Cruise Ships

Larry,

Great to hear that you enjoy cruising. For me, never been and never plan to go. In this forum you will find more on-the-ground travelers than you will find cruisers.

"Horses for courses" is my mantra. A rental car, Eurail pass, tour bus, bicycle, riverboat, or a cruise ship may all be options DEPENDING upon the planned itinerary.

Clearly, Paris or Zurich don't lend themselves to cruise travel. Ports on the Mediterranean do. There are clear limitations to having a predefined schedule - a la a cruise line or a RS tour or even train schedules - but if you know what you want and the cruise ship fits, it can be a wonderful way to travel. Unpack once, and let the captain do the driving, the chefs do the cooking, and the staff take care of the room.

Rick has a guidebook to Mediterranean Cuise Ports, which is geared towards DIY from the ship: https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/p/mediterranean-cruise-ports

I haven't done any cruises in Europe. My first two visits to Europe in 1967 and 1970 were by ocean liner and the US Navy, respectively. These eliminated any jet lag.

I haven't used a huge cruise ship but I have been watching with interest the Northern Ireland exploits of the around the world live-aboard Villa Vie Residences’ Odyssey ship. After 4 months stuck in Northern Ireland they got 15 miles yesterday before going back and anchoring. Maybe tonight?

Here's a link to a TV special that Rick Steves did on cruising the Mediterranean. cruising the med

Many people have negative opinions regarding the impacts that cruise ships have on the ports they visit. And because the time actually spent visiting a place is so short, it's a different limited experience from touring on the ground. But clearly it's a popular option for many.

Thank you so much for the info about Cruise Boats. Very Appreciated

We have taken 21 ocean cruises since 2010. Our last one was in 2022 when we did Celebrity to the Galapagos Islands.
We don't do cruises anymore since we have done cruises in the Caribbean, Europe, 3 tranatlantics, one transpacific, Australia, Japan and China, Singapore to Dubai and three to or from South America.

Cruises up the coast of Norway, around the Horn of South America, Alaska visiting two huge glaciers, through the Panama Canal are perfect for the scenic views.

Also, we did other cruises that combined visiting some ports and on the same trip included a land trip that was separate.

Our favorite cruise lines were Celebrity, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines. It is best to compare itinerary and price.

The “huge” cruise boats you mention, topgunlc85, hold so many people that there must be a lot of travelers who like to go on them. I haven’t gone on a big ship cruise. You said that you pretty much enjoyed most of the 6 cruises you’ve taken … I wonder which ones you didn’t enjoy so much, where they went, and what wasn’t so great with them? Any information you can provide to educate us on what to watch out for or avoid would be helpful. Thank you, and Hope your next trip is good!

As for the size of the cruise ship, we like the relatively smaller ships that hold 2500 to 3000 passengers rather than the huge ones that carry 6000 or more.

When traveling with a large group of friends we usually cruise. Otherwise the logistics are a nightmare. Our last cruise this past May was on Holland America’s ship the Rotterdam up the coast of Norway. There were 8 adults.
1. At 66 years of age we are too young for this cruise line. We never saw so many walkers, Wheelchairs, and canes in one spot. And people would sit down at the cafes and never move till the next meal. The books, games, and cards came out and they never left. Also, the activities on the ship were practically non-existent. One afternoon they offered adult coloring - sad. What was sadder was that we attended as there was nothing else to do.
2. Unless you are 100% into scenery and hiking, Norway was a snooze. Being city people we enjoyed Oslo but that was about it. Even Bergen had slim pickings.
3. The excursions offered by the ship were very expensive, like $200+. The cruise itself was costly so we just booked 2 excursions. Most of them were for hiking and biking etc.

Have we gone on great cruises, yes. We went with Celebrity on their British Isles cruise and had fun and interesting ports, such as Belfast, Guernsey, and Dover. We also got to St. Petersburg, Tallin, and Helsinki on a cruise - places we probably would never have visited in our own.

Like any tour you are looking at you have to do a little research. Check out the ports, the size of the ship, whether they dock or you have to tender, the number of cabins and guests, etc.

I recently went on a cruise but only to placate my wife who has been badgering me to go on one for years. It was a Cunard cruise to Bruges, a 4 night taster to see if I would enjoy it. I insisted on staying in a Queens Grill room as a major part of going was to enjoy the food, cruise ship buffets concern me!

It was OK. The room was great, we had a penthouse suite but the food wasn't as good as I anticipated. The ship was lovely and well staffed but I was bored, it was all quite monotonous and the days just felt centred around meal times. It confirmed what I had suspected and that cruising is not for me.

Regarding Barbara's comments, I can say that we have never experienced a cruise as bad as she outlined.

We have never done Holland America cruises, but it has a reputation for cruising with the oldest passengers, still, it has a good reputation.

As for doing a coastal Norway cruise up several amazing fjords, I can say that that cruise with Royal Caribbean in 2019 was fantastic.

The scenic nature of the places we visited was exceptional. We found private tours from the ports that were super and half the cost of the ship's excursions. Some people prefer renting a car or doing Norway by rail. The logistics for that are huge due to the terrain you encounter into the interior of the country. Our cruise went all the way past the North Cape and doing that by car or rail is just too much. You would need to fly to get to some of those far north places easily.

Also, Norway is one of the most expensive countries in Europe and if you cruise your lodgings, meals and transport is included with the cruise. I remember in 2019 buying a beer in Norway, cost was 8 Euros. I had been to Portugal earlier that year and remember buying a similar beer for less than a Euro.

I like cruises for places not particularly easy to visit such as Greek islands ( and just last week in maritime Canada ) but for most of Europe that I am interested in, they are not near the coast and visiting Paris, Rome, Florence, and Berlin from their ports makes little sense to me

Like any tour you are looking at you have to do a little research.
Check out the ports, the size of the ship, whether they dock or you
have to tender, the number of cabins and guests, etc.

Absolutely yes. Same if you choose a bus tour. While the stress of getting from place to place is taken out of the equation, it's the effort that you put into the rest that can make the difference of a successful trip over a hum drum experience. We've cruised several times as well and never regretted it.

Would not suit me to be in a port for less than a day, hesitant to spend on a meal when it is free back onboard. And then after Barcelona say that I have seen Spain. To me it is not traveling.

I am not a cruise person, so I am biased. Six of us went on a Western Mediterranean cruise with the Norwegian Cruise Line in 2015. We were about 50 at the time.

For the most part, I enjoyed the experience. The dinners on the specialty restaurants on NCL were good. The breakfasts were massive all you can eat buffets. As mentioned before, you pay for it but you will miss out on all the ship lunches. Of course, you can more than make up for it with all the snacks and foods which are available at all hours. With only one lunch on shore per day, you really miss out on local cuisine opportunities which is a huge part of traveling.

Our only unpleasant experience was in Cannes where we had to use tenders to get to shore and back. We were instructed to be back at the port by 1pm to catch the tender. Unfortunately, high winds caused one of the anchors on the cruise ship to break, making it too dangerous for the tenders to dock with the ship. We had to wait in the lineup while the crew fixed the anchor. It took 3 hours. I wished that they had let us return back to town instead of just waiting around the whole time at the dock.

I actually found the whole cruise lifestyle to be exhausting. You have to wake up super early in the morning to eat breakfast and then to catch your shore excursion transportation. Some ports like Civitavecchia, Livorno and Naples require hours of sitting in a bus (or private van in our case) and a lot of rushing around to see stuff. We were always dead tired and asleep on the drive back to the ship.

Back at the ship, we then had to shower and make our dinner reservation. Do you like Italian or French ship cuisine prepared by Filipino cooks? For the most part, it was a good dining illusion. There were evening shows, but I often dozed off after the big meal and the the long day.

The next day we would wake up at a new port and repeat the whole process again. Sleeping while changing ports and waking up to a new city everyday is the only advantage of cruising. However, compared to my normal land travels, I gained weight and felt more exhausted after a cruise.

On the one sea day, the decks were crowded with passengers vying for deck chairs and the pool. The mass of people on one cruise ship is huge. When everybody converges in the same space during the same hours, it can be unpleasant for all. Most travellers will say that a destination is much nicer after the cruise ship crowd sails away. It is no wonder some cities are banning cruise.

I won't rule out going on another cruise in the future as I get older. Some cruises like Alaska or visiting islands probably make more sense by ship.

I guess I won't say I never will go on a cruise, but in looking at several, I just am not interested.

Why? Mainly the pace, I wouldn't plan a trip with a new city every day and unable to explore a city as I would like. Second, food. I travel to taste the places I go, it is a big part of my travel. I am sure the food on the boat is fine, and they try to include "local cuisine", but it is not local, not made by the people of the area. Same with local wines and beer.

I get that many enjoy cruising for the cruise, but that is just not me.

Not all cruises are what they call port intensive- a new port every day.

In fact the line I have usually sailed with specifically makes a habit of a mix of port days and sea days- with two successive port days being unusual.

Nor are all cruises like the major American lines, where if it's Tuesday you know what the menu will be fleet wide every week.

You don't have to take the excursions.

Firstly there are never enough excursion places for everyone on the ship. Secondly I (and many others at least on my ships) have the ability to plan my own independent days at the vast majority of ports, and am capable of reading a watch to keep track of time. In fact I at least have a sketch plan of what I intend to do in each port BEFORE booking the cruise, and decide if the port times are adequate for me.
On sea days I am on a cruise to be at sea, not to be in some resort which by chance happens to be floating. The theme parks and shopping malls on board hold very little interest to me.
I am also used to enrichment talks on board, something apparently quite lacking on NCL.

I only book an excursion if it is something pretty unusual which I couldn't possibly do under my own steam.

Even the major lines have a wide range of possible itineraries from the port intensive to the positively laid back relaxed.
There is a big difference.

We've travelled through Europe via Ocean Cruise, RS Tour, and on our own and enjoyed them all. Some people don't like the idea of only spending one day in a port and that's valid. The best advice I received when I brought that up with a friend is not to let it get in the way of a good time. Consider it a sampler of somewhere you may want to spend extra time in the future. That happened after a stop in Naples in 2014; we did a whirlwind trip through Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast which resulted in a 2 week stay in Sorrento 9 years later. Same with a bus tour. We were in and out of the Dordogne region too quickly on our RS tour in 2019, but instead of being disappointed, we looked forward to a longer visit which we did a couple of months ago with a week stay in the Dordogne and Bordeaux regions.

Bottom line is you won't know if it's for you until you do it. We're doing a river cruise in May and I have no idea if we'll like it or not. We felt the same way before our RS tour in 2019.

You don't have to take the excursions.

In total we've done 5 ocean cruises and used the ship's excursion options just once. That was to Florence because we determined it was going to be too complicated on our own. Most of the time we didn't bother with a tour at all, but when we did, the tour company was always very aware of when we needed to be back and made sure we were.

Iam curious as how many travelers like to travel on huge cruise boats. And to go to places like Europe etc.

The good news is that cruise passengers will never know what they have missed because in Europe they are missing a lot, especially culture. People pay a lot of money to come to a place but visit it like a zoo. Another risk is that passengers of large ships travel in bubbles. In a lot of cases cruise passengers were at the location, but not there.

The concept of cruise tourism fails finally when large ships visit places which have only a small ratio of inhabitants compared to the number of passengers. If y whole village becomes staff and statists of a cruise ship then culture is served at the breakfast buffet of the incoming cruise ship in the morning.

I think it's a mistake to lump all cruise lines together. The experience one gets on lines such as Regent is scarcely comparable to that on, say, Royal Caribbean. Smaller ships, better and more local cuisine, and better curated excursions on the former; lower cost on the latter. In neither case does one acquire an accurate perspective of life in the port cities, but then again tourism never can provide a totally objective view of the visited places. Certainly we never felt like zoo visitors when we cruised.

I've said elsewhere that our cruises were valuable in giving us an idea of places we'd like to explore further. I think that's a realistic expectation for a cruise. That, and eating and drinking to excess while on board. We accomplished those as well.

A few observations:

1. As noted above, cruise lines can be very different.

2. Cruise itineraries can be different. Some cruise lines try to be port-intensive with overnight stays. I once took a Baltic cruise on Azamara, and we had three nights in St. Petersburg.

3. Some itineraries or parts of Europe are more cruise-friendly than others. Again, I took a Baltic cruise, which covered Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Tallinn, and Germany. It was much easier visiting those cities on a cruise rather than trying to replicate that itinerary on my own.

4. This may be heresy, but in some respects, European cruises with private guides (not the cruise-line tours) are similar to some Rick Steves tours, which often move quickly and do not spend much time in any one place.