Celebrity Cruises
She disappeared a year ago last month, without a whimper, without a wake. If we hadn’t visited Celebrity’s website this week to check on the size of its fleet, even we may have forgotten the passing of the Mercury. In horse vernacular, you’d say she was being retired to stud. Or maybe that should be [...]
On the weekend, we came across a story about “gentlemen hosts” on cruise ships. These are “jobs” for single men who pay $30 a day to go and have a good time on a cruise, with no romantic liaisons allowed. In other words, they have to be, well, gentlemen. The Gentleman Host Program and others [...]
In another life, as a sports writer, there were five big sports events I hoped to see before moving on to another profession. One of them was the Kentucky Derby. I made it, in 1978, when Affirmed left the favorite, Alydar, a length-and-a-half behind at the finish line of the famous Run For The Roses. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]