Cruise forum

No forum for that here. Best I've seen is cruisecritic.com although its a bit hard to navigate and find the forums and reviews sections. Lots of experienced cruisers hang out there.

My two best cruises were European cruises.
We went from Civitavecchia (Rome) down to Malta to Crete, Athens, Turkey and through the popular Greek islands ending in Venice.
Later that year, we went from Copenhagen to Warnemunde, Tallin, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm and back to Copenhagen. Boy, what a trip? Scandinavia is so deadly expensive on the ground that we have found the cruise by far the cheapest way to see the region. We went in three days early and stayed a week later--flying to Oslo and taking the Norway in a Nutshell Tour. The "show town" of St. Petersburg was the highlight of the trip.
We have also taken two April repositioning cruises from the U.S. to Europe. They were almost 2 weeks long and ridiculously (low) priced. On one, we flew over to Budapest. April, 2018, we spent a weekend in London and flew over to Ireland for a week.

For cruising, I use mainly Cruise Critic as my jumping off point for planning shore excursions. I follow a combination of the forum dedicated to my cruiseline, the forum for my Roll Call ( subforum specific to my specific sailing where we have a lot of discussions about excursions, and even join up to book small group private excursions), and of course the Ports of Call forums for advice and reviews of shore activities. From there I'll branch out to other travel sites for more in depth info on the individual ports. You can certainly ask specific port questions in the country forums here; just be clear in your questions that you are talking about a time restricted shore day. That will help inform the answers you receive.

We have cruises 6 times - I love this forum , however like others I recommend
cruisecritic.com

It’s the most intensive cruise forum I have found - ports of call , excursions , every cruise line and ship on those lines are well covered

As well as Pat's list of what is available on cruise critic, there are also reviews. Reviews of ships, reviews of itineraries, reviews of port stops, etc. So informative.

Last spring we met David (above) and his wife on a transatlantic cruise, had a wonderful lunch and other good times with them. We had read each other's posts and realized we were going on the same cruise. But that's a lucky break, on the whole this forum isn't terribly useful for cruise planning -- especially ocean cruises, it may work better for river cruises in Europe. Cruise Critic is the dominant source for all things cruising. Luckily for me, my wife haunts that site while I waste my hours on this forum. ;-)

Now that our host is getting on in years, he's showing more interest in cruising along with the rest of his demographic. So maybe someday there will be a dedicated "cruising" topic here. But it will never compete with Cruise Critic for volume and comprehensiveness.

Cruise critic is a good place to start. I find most, if not all, people there have a completely different travel style than me. They tend heavily toward the cruise ship's shore excursions; I figure out my own plans for shore days. That said, the discussions will give you a good idea of what is available at any port of call so you can chose what you might be interested in. If an idea sounds good to you, I'll guarantee there is a way to do it more efficiently (both time and money) and more enjoyably by avoiding the cruise ship's excursions.

I take it you've already chosen your cruise? Cruise critic also reviews ships and lines extensively. Some of the criticisms wouldn't matter to me, others do. I can review what people say and decide whether it's something that I would consider a negative. For example, Costa cruise's "Travel Italian Style" sounded pretty good until I read reviews. "Italian style" was critiqued as completely unresponsive customer service and overweight, hairy middle-aged guys in speedos ogling your wife at the pool. I decided Costa wasn't for me (before they had other issues).

Ports of call are much more important to me than amenities on the ship (not true for many on the website). I also prefer ports of call that can reasonably be seen in a day. Tallinn, Helsinki, Oslo are examples of smaller cities where you can visit your must-sees in an eight hour stop. Barcelona is an example of a city with way too much to see to consider an eight hour stop a good visit. Rome, Florence, Berlin, London are examples of cities that are both way too big AND require a significant portion of your day getting from the port to the city and back.

I echo the desire for a forum topic here on the RS site. I'm interested in doing a solo cruise and have tried to use cruise critic to get my bearings but I always end up feeling like I'm in the car with Chevy Chase and he's saying, "Look kids, Big Ben". The site seems circular and chaotic to me.

As far as I can tell, my best bet is a solo cabin on Norwegian. Beyond that, I've conceded defeat to the site - I'm clearly using it wrong and can't figure out how to make any progress. If you can figure it out, it seems to be the place to go.

As far as I can tell, my best bet is a solo cabin on Norwegian. Beyond
that, I've conceded defeat to the site - I'm clearly using it wrong
and can't figure out how to make any progress

MNFerst, sorry to hear you've had problems with the CC website. Since it's recent renovation it has had some hiccups. Have you found your way to the solo cruiser forum yet? Its located under the Special Interest section on the main forum page. You might be able to find some useful advice there.

I don't know what the single cabins on Norwegian are really like but I'm glad they're providing a more affordable alternative to the "single supplement." Another advantage of Norwegian for solos is that they encourage (or at least don't discourage) sharing tables with others at dinner. They don't do assigned mealtimes or tables, you can eat alone, with your partner, with others by arrangement, or with whoever else is ready to share when you show up. We have met some very enjoyable people on NCL cruises and had no bad experiences with dinner companions. (Some forgettable ones, to be sure.)

We have cruised on NCL 7 times and still cruise with them. We also like Celebrity (10 cruises) and Royal Caribbean (1).

The NCL single person cabins are great for solo travelers. NCL has great entertainment, but Celebrity has better cuisine.

All three cruise lines give you the option of dining with others at the Main Dining Room.

Thanks for all the advice. I've been on Cruise Critic and I've found some info helpful, but the forums aren't as organized and clear as on this site. I've used this forum for a few years now for my other trips to Europe and this time I've gone to the forum on RS for each individual country that we will be stopping at on our cruise and got some helpful info. Maybe Rick will add a cruise forum to his site, as he has started to include cruising to his shows and book series.

I'm a bit more active over on cruise critic's boards than I am here. They are great for information on cruises, but less so on what to do in port. Not that there's not lots of info - its just that many folks over there aren't exactly RS type travelers so if you want an RS type day, don't necessarily rely on them.

The Roll Calls are particularly useful, but the CC regulars lament they aren't near as active as they once were. I've joined private tours through the Roll Call, as well as Slot Pulls, Cabin crawls, book clubs, etc. Obviously number of sea days informs number of activities that get organized.

Tread carefully with the meet and mingle that the Cruise line will offer for Roll Call folks. We have stopped joining those as they seemed more like b*tch fests; full of people who've done a million cruises and still cruise despite getting no joy from it.

We are doing our second Transatlantic next March 29th. Miami to Rome, with seven nights in Rome before coming home. Through cruise critic we joined a fellow's private tour of Gibraltar. Hoping someone puts together a Slot Pull.

All that said, I totally agree with the previous poster who thinks Rick ought to add a cruising sub forum. People will get a different perspective to cruise critic.

Help with ports? Try Tom’s Port Guides, excellent resources for free.https://www.tomsportguides.com/
After that you can decide if you want to join a roll call group tour, start your own and see who wants to join you, join a cruiseline excursion, or strike out alone.

My favorite and only cruise?

The Staten Island Ferry!

23 minutes is the maximum I want to be trapped on a giant boat with over 1,000 passengers. That said, it IS the best deal in town! :-)