Cruise Deprivation and What to Do About It

We’re all reduced to arm chair travelers these days.

I don’t know about you, but I took comfort from the Sky Princess blazing “We will be back” in lights across the ship.

But in the meanwhile, how can we satisfy our insatiable appetite for cruising?

Well, here are a few suggestions:

Book it. Not the trip, your photos. Do something awfully old-fashioned—create a photo album. Yeah, having them on your cell phone is great. But seeing them in print, laid out in a slick coffee table book is even better. It’s cheap to put together and it will keep your mind off the vacation you didn’t have.

Stack the deck. Put your favorite photos onto a deck of cards, a mouse pad or luggage tag. Do what you never had time for. We had Shutterstock make up luggage tags with our faces on them. It would be hard for someone to take the wrong suitcase now.

See a disaster. Watch “Titanic” or “Poseidon Adventure.” Not something you’d want to do while you’re cruising. But now, while we’re all in dry dock, why not? Heck, you might even check out the YouTube videos on the sinking of the Concordia.

Root for Royal. And Carnival. They’ve been heroes, letting us off the hook while facing large losses.

Plan your next one. You know there will be a next one. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but at some point, your ship will sail again. And you want to make sure you’re on it.

Cruising’s Ten Commandments

Okay, so maybe Moses didn’t come down from the mountain with these commandments.

But I bet he’d think they were worthy for you to carry around on your tablet—whether your upcoming cruise is your 1^st or 14^th:

1. Your passport to your trip. Yes, you need your passport for the Caribbean. And this is not intuitive, but it’s very important: make sure it does not expire within six months of when you get back from your trip.

2. Over-tag your luggage. On our last trip, our suitcase almost ended up in Maryland—but we live in Florida. Someone grabbed our bag by mistake and took it to the airport. You can’t have too many tags with your name and cell, or bright-colored things hanging from it.

3. Muster up! It’s tempting to tune out at the muster drill. But just bring up a YouTube on the Concordia to remember why it’s not a good idea.

4. Do unto others...you know the rest. In other words, be nice to your fellow cruisers—it’s their vacation too. Don’t leave your stuff on the pool lounger and then go to the buffet. And speaking of the buffet, if you see someone’s sweater on a chair, please don’t sit down and pretend it’s not there.

5. The early bird makes the boat. Flying in the same day is very risky. You might just miss the boat. Or you may make it—but you luggage may not.  

6. Insure a safe trip. Getting trip insurance protects the investment you made in your cruise. But not all insurance is the same—ask questions and read the fine print. Check out this posting for more.

7. Load up on motion medicine. If you get car sick, air sick or sea sick, bringing stuff with you is the surest way not to need it. And bring whatever else you think you could need—and hope you don’t.

8. Pack right (or is it pack left?) and carry on! Your carry-on should not be an afterthought. One of our cruises was a nail-bitter—our luggage did eventually show up—after dinner.

9. Know your time wisely. When you go ashore, know if there’s a difference between ship time and port time. Or you’ll be chasing the ship on your own dime.

10. Stay sanitized. Wash hands often to avoid getting sick or making the rest of us sick. Consider carrying hand wipes or little sanitizing sprays to use after reaching for the ladle or salt shaker. And that TV remote? Elevator button? Banister and railing? They, too, can be germy.

Have a Commandment #11? Drop us a line.

What Gets Better as it Gets Older? Cruising.

Those of us who have been cruising for a while tend to look back wistfully at what’s gone out to sea—midnight buffets, five-course dinners, chocolates and cards on our pillows, little shampoo bottles and Q-tips.
 
But in many ways, cruising is better than ever. Consider this:
 
Bigger ships make a bigger bang. Think of all the bells and whistles that didn’t exist before. Like

Chicago on the high seas, via the Allure

more balcony rooms. 3D movies and bumper cars. Rock climbing and zip-lining. Broadway shows. Glass-blowing and cooking demos.
 
Ships come in all sizes. The cruise lines keep pumping ‘em out, large and small, and that’s only a good thing. Want to go to exotic ports and get to know your fellow travelers? A small ship’s for you. Surfing and skating is your thing and don’t mind sharing space with 5,399 other travelers? There’s one for you too.
 
Backstage is the new front stage. Once a word-of-mouth thing, galley tours, backstage tours and if you’re lucky, even bridge and engine room tours, are standard fare on today’s ships. Think of the useful tidbits you’ll walk away with—pounds of coffee consumed each day and how fast the ship goes at night.
 

Stainless steel galore on a Princess galley tour

The smoke out. We all breathe easier these days with smoking banned on most ships in most places. Even in those palaces of puffing—the casinos.
 
Ways to health. There are more and better ways to be healthy onboard, with well-equipped fitness centers and classes, jogging tracks and health-food style restaurants. Royal Caribbean’s Oasis class ships and many Celebrity ships have no-cost healthy dining choices that, for the most part, are better than what they serve up in their MDR or buffet.
 


Hand wash reminder on
Celebrity's Constellation

Sanitation savvy. Alas, the cruise lines have had their share of experience with norovirus, which has made them pros at avoiding and containing it. Sanitizers are everywhere and Princess won’t let you near the buffet without a spray.
 
Safety takes center stage. There is no better time than now to cruise when it comes to safety. With the Concordia and engine room fires still fresh in everyone’s memory, the cruise lines are going out of their way to reassure the public that cruising is as safe as ever. There’s new attention to muster drills, installation of backup generators and other safety measures.
 
Steady and stable. The big new ships today are more stable than the ones that came before. There have been many improvements in design that have made them more solidly built. We’ve been amazed that we’ve felt very little movement onboard. In fact, after 16 trips, we’ve not used seasickness medication once.
 
More demand equals more fun. Demand for cruising—at least outside the U.S.—has been growing, encouraging the cruise lines to build more ships, each outdoing the next with fun features and other ways to entice and excite us, making cruising more intriguing than ever. And best yet--keeping costs on an even keel.

 

How Do You Like Your Captain?

Old or young? Visible or invisible? Charming or all business?

On a recent cruise, our captain seemed to be everywhere—except, perhaps, the bridge. He was in port with us. Guest speaker. Game show panelist. Party host.

During the Q&A after his lecture, a guest commended him for being “the most approachable” of the captains he’d experienced.

Then, reading our thoughts, a woman asked, “Have you ever accidently fallen into a lifeboat?”

Today marks three years since the Concordia went down, taking 32 lives with it. Still we wait for a verdict in the trial of Captain Schettino. He’s doing a good job of keeping in the public eye, lecturing at college, going to parties and doing what he seems to do best—charming everyone around him.

The critics have been few, and perhaps it’s because more than ever, the captain has become the cruise line’s top PR guy. We’ve turned our man at the helm into a celebrity, and he’s responding in kind.

But they’re not all like that. One cruise, not so long ago, when we were doing a slow scenic circle around St. Lucia’s Pitons, a small local motorboat—really just a rowboat with a motor—pulled alongside our massive vessel and its passengers, a group of young men, began calling up at us. Our captain got on the PA to caution us against engaging them, suggesting that the proximity of their boat to our 80,500-ton behemoth could bring them harm.

And on yet another voyage, our captain was a no-show at the Welcome Toast, because the business of running the ship kept him away.

Clearly, there are some captains out there who take their role as Safety Officer #1 quite seriously. But in this age of celebrity obsession, the more we demand to see of our captain, the more he’s going to feel the need to be seen. And the less he’s going to give to commandeering the ship. Personality shouldn’t be a prerequisite for a captain. Competence should be all that counts.

But that’s my opinion. What’s yours?