Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:02 am on Feb 6th, 2012

It’s entirely possible that Princess now holds the norovirus record. This weekend, the cruise line admitted the number of cases on two of its ships had grown to 499. Saturday, the Crown Princess returned to Fort Lauderdale from the Caribbean with 12% of the people on board suffering from the disease — 364 passengers and [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:13 am on Jan 31st, 2012

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 [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:56 am on Jan 30th, 2012

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 [...]

Continue reading about Cruising: A Chance to Escape

Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:36 am on Jan 26th, 2012

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 [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:34 am on Jan 24th, 2012

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 [...]

Continue reading about Cruise Tragedy Not Going Away

Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:02 am on Jan 23rd, 2012

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 [...]

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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 1:19 am on Jan 16th, 2012

When the starboard side of the Costa Concordia ripped open and listed in the waters off the coast of Italy this weekend, it was more than a wake-up call for cruise lines, captains and crews. If any of us who feel so safe and secure on cruise ships (and we do) needed a wake-up call, [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:49 am on Jan 11th, 2012

Every once in a while we come across a story about cruising that is just a nice story, and that makes it worth re-telling here. The story is about Zara Holtz. Mrs. Holtz turned 100 the day the world turned 2,012. Her son and his family took her on a cruise, sailing the Norwegian Sky [...]

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Posted by Bob & Nancy at 1:22 am on Jan 10th, 2012

There will be eight new cruise ships launched this year, and the two here are on the list, even though they have been around under “assumed” (old) names. This is the final installment of the new ships of 2012. Photo by Kim Hansen Ship: MV Voyager Launch date: November 17 Capacity: 556 Sister ships: None [...]

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