Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:56 am on Jan 27th, 2012

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 [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:00 am on Jan 17th, 2012

One of the allegations surfacing about the captain of the Costa Concordia from its horrific accident is that he may not have been on the bridge, driving the ship. At the risk of sounding like we’re defending the captain, who is being blamed with much more than absentia, the possibility that he would not be [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:08 am on Jan 9th, 2012

There will be eight new cruise ships launched this year, two of them refurbished ships that have been given new names. As 2012 gets underway, we’re giving you a snapshot of all of them… Launch date: April 24 Capacity: 1,258 Sister ships: Marina Maiden Voyage: Athens Home Ports: Europe, then Miami Ships now in Oceania [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:23 am on Dec 29th, 2011

It was almost nine months ago that we were introduced to Cellar Masters, in a big way, on the Celebrity Eclipse on a cruise across the Atlantic. Still in its embryonic stage, Cellar Masters was a way for passengers to buy wine a glass at a time, and at a time of their choosing…even 3 [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:33 am on Dec 8th, 2011

Our cruise blog teammate Phil Reimer, who has been writing about ships and ports and the eateries and people on both, has spent this week on the Carnival Liberty. His impressions are posted daily on his cruise blog, portsandbows.com. The Liberty is the first Carnival ship to go 2.0. In Celebrity’s world, this is called [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:25 am on Nov 14th, 2011

On the surface, any time a drinking age is lowered, it’s considered to be a bad thing, and no doubt Royal Caribbean is going to feel the heat now that it’s announced the drinking age on its ships is dropping from 21 to 18. There is, however, another side to the story. Several years ago, [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:43 am on Oct 24th, 2011

Too bad about the Eclipse, isn’t it? The one in the sky and the one on the sea. If they’d been able to get their schedules together next November, they really could have made history. If they had, the Solar Eclipse (that’s in the sky) and the Celebrity Eclipse (it’s on the sea) could have [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:26 am on Oct 19th, 2011

In our haste to tell you last week about seven wine cruises on the Celebrity Constellation next year in Europe, we neglected to dig beneath the news and tell you why this is happening. It’s because of the Holy Land where, believe it or not, they do like wine…we have a bottle of red from [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:36 am on Oct 10th, 2011

Ever wonder about theme cruises? You know, cruises where you can rub elbows and shake hands with a celebrity, or with somebody who did. Cruises where you learn astronomy, scrap-booking or weight-loss from an expert. Cruises where you can listen to old ballplayers tell stories, or old doo-woppers doo-wop. Well, theme cruises aren’t going to [...]

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Posted by Nancy at 1:37 am on Oct 6th, 2011

It’s not so long ago that when people talked about cruising, the quantity of food was at the top of the list. Not quality…quantity! Things have changed. On our last cruise, aboard the Coral Princess, we noticed the sensible size of dinner portions. Make no mistake…you can still eat as much as you like, but [...]

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