OT - Cruise Ships? | The Boneyard

OT - Cruise Ships?

DaddyChoc

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your favorite?

Where did you go and how many days? Ship sailed from...?
 

LasVegasYank

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We've cruised 11 times, ten on Carnival. Good value and attentive crews. Food is good.

We sail out of Tampa which is 45 minutes from home. Valet the car, board and set sail. Mostly seven day cruises. We always book a balcony stateroom which runs about $1,500.

Since we've been to most ports many times we sometimes never leave the ship which is fine with us. Shore excursions are pricey. We avoid the shops for the most part but always pick up a couple of bottles of liquor duty free.

Get a real deal once in a while. Two cruises ago we were scored a balcony stateroom for $250 total for the two of us for a seven-day cruise.
 
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I've been once and had a great time. We sailed out of Alabama on Carnival and went to Cozumel and Playa del Carmen, Mexico for 5 days. We had a balcony room.
 

Adesmar123

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Cruise lines are quite different and focus on different things. Its much like the differences in car manufacturers. A Kia is not at all like a Ferrari.

If you are looking for value try a repositioning cruise (ie transatlantic). Crucon is having a huge sale now on a lot of cruise lines. Look through that to get some ideas.
 

msf22b

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We just sailed 10 days on the Med in Norwegian Spirit, an older, smaller vessel. much less crowded than the mega-ships and altogether satisfactory.

We don't cruise (at this low price point...way less than $100 a day) for gourmet food and five-star service, but everything was just fine.

For me, the only problem was the necessity of extreme planning as virtually every day, we were in a different port, most fascinating, and for example Barcelona...you can see a few churches, the museum, eat a nice lunch...quite amazing and reasonable and then make your way back.

We had a great time in Naples...most cruises, even rental car companies recommend skipping, just get on the bus for Pompeii, Capri, or whatever. But we found it a vibrant, alive, friendly city...I loved it.

We go every year.
 
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Viking river cruises- 200 passengers, fresh, fabulous local food- interesting excursions, beer and wine included- go in the Fall when they offer deals. I've done the Danube(Neuremberg to Budapest, 8 days) and doing the Rhine this fall (Amsterdam to Basel Switzerland). Onderful
 
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Wife and just return from Vinking River Cruise behind the former iron curtain, Budapest to Bucharest. Simply described, marvelous. Our daughter is in the Peace Corps and is deployed in Moldova so she met us in Bucharest and toured Romania and Moldova for a week. As stated above, a river cruise is smaller, much more personalized, and most of the excursions are included in the price of the cruise. We have also taken the Viking cruise from Amsterdam, Holland to Basil, Switzerland and it was just as fantastic.
 
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Wife and just return from Vinking River Cruise behind the former iron curtain, Budapest to Bucharest. Simply described, marvelous. Our daughter is in the Peace Corps and is deployed in Moldova so she met us in Bucharest and toured Romania and Moldova for a week. As stated above, a river cruise is smaller, much more personalized, and most of the excursions are included in the price of the cruise. We have also taken the Viking cruise from Amsterdam, Holland to Basil, Switzerland and it was just as fantastic.
A warning on river cruises. If the water level is too high you can get stuck unable to get under bridges, and have to take bus trips during the day and then back to the boat. I know people that this has happened to.
 

vtcwbuff

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Not a cruise fan - too many years of haze gray and underway I guess, but I have two cruises on my bucket list - Seattle to Alaska and the Norwegian fjords all the way to Tromso out of Britain.

Both on small ships. I think I would go bat sheet on one of those ginormous floating ant farms.
 

Fishy

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We like cruising - it's our preferred vacation at this point.

Our favorite line is Disney - we're gold status there which entitles us to some perks that add up to basically nothing. Royal Caribbean is fine, Norwegian is fine. Carnival...is not for us, but a lot of other people seem to like them.

Disney is expensive compared to the others, but the service is better than RCL and an orbit better than Norwegian. (Carnival has service, but 99.8% of the staff on a Carnival ship are employed as bartenders. The other 0.2% drive the ship.) We find there's more to do on the Disney ships and it's obviously geared towards families.

They also have a nice feature called rotational dining. Every night, you eat at the same table, but at a different restaurant. Your maître d', your server and your beverage server rotate with you, so after a night or so, they know you and you know them.

We like heat, sun, sand and blue water, so we tend to look for the seven-day Caribbean cruises. That generally means the Disney Fantasy out of Port Canaveral. Those trips either go to eastern Caribbean (Tortola/St. Thomas/Castaway Cay) or western (Cozumel/Grand Cayman/Falmouth/Castaway Cay.) We took the eastern trip last July and will take the western trip again in August, 2018.

This August, we're cruising out of Vancouver to Alaska on the Disney Wonder. I'm a little apprehensive given the lack of heat, sun and sand, but people rave about the Alaska cruises, so we'll see.

One cruise I'd like to try.....Norwegian has a cruise out of New York City that goes to Bermuda and docks there for three or four days. I've been to Bermuda, but this seems like a perfect way to spend time there.
 

KnightBridgeAZ

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OK - I have to be honest, I haven't been on a cruise yet, but my sister-in-law has been working for a variety of "cruise" travel agencies for years.

- As said above, each company is different. She isn't a Carnival fan, likes Norwegian among others, I know. But above all - each line is designed to appeal to a specific market.
- My mother did the Alaska cruise quite a long time ago, but I remember she raved about it. She was on a smaller "educational" type cruise.
- I like the look of the Viking River Cruises, but they are not in my price range.
 

msf22b

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Interesting that (with the partial exception) of the river cruises, the 'yard participants of this thread stick to the 'middle-class' cruise lines rather than the executive-class lines.
 

Fishy

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Interesting that (with the partial exception) of the river cruises, the 'yard participants of this thread stick to the 'middle-class' cruise lines rather than the executive-class lines.

We took a cruise on Regent Seven Seas, but honestly, those lines skew so old that I wouldn't recommend any of them here. Ship was great, staff was great, the excursions were creative, but I felt like Godzilla towering over the cotton-tops whenever I moved around the ship. We were the youngest people on the boat by three decades - we were a curiosity to our fellow passengers. It was awkward.

And just not a hell of a lot to do. I did learn to play bridge, though.

Lovely cruise, lovely people, lovely staff...if you're of a certain age, highly recommended. If you're not, ah,wait until you are.
 

DaddyChoc

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We took a cruise on Regent Seven Seas, but honestly, those lines skew so old that I wouldn't recommend any of them here. Ship was great, staff was great, the excursions were creative, but I felt like Godzilla towering over the cotton-tops whenever I moved around the ship. We were the youngest people on the boat by three decades - we were a curiosity to our fellow passengers. It was awkward.

And just not a hell of a lot to do. I did learn to play bridge, though.

Lovely cruise, lovely people, lovely staff...if you're of a certain age, highly recommended. If you're not, ah,wait until you are.
Thanks for the info
 

Adesmar123

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Interesting that (with the partial exception) of the river cruises, the 'yard participants of this thread stick to the 'middle-class' cruise lines rather than the executive-class lines.

Yup...there is Celebrity . Oceania, Azamara (to name 3) which offer incredible service, food and value for just a little bit more. All are good, but some are better.
 
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Ours would be from Vancouver to Australia and New Zealand. Both relaxing and spectacular. I'm a birder so my criteria for what is a good port is a bit skewed. Also real mariners love sea days and our cruise this fall to Dutch Harbor, Japan and China has lots of them.
 

Adesmar123

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If you choose the Alaska cruise, we went from Vancouver to Seward (inside passage). It was great. The we took a bus to Denali and white water rafted and toured Denali Park. We then took the Alaskan Train back to Anchorage. We stayed in Anchorage overnight at a B &B and toured anchorage.

Good trip all in all..
 
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your favorite?

Where did you go and how many days? Ship sailed from...?

From New York to Bermuda on Norwegian Breakaway. It was fun, the food was great, weather was beautiful, but I'm honestly not sure I'd do it again.
 

DaddyChoc

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From New York to Bermuda on Norwegian Breakaway. It was fun, the food was great, weather was beautiful, but I'm honestly not sure I'd do it again.
why not?
 

Waquoit

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I did one cruise, 4 days, Ft. Lauderdale to Cozumel and back on Royal Caribbean. It wasn't for me. It seemed like the entire thing was game to get more money out of you. They'll feed you but if you want something better, it's an upcharge. There's "tons of stuff" to do, I was told. Like what, hang by the pool? That was a nightmare of screaming kids and drunk parents. We ended up playing a lot of air hockey. It was one of the few games in the arcade that wasn't out of service.

But I learned that cruise people love their cruises. Cruise people get hooked on cruises like tattoo people keep getting more tattoos. Our first sit-down dinner we were seated at a table with a cruise family. We hadn't even left port on this cruise and they were all talking about was the cruise they were going on in six months. And as it turned out, that wasn't even their next cruise. They had another booked in 3 months.
 

Adesmar123

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I did one cruise, 4 days, Ft. Lauderdale to Cozumel and back on Royal Caribbean. It wasn't for me. It seemed like the entire thing was game to get more money out of you. They'll feed you but if you want something better, it's an upcharge. .

I think you chose the wrong ship and destination. There are plenty of cruises with just the opposite environment. There are cruises that provide specialty restaurants at no additional cost. Try a higher level cruise line. Its a world of difference.
 

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