As we keep reminding our kids, because nobody else will, we were really ahead of our time as cruising parents. It was a couple of decades ago (exact year not disclosed, to protect revealing exact ages and getting us in exact trouble) and we decided on a family cruise, down the Mexican Riviera. Our sons [...]
On Friday we happened to see our family physician, who has since left with his wife on a Caribbean cruise. Naturally, we were all ears. This week they’re en route to Honduras, Grand Cayman and Mexico, from Fort Lauderdale, and since we’d been in all these places during the past six months we shared some [...]
Let’s clarify one thing about this blog before we begin: It is not about age discrimination. As cruise lines search for entertainment lightning rods to attract passengers to ships, they are reaching further into the…uh, age bag. They are recruiting entertainers of our age, and older. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, it [...]
Today, it’s time to make three port stops, all of which are enjoying their changing associations with cruise ships… New Orleans: It’s almost like people who cruise just re-discovered what a great place New Orleans is to visit. In 2011, the port showed an increase of 39 per cent to 738,908, the most cruise passengers [...]
Either there’s been a dip in the advertising by major cruise lines, or it just seems that way. Everybody’s just a little gun shy about promoting cruises when bodies are still being discovered off the shores of Italy. The cruise pendulum continues to swing towards river cruising, and there is no shortage of advertising these [...]
It was our intention to write about something other than the Costa Concordia today. However, it’s difficult to find a story anywhere on cruising that doesn’t include more than a passing reference to a ship almost nobody had even heard of three weeks ago. In fact, most of the stories about cruising these days are [...]
One last postscript on the cruise-ship accident that nobody wants to read about any more… This wasn’t supposed to be the Costa Concordia’s final cruise, so there are passengers booked on future trips that won’t happen. What happens to them? In addition to probably millions paying in liability to those on the ship, Costa will [...]
Ice breakers leading the way to reach the fuel-starved people of Nome, on the far west coast of Alaska. Elsewhere in the state, there are snowbanks towering 15 to 18 feet high. Good time to think about an Alaskan cruise? The answer is yes. It is now that cruise companies start promoting this year’s cruises [...]
Here’s one of the New Year’s resolutions made in our house: By the end of 2012, we hope we will no longer be able to say we’ve never been on a river cruise. Clearly, river cruising is becoming a significant part of the “cruise community” and it’s time for us — so that we can [...]
Everybody who has been on a cruise ship, and countless people who haven’t, can’t stop talking about the Costa Concordia, as the death toll continues to rise. As always, there are more questions than answers. Some that have crossed our minds over the past few days, in trying to look at the big picture and [...]