When you’re No. 2 — or even No. 3 or No. 4 — you try harder. Norwegian Cruise Lines has plenty of experience, competing with bigger brands, all of which are part of cruise line consortiums…Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Princess and so on. When you try harder, you try everything. Quality of products, quality of service. [...]
“We are committed to Southampton as our main base, but Liverpool is our spiritual home.” Those are the words of Peter Shanks, Cunard’s President, after word leaked in the Liverpool Daily Post that the Queen Mary 2 may — that’s “may” — start sailing from Liverpool to New York on a one-off, sporadic basis. The [...]
My husband loves cruises and he loves football. On Sunday, he could still get on the Norwegian Epic and watch the Super Bowl with as many as 4,000 other football fans. It is his worst nightmare. Let me tell you tell you something about this football fan, since he is always willing to tell you [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Having never watched one minute of one episode of Kate Plus 8, nor any of its iterations, we’re completely on the fence about whether it’s a good idea for Royal Caribbean to promote a cruise with Kate Gosselin. Evidently, others are not. Here’s a sampling of headlines emanating from the buzz created by Royal Caribbean: [...]
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 [...]
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: June 3 Capacity: 3,690 Sister ships: Carnival Magic, Carnival Dream Maiden Voyage: Venice Home Ports: Barcelona and Miami Ships [...]