Ralph Grizzle from USA Today's Travel spoke with KISS' Gene Simmons recently about a number of topics including the first-ever KISS Kruise will set sail October 13th-17th from Miami, FL, to Half Moon Cay and Nassau, Bahamas on board the Carnival Destiny. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

USA Today: We’ve all got Great Expectations, Gene, what made you decide to take KISS to sea?

Simmons: "The KISS Kruise is a chance for all of us - the band and the fans - to have a ball. Just let your hair down and not worry about it at all. KISS has always been about breaking the rules. We’ve never liked that moat - the stage - separating the band from the fans. So whenever we do a show, we try to take the action right to your face. A cruise will let the fans get up close. We try to take it inside you, we want you to smell it and taste it and feel it."

USA Today: So are we going to get a preview of your new album on the cruise?

Simmons: "That could happen. We try not to make too many rigid plans. It’s like we’re invited to a party and we don’t want to make plans. We just want to let the party happen on this cruise and just take requests from the fans. We’ll just try to have a lot of fun and not plan it out too much. I don’t know anyone who brings a list of 10 things they’re going to do at a party and what time they’re going to be doing them, do you? That’s not the kind of party I want to go to. Of course, the one show is a full production number and that we have to have pretty planned out. But the other will be Unplugged, which is forget about it all and let it happen.

USA Today: Are any new songs going to be inspired by the trip?

Simmons: "Maybe. We’re going to be doing obscure stuff and we’ll make some of it up as we go along. We tend to let the words and the riffs come naturally when we’re inspired by something. And sometimes you just write songs because the words sound cool and you don’t worry about the story. I have no idea what’s going to come out of the experience and to me, that’s exciting. There will certainly be songs that we don’t do on tour. In our catalog we’ve released 45 - or is it 48 albums - about 30 of them studio records. That’s certainly enough material to make it a lot of fun."

Read the entire interview here.