Norwegian

Bob & Nancy on March 16th, 2012

Photo by Frank Kovalchek You just never know how going on a cruise is going to change your life. For example, we never imagined that in the first week of March — when most people were tuning into their source of sports for the final stages of basketball and hockey, or the start of baseball [...]

Continue reading about A Cruise Trip to Alaska and the Iditarod

Bob & Nancy on March 14th, 2012

Do you ever wonder if Steve Jobs could have iMagined the depth of his iCreations? Just when the world has become accustomed to the iMac, the iPhone, the iPod, the iPad and the iWorld, along comes the iConcierge. This creation is the work of Norwegian Cruise Line, for use on its Epic, the flagship of [...]

Continue reading about Epic Passengers Can Stay in Touch

Bob & Nancy on March 2nd, 2012

The news yesterday that Royal Caribbean is exercising its option to build another new ship again begs the question: Has the cruise industry discovered the customer’s tolerance for big ships? The same cruise line that owns the two biggest ships “of the Seas”, the mighty Oasis and the equally mighty Allure. They carry about 6,000 [...]

Continue reading about Royal’s New Ship The Standard?

Bob & Nancy on March 1st, 2012

The last time we cruised out of Galveston, we were impressed that the hotel we booked for the night before the cruise allowed us to leave our rental car in the hotel lot for five days, until our return. Just a little extra. There’s a hotel in Seattle that is also catering to people who [...]

Continue reading about Recognizing Cruise Ship Impact

Bob & Nancy on February 24th, 2012

So much is made of the sizes of cruise ships, isn’t it? Some cruisers think biggest is best. Some think smaller is better because of its intimacy. There is, naturally, no correct answer. In reading about cruise ships, we came across an interesting measurement. Take the size of the ship (measured in “gross tonnage”) and [...]

Continue reading about Space Ships…or Space on Ships

Bob & Nancy on February 20th, 2012

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. [...]

Continue reading about Norwegian…Egyptian winning jingle

Bob & Nancy on February 16th, 2012

“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 [...]

Continue reading about Cunard Return…Just a Few Years Later

Nancy on February 3rd, 2012

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 [...]

Continue reading about A Not-So-Super NCL Party

Bob & Nancy on January 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 [...]

Continue reading about NCL Calling its Kids…er, Youth

Bob & Nancy on January 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 [...]

Continue reading about Simple Man Cruise Not Simple?