Cruising - Who else does it?

KhalJimbo

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My Wife and I just booked our holiday for this year, going on a med cruise.

7 day all inclusive (except for alcohol), $100 free onboard spending, flights from Heathrow to Rome and from Barcelona back to Heathrow and all airport transfers included for a shade over £1k with Royal Caribbean.

We had our first cruise for our honeymoon from Southampton to the Canaries also with Royal Caribbean and had an amazing time. We really enjoyed cruising purely because of how many places you get to go to. We would be bored to death if we went on a holiday and just sat on a beach for a week, but with cruising you are always going somewhere and not to mention the food is always incredible.

We are also looking to book another cruise holiday for next year in the Caribbean, would love to do a Canadian\Alaskan cruise sometime, so we'll wait and see for that one.

So who else on here cruises for their holidays?
 
We really enjoyed cruising purely because of how many places you get to go to.

Isn't that how the "If it's Thursday we must be in Rome" quote came about?

We would be bored to death if we went on a holiday and just sat on a beach for a week, but with cruising you are always going somewhere and not to mention the food is always incredible.

And I would be equally bored just sitting on a boat for a week and I much prefer eating local food when I'm on holiday rather than the usual Euro bland served up on cruise ships.

I have nothing against people enjoying different types of holiday but I think that some of your reasoning is a little suspect :)
 
Isn't that how the "If it's Thursday we must be in Rome" quote came about?



And I would be equally bored just sitting on a boat for a week and I much prefer eating local food when I'm on holiday rather than the usual Euro bland served up on cruise ships.

I have nothing against people enjoying different types of holiday but I think that some of your reasoning is a little suspect :)

Not at all, you're only on board over night or if its a day at sea otherwise you're filling up on local cuisine from where ever you are. We just really enjoy the fact that on a weeks holiday we get to go to 7 different cities in a more stress free state than if driving\flying to 7 different cities along the Italian\French Riviera.

I guess you've never been on a cruise before? We had the same thoughts when we did our first one, in fact so have the people we have spoken too before going on their first one. I can't think of anyone of them who have said they will not cruise again, in fact they are all on their 2nd\3rd cruise already.
 
I guess you've never been on a cruise before?

You're correct and I won't give you the smart answer that I'm not old enough as I am :D

I've often fancied a Nile cruise or a Mississippi cruise on Proud Mary but never really a Med cruise as I don't think that one day in a port is anywhere near long enough to do anything.

We went to Madeira for a fortnight at Easter and found it to be a fascinating place and spent several days exploring the whole island without really touching Funchal at all yet we saw these giant cruise liners berthed there for the day and I wondered exactly how much of the island (or even Funchal) the people could see in one day before they were whisked off to the next port of call.

Not much I'll bet but if you tell us where you'll be stoppping off on your forthcoming cruise I might be able to suggest what you should be eating if I've been there :D
 
I've done Madeira, loved that place. I want to go back one day and go to Porto Santos (?).

We are going to Rome, Florence, Genoa, Nice, Provence and Barcelona.
 
We are going to Rome, Florence, Genoa, Nice, Provence and Barcelona.

Well that's shut me up as I've never been to any of those places and I was looking forward to telling you what you should be eating and where as well :D

If you get lost and end up in Malta do let me know though :)
 
I'm just hoping for a REALLY good Pizza somewhere
 
we've cruised the Caribbean and it was an amazing holiday and experience. We would definately do it again. People do get hooked on cruising and many dont do any other type of holiday once they have experienced it. There are some beautiful itineraries around and your Western Med one is good. As Wore Nowt says you dont get a lot of time to experience the country/place you dock at but you do get a taster. many of my clients book future holidays at destinations that they have cruised to as they want to see more of it - Rome is one of those!
Alaska is an amazing destination for cruising as the ships get very close to the scenery- definately one on my bucket list too.
Enjoy it, its an amazing way to spend a holiday, but as Wore Nowt says its not for everybody!
 
My wife and I went on a Caribbean cruise last year on Ventura.

Everyone said beforehand once you've been cruising you'll never book a 'normal' holiday again, however we wasn't overly keen on the whole cruising thing.

There seemed to be quite a lot of snobbery from fellow passengers talking about how many cruises they'd been on before, and that they wouldn't be getting off in Barbados as they'd been 14 times before etc etc :facepalm:

Also most of the ports you dock in are a few miles from the beach and obviously all the locals know you're turning up and they hound you from the minute you get off the ship until you use one of their services or buy something off them or just generally give them some money. I guess it's a little different when we've been to the Caribbean before and the hotel has a private beach and you miss that side of things.

The plus side was we got to go to 11 islands in 15 days and some Islands where absolutely gorgeous, and places previously we wouldn't of thought of visiting!

Maybe we're a little young (27) for the cruising scene so will possibly try it again in a few years time! :)
 
There seemed to be quite a lot of snobbery from fellow passengers talking about how many cruises they'd been on before, and that they wouldn't be getting off in Barbados as they'd been 14 times before etc etc :facepalm:

Also most of the ports you dock in are a few miles from the beach and obviously all the locals know you're turning up and they hound you from the minute you get off the ship until you use one of their services or buy something off them or just generally give them some money. I guess it's a little different when we've been to the Caribbean before and the hotel has a private beach and you miss that side of things.

The plus side was we got to go to 11 islands in 15 days and some Islands where absolutely gorgeous, and places previously we wouldn't of thought of visiting!

Maybe we're a little young (27) for the cruising scene so will possibly try it again in a few years time! :)

I agree with what you say about the people on board, there is that sadly and people do enjoy talking about their previous cruise experiences but also maybe you chose the wrong cruise line? P&O is geared more to the older traveller, so if you had chosen Royal Caribbean as the OP is going on you would very likely have found it to be a completely different experience. RC is much more geared up to the younger traveller - appreciate that Ventura is a family ship but the P&O experience is more for the older.
Generally if people take advice and choose the right ship/cruiseline rather than basing the decision on the itinerary or the price then they get a much better experience.
I know what you say about people hounding you at the ports -we did see this too, but you just say no firmly and they leave you alone -also you have to remember that these people are extremely poor (poverty that we really dont know) and its what they do to survive. giving them £1 or equivalent is not really going to break the bank!
 
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We chose the holiday/ship at the time as it was going to the Grand Turks and no other company seemed to be going there and its one place we really wanted to visit after seeing it out the window of the plane flying to Jamaica the year before.

It was a lovely ship and our room was very nice, I just don't like feeling its a competition for 2 weeks!

I appreciate they're poor and happy to help where reasonable and possible, however we had one guy offering me women to sleep with on one beach, we had a guy follow us for 15 minutes wanting money for fetching sunbeds/applying sun cream etc even though he was told we're not interested and to go away politely on several occasions. We had them on one beach tell us they'd bring drinks over for us and if they saw us get up they got quite aggressive that we weren't using them and then one women selling 'trinkets' on the beach was shouting at another young couple and actually swore at them asking them why they came to the island as they refused to buy anything off her!

That was in a 2 weeks period, after the first couple of times it gets a little irritating and sort of takes the shine off the place you're visiting but I guess that's what you get when your not on a hotels private beach with security to stop them pestering you.
 
I appreciate they're poor and happy to help where reasonable and possible, however we had one guy offering me women to sleep with on one beach, we had a guy follow us for 15 minutes wanting money for fetching sunbeds/applying sun cream etc even though he was told we're not interested and to go away politely on several occasions. We had them on one beach tell us they'd bring drinks over for us and if they saw us get up they got quite aggressive that we weren't using them and then one women selling 'trinkets' on the beach was shouting at another young couple and actually swore at them asking them why they came to the island as they refused to buy anything off her!

That was in a 2 weeks period, after the first couple of times it gets a little irritating and sort of takes the shine off the place you're visiting but I guess that's what you get when your not on a hotels private beach with security to stop them pestering you.

definately agree that's out of order!:)
 
Maybe we're a little young (27) for the cruising scene so will possibly try it again in a few years time! :)

I'm 27, was 26 when we did our first one last year and my wife was 24. With Royal Caribbean it is way more geared towards the younger traveller, on our last cruise I would say the average age on board was mid early 30's. We had loads of people the same age as us too.

I agree that sometimes you don't get enough time at the different ports to do or see everything they have to offer which can suck, but it does offer a great insight to see where you would want to go for a potential holiday. For instance we found on our last one that we'd never go to Gran Canaria for a holiday or Tenerife. From reviews we thought we'd love those places and thought we could spend ages around the towns and beaches etc, but that turned out wrong.

I'd rather spend one day on a cruise and go on to somewhere else than book a week's holiday judging by reviews and end up not enjoying outselves for that week. Each to their own though. We found we much preffered the Portugese side of things and are looking at going back to Lisbon possibly for a short winter break maybe Jan\Feb.

Our last one we found so much easier than dealing with big airports\customs etc etc as we left from Southampton so it was just a matter of parking in the car park, giving our bags to the baggage handlers and queing for less than 5 minutes in the customs area to pick up our on board passes. That we couldn't fault at all, from parking to getting on board was less than 20 minutes.

Will be interesting to see how it goes this time as we need to fly into Rome first, I just hope we get to spend a little bit of time in Rome before getting our transfer to the port.
 
For instance we found on our last one that we'd never go to Gran Canaria for a holiday or Tenerife. From reviews we thought we'd love those places and thought we could spend ages around the towns and beaches etc, but that turned out wrong.

I'd rather spend one day on a cruise and go on to somewhere else than book a week's holiday judging by reviews and end up not enjoying outselves for that week.

If you want advice on holiday destinations you need to ask someone who's opinion and taste you trust and not go on reviews as you need to know the person writing the review before you can know whether you can trust his opinion.

What was it about Tenerife that didn't meet your expectations?
 
If you want advice on holiday destinations you need to ask someone who's opinion and taste you trust and not go on reviews as you need to know the person writing the review before you can know whether you can trust his opinion.

spot on! maybe one day people will stop thinking of tripadvisor and the likes as a bible!
 
CLAIRETRAVEL1 said:
spot on! maybe one day people will stop thinking of tripadvisor and the likes as a bible!

Sorry, but travel agents have 'expected' people to take their advice as gospel for years. ;-)
I'd rather believe loads of good reviews about a place on trip advisor than one review from a travel agent, who is likely to have been there on a jolly or a kickback deal and who might not be being entirely unbiased.
There's really nothing wrong with believing MAJORITY opinions about places on the likes of
trip advisor.
 
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Sorry, but travel agents have 'expected' people to take their advice as gospel for years. ;-)
I'd rather believe loads of good reviews about a place on trip advisor than one review from a travel agent, who is likely to have been there on a jolly or a kickback deal and who might not be being entirely unbiased.
There's really nothing wrong with believing MAJORITY opinions about places on the likes of
trip advisor.

I take offence at your comments there, to be honest as I do with a lot of people on this forum. For information travel agents have a lot of information at their fingertips from fellow professionals which enables them to give unbalanced impartial opinions. I would never try and tell you how to do your job! All I try to do is help with my knowledge of the industry, as you all seem to know so much better than a travel professional I am now going to bow out of this forum and leave you all to your bad advice between each other.
 
You'll have to ignore FZR - he refuses to take his happy pills :D
 
as you all seem to know so much better than a travel professional I am now going to bow out of this forum and leave you all to your bad advice between each other.

Blimey Claire, I don't know what's worse - Mr I hate everything FZR400RRSP (as he's known to us all here) or you throwing your toys out of your pram because he has you in his sights as well as everyone else.

Just ignore him like the rest of us do
 
yes I know- sorry guys! toys are now back in the pram, I'll stay here if only to rile further :) . thanks for your comments everyone
 
I'm not telling you how to do your job, merely pointing out that I feel reading dozens of reviews about a place on trip advisor is better than listening to one travel agent.
Hardly controversial.
 
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Me and the missus did our first cruise in 08 on Costa Cruises around the Western Med. both in our 30s and we loved it! True you only get a taste of each place but we've done 2 return holidays to these "tasters".

We're going on our 2nd cruise in 59 days (but who's counting?). 11 nights round the Eastern Med on MSC Cruises. Can't wait!
 
Interesting to read these comment. Been thinking about doing a cruise for a while. Love the diea of going to different cities. Haven't visited any European cities before and would love to see them, so thought a cruise would be a good option for this. My parent are hooked, they have just come back from their 3rd cruise.
 
Two of our friends have just done their first 3 day taster cruise on Princess Cruises and they came back and can't stop talking about how good it was.
 
We've just done two cruises with Princess, last October we did New York up to Halifax then back down via Bar Harbour, Boston and a few other places who's names escape me now. It was me & my husband (mid 30s) & our 10 year old. There was loads to do and the range of expeditions were fantastic. Our daughter loved the kids club & it was nice getting some time to ourselves!

Having enjoyed that so much we did a 2 week Caribbean cruise at Easter. We really enjoyed that, especially the route they took. The islands were brilliant and we didn't have any problems with annoying locals! Again an excellent selection of expeditions.

We never really thought we'd become "cruise people" but I'm afraid we have! We chose Princess because of their relaxed dining, where if you didn't want to dress to the nines every night (especially with a child) you didn't have to.

I would recommend looking at the Cruise Critic website, which definitely helped us make our decision.
 

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