though security, customs, get transport on the other end. Door-to-door time is almost twice what it would have taken to drive. And for the six of us it was only about five times the cost of driving.

I’m glad we did it. It was fun. But I was originally thinking this would be a reasonably efficient way to make the trip. It ain’t. Take the trip for the experience. If you’re in a hurry… drive.