On the other hand…
Reviving this zombie to post a couple of videos I just found by one of my favorite YouTubers, Gary Bembridge, about how to live on regular cruise ships full time or nearly so. He’s reviewed five other YouTubers who do this, and reports on how much it costs, what it’s like, and in a separate video, the downsides.
One of the ways a couple of these folks travel “free” some of the time, is by getting credit for their gambling in the onboard casinos. But annoyingly, he doesn’t say how much that gambling costs or maybe they won’t reveal it. But it’s a significant gap in the picture of the total costs. Presumably casino comps don’t lose the company money.
The downsides: inside cabins that are cramped, noisy, uncomfortable; repeating the same itineraries week after week; loneliness; missing family life and events; lots of time planning for and/or gambling to “earn” the next trips; inadequate medical and dental care, etc.
Another view:
For some reason they are comparing the cost of a cruise to assisted living. Shouldn’t it be compared to independent living? There aren’t cruise ship shad who make sure you take your meds and help you bathe, are there?
I wouldn’t depend on shad to do anything for me, really, except provide an occasional entree.
Provided you like herring! 
Makes me think of the tallest tree in the forest…
For some reason ( maybe it’s a regional thing, maybe not) I’ve seen people define “assisted living” as what I’d describe as living a resort-style ( or cruise ship 
) life - they have a room/apartment with a lock on the door ,possibly with a small kitchen. Meals are available in a dining room, houskeeping is provided, there are social activities, bus trips etc and people can come and go pretty much as they please. Those people seem to describe any living situation where someone gets assistance in bathing or dressing as a nursing home, which to me is a hospital-like building , with a room you can’t lock , that requires making arrangements to leave with your family for the day and provides medical care, physical therapy and other services you won’t find in either assisted living or independent living such as tube-feeding.
About living on a cruise ship almost full-time , I’ve thought about it and decided against it but my husband met someone who does it on our last cruise a few weeks ago. He’s on cruises for about 48 weeks a year. He keeps a room at a friend’s house in a port city and arranges all of his medical appointments for those 4 or so weeks a year. He also gets all of his mail there and his friend scans it to him. If you can book last-minute, you can get really cheap prices if you have loyalty status - I can get a 7 day Mexican Riviera cruise for $299 per person in December. Let’s say with taxes and tips it comes to maybe $1000 per person per week, tops. He doesn’t do a lot of things that people often do on vacation cruises - he doesn’t do shore excursions, buy drink packages or buy souvenirs. He does gamble - but he probably would gamble just as much if he lived on land. Some of those downsides aren’t downsides to him - he doesn’t have any family to miss and he pretty obviously finds new companions on every cruise. Some “downsides” he didn’t mention but they wouldn’t be downsides for me - the same itinerary over and over doesn’t seem all that different from living in the same neighborhood for 48 weeks a year.
I have a friend who recently had to move to assisted living after a stroke damaged the part of his brain that lets you balance. He moved to a place where he had a two room apartment with a door he could lock and a kitchenette. It had social activities and bus trips. He’s upgraded, and now has a stove, the first place he moved to he just had a fridge and a microwave. Meals and housekeeping are available, and he’s free to come and go as he pleases. But when he first moved there, he had almost no time he could plan on, because he also had a schedule full of physical therapy and medical exams. Which is why he moved there, for the access to those services.
His condition has stabilized, and he has relearned how to walk. Now, he hires an Uber and goes out for evening events. It’s possible his upgraded place is independent living (which also provides meals and housekeeping, but not the nursing and therapy assistance). But i don’t think so, i think he still needs access to those services. Anyway, he definitely had them in the first place, but also had more personal space and more freedom than one has on a cruise ship.
(I assume the staff has master keys to those lockable apartment doors, and uses them if the resident pushes the emergency button, or hasn’t been heard from in a while.)
Where my mother is, the costs are designed to be just about the same. You start off in an independent living unit, which is larger, and has meals supplied in a main dining room. As you develop needs for more assistance, they move you to a new, smaller unit, but increase your daily interactions with the staff. My mom is on Step 2 of this, with at least a Step 3 still available. You basically trade living space for Personal Support Workers time.
It would probably be better than three years on a Navy ship. Certainly more interesting!
More colorful too. The Navy could definitely use some interior designers.
Having just completed my first cruise I can report back tat, yes, I would indeed!
Cool. Where did you go?
Alaska, and it was amazing. I would take that cruise again in a heartbeat. Princess. Wonderful folks.
Cool. I took Princess to Alaska in 2000, and did the land trips also. Lots of fun.
We did NCL to Alaska and the Denali land tour. The highlight was a helicopter ride to walk on top of a glacier. We also took the small boat tour to get up and close with the Hubbard and the other passengers on the ship said it was a waste of money since they would see it from the big, warm comfortable ship. Except due to weather the ship couldn’t enter the sound while our boat did. Lots of Karens after that.