Articles
"12 Myths of Cruising" - Continued
Myth No. 1: Cruising is expensive. Blame the movie "Titanic," all that shimmering crystal, gold and brass, burnished mahogany staircases and bejeweled aristocrats. In real life, cruising runs the gamut from bargain to deluxe. Cruise advocates argue that a mainstream cruise offers the best overall value in the travel industry, an assertion hard to dispute.
For instance, cruising the Caribbean aboard a 1,000-plus-passenger ship (Princess, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Holland America, Carnival) averages between $120 and $250 a night for 2012, depending on the season, cabin (interior, view, balcony, etc.) and length. Remember that this is lodging, transportation, food and most onboard activities all rolled into one.
If you really want a bargain, book an interior cabin: It’s even cheaper, there’s more room, and if you spend all your spare time exploring destinations or enjoying the ship, it won’t matter that you lack a window or deck.
Myth No. 2: Cruising is not for "real travelers." Veteran world travelers generally look down their noses at cruising. Aren’t the ships overrun with retirees who save all their nickels so they can spend five days bellying up to the buffet and don’t care whether they’re in Venice or Vegas? No, they’re not.
Big-ship cruising on the classic Caribbean, Mediterranean, South American, South Pacific and Alaskan itineraries offers any traveler one immense strategic advantage: Your hotel room goes with you. Unpack once. Fly into the embarkation port, fly home from the debarkation port. As your floating hotel takes you from Barcelona to Monte Carlo to Rome to Greece to Venice, you can dine in the candlelit hush of the premium dining room, onshore at local restaurants or in the cafeteria. You can lounge by the pool drinking Bud or sign up for private limousine tours of the Parthenon. Ships accommodate both types of travelers.
And they’re not all Americans. Europeans throng the Mediterranean itineraries: Holland America is a U.S. company based in Seattle, but barely half the passengers on its numerous Mediterranean itineraries are Americans. The rest are Dutch, British, Russian, Polish, Mexican, Brazilian, German and more. My last cruise had more than 27 nationalities onboard.
Myth No. 3: Port calls are just frivolous fly-bys. Rome in a day. A morning in Dubrovnik. Mazatlan for the afternoon. Four hours in Glacier Bay. How can you call this “visiting” a place?
Most cruise-ship port calls are indeed brief, a full day at best. But no one claims this is an in-depth look at ancient Rome or anthropogenic glacial disappearance. A shore excursion is simply a chance to get a taste of a place, and, depending on your guide, learn a lot. For example, I had no idea that ancient Rome’s monuments disappeared in part because the stone was “recycled” (stolen for reuse by later builders).
Some lines are starting to create itineraries that include two nights in a single port, such as Rio de Janeiro or Hong Kong. Still brief, but the vast majority of travelers would never otherwise visit there at all.
And in many smaller ports, one day or less is plenty. My wife and I strolled around Monte Carlo for three hours, which was more than adequate (alas, no James Bond sightings).
Myth No. 4: If you want to see anything, expensive shore excursions are essential. On the contrary, most port calls bring the ship close enough — either at a wharf or by tender — for passengers to wander on their own. That’s how I’ve seen Sitka and Ketchikan, Alaska; Nafplion, a lovely little Greek town with cobblestone lanes; Corfu; Venice; Ruse, Bulgaria and many more. In another Greek port my wife and I joined a lovely British couple, rented a car for $50 and drove to Olympia, the original site of the Olympic Games. We watched Dutch high-schoolers race on the same field that ancient Greeks used, then had lunch in a tiny crossroads town. A similar shore excursion would have cost $129 each.
Myth No. 5: Cruise food is dreck. No, it’s not. The salad bars on Holland America ships are excellent. The pizzas on Princess’s Golden Princess are among the best anywhere. Most cruise lines offer white-linen fine dining at no extra charge, and the modern wrinkle of paying a $25 surcharge in the premium restaurants gets you a very good dinner, such as in Holland America's Pinnacle Grill on the Nieuw Amsterdam. Options range from steak Diane to cedar-plank black cod.
There is almost always a decent array of fruit at breakfast; simple make-your-own sandwiches will be as good a lunch as in your own kitchen; the efforts every cruise chef makes to represent local cuisine are worthy if not resounding successes. On smaller cruise ships, such as the wonderful American Safari Cruises adventure boats that sail Alaska, Hawaii and the Sea of Cortez, you can make individual requests and suggestions to the chef in person.
Myth No. 6: The food is fabulous. Not this, either. Cruise-ship dining ranges from cafeteria average to very good in the premium restaurants, but when I say “very good,” I don’t mean world class. Yes, cruise lines have all signed up big-name chefs whose recipes are offered you on brass-embossed menus. But recipes alone do not make great food, and the task of provisioning and cooking for 2,000 people a night often overwhelms good intentions. As for the main dining rooms, chicken breast a la king or bacon left beneath an infrared warmer for a half-hour is overcooked. That’s cafeteria food, folks. Yes, there’s a lot of it. Those who ooze ecstasy about cruise food are confusing quantity with quality.
And the smaller ships almost always have other imperatives, such as wildlife watching or outdoor adventure, that make gourmet cooking secondary. Big or small, however well-intentioned, cruise food is not comparable to a gourmet restaurant on land. It’s good, but not great.
Myth No. 7: It’s all big boats these days. The cruise industry has gone gaga over boats big enough to conduct small-scale invasions: Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas sails with more than 6,000 passengers aboard, is divided into "neighborhoods," and offers activity and entertainment that far, far exceed any small city on land. Sail on this behemoth and you are in effect taking a vacation at a large all-inclusive resort that happens to float.
But there is an infinite array of alternatives. You can cruise the Inside Passage in Alaska with 2,000 other passengers on a midsize ship and have a great experience. Or you can sail Southeast Alaska’s scenic, wildlife-rich waters with just nine passengers aboard Dennis Rogers’ Alaska Sea Adventures M/V Northern Song, whose 84-foot length allows it to go where the big ships cannot, and whose flexible weeklong itineraries allow the captain to take travelers to the best weather, best wildlife and best scenery.
Many fine small-ship cruising companies offer adventure-based itineraries all over the globe. American Safari Cruises specializes in sensational wildlife watching and outdoor activities in Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico on 25- to 125-passenger boats. Compagnie du Ponant sails sleek, modern, 132-stateroom mega-yachts around the Mediterranean at remarkably affordable rates. Adventuresmith Explorations represents myriad small-ship cruise operators from Asia to Antarctica.
And what some would say is the only real way to sail the oceans — under sail — is available from Star Clippers, with its three tall ships in the Caribbean and Mediterranean carrying 170 to 225 passengers. These are the biggest tall ships operating today, and it’s worth remembering that while the big boys today carry 20 times as many people, it wasn’t long ago that ships like these were the standard of the seas.
Myth No. 8: I’d love to cruise, but the ocean is scary. Fine, take a river cruise. Long, low, highly maneuverable riverboats sail many of the world’s great inland waterways, from China to South America to the Pacific Northwest.
But the world capital of river cruising is Europe, where hundreds of boats ply the Danube and Rhine rivers. (Uniworld and Viking are the biggest operators on Europe's rivers.) These passages afford travelers the chance to see a vast expanse of the continent, from the Black Sea and the nascent democracies of Eastern Europe to the high-hill castles of Germany and the pastoral fields of Holland. Upper Rhine cruises are beloved for their passage by hillside vineyards and cathedral-spired cities; Danube cruises almost all start or end in Vienna, recently tabbed the world’s best city .
Myth No. 9: All-inclusive cruising is history. Cruises generally include lodging, meals, some beverages and most onboard activities and amenities. That’s pretty inclusive. Spa treatments, premium dining, liquor, specialty drinks, shore excursions, commemorative photos — all these are extra, and should be.
Most small-boat lines and today’s luxury-line inheritors of the glory days, such as Seabourn, Silversea, Regent Seven Seas and Crystal, offer even more inclusive pricing. On Alaskan Dream Cruises, not only are beer and wine at dinner complimentary, so are the shore excursions — and so is the foul-weather gear you need while traipsing around southeastern Alaska. On Silversea, the fare includes all dining options, beverages (even alcoholic) and port transportation.
All the whining about the end of the good old days of inclusive cruising has been from folks who miss the blessedly defunct all-you-can-drink days on the mainstream ships. But now there’s a new wrinkle: all-you-can-drink surcharges bubbling up on lines such as Celebrity and Oceania. Hand over $49.95 a day and you can down all the booze you want from the bar, all day, excepting ultraluxe champagnes and such.
Myth No. 10: Cruise ships are disease factories. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 80 percent of all outbreaks of the most common gastrointestinal illness, norovirus, occur in land-based institutions such as assisted living centers or schools. As for the other notorious supposed cruise danger, Legionnaire's disease, the CDC studied a six-month period in 2003 and found eight cases — total — from hundreds of cruises. Two patients died; in a similar six-month period, almost a quarter-million people die from smoking.
Cruise ships today fervently promote hygiene. Guests pass sanitizing stations entering every dining room and restroom; fact sheets and onboard instruction foster wellbeing; serve-yourself food buffets have been severely cut back. Taking a cruise is no more a risk to your health than going to a shopping mall — probably less.
Myth No. 11: The shopping is great. Face it, the trinkets, watches, baubles, paintings and booze you find on cruise ships are no better priced or higher quality than whatever you find on land. Same goes for the stores that glue themselves to cruise wharves, such as the innumerable diamond shops that have cropped up in the most ridiculous places, such as several Alaska ports. Your neighborhood jeweler at home will serve you better. Cruising has many advantages, but shopping isn’t one.
Myth No. 12: The industry is bad for the environment. Perspective is needed here. Compare cruising to, say, trucking. It’s true that not long ago, cruise ships were heedless about such things as waste and energy use, but change is sweeping the industry. Cruise lines increasingly are adopting sustainable travel codes that, for instance, govern shore excursions in Arctic environments; Silversea, Holland America and Celebrity, along with many smaller operators, subscribe to this. Recycling is vigorously promoted onboard ships, large and small. Waste disposal practices have improved markedly.
My favorite example, though, belongs to Princess Cruises: 10 years ago, the company partnered with Juneau to create the world’s first shore power facility. Today, Princess ships that tie up in Juneau plug in (literally) to the city’s electric system and turn off their diesel engines while in port. The line has 10 ships equipped for shore power, has helped five other ports install the equipment, and continues to expand the program. In a decade Princess has thus saved millions of gallons of diesel fuel and spared the atmosphere tons of pollutants.
Eric Lucas
Myth No. 1: Cruising is expensive. Blame the movie "Titanic," all that shimmering crystal, gold and brass, burnished mahogany staircases and bejeweled aristocrats. In real life, cruising runs the gamut from bargain to deluxe. Cruise advocates argue that a mainstream cruise offers the best overall value in the travel industry, an assertion hard to dispute.
For instance, cruising the Caribbean aboard a 1,000-plus-passenger ship (Princess, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Holland America, Carnival) averages between $120 and $250 a night for 2012, depending on the season, cabin (interior, view, balcony, etc.) and length. Remember that this is lodging, transportation, food and most onboard activities all rolled into one.
If you really want a bargain, book an interior cabin: It’s even cheaper, there’s more room, and if you spend all your spare time exploring destinations or enjoying the ship, it won’t matter that you lack a window or deck.
Myth No. 2: Cruising is not for "real travelers." Veteran world travelers generally look down their noses at cruising. Aren’t the ships overrun with retirees who save all their nickels so they can spend five days bellying up to the buffet and don’t care whether they’re in Venice or Vegas? No, they’re not.
Big-ship cruising on the classic Caribbean, Mediterranean, South American, South Pacific and Alaskan itineraries offers any traveler one immense strategic advantage: Your hotel room goes with you. Unpack once. Fly into the embarkation port, fly home from the debarkation port. As your floating hotel takes you from Barcelona to Monte Carlo to Rome to Greece to Venice, you can dine in the candlelit hush of the premium dining room, onshore at local restaurants or in the cafeteria. You can lounge by the pool drinking Bud or sign up for private limousine tours of the Parthenon. Ships accommodate both types of travelers.
And they’re not all Americans. Europeans throng the Mediterranean itineraries: Holland America is a U.S. company based in Seattle, but barely half the passengers on its numerous Mediterranean itineraries are Americans. The rest are Dutch, British, Russian, Polish, Mexican, Brazilian, German and more. My last cruise had more than 27 nationalities onboard.
Myth No. 3: Port calls are just frivolous fly-bys. Rome in a day. A morning in Dubrovnik. Mazatlan for the afternoon. Four hours in Glacier Bay. How can you call this “visiting” a place?
Most cruise-ship port calls are indeed brief, a full day at best. But no one claims this is an in-depth look at ancient Rome or anthropogenic glacial disappearance. A shore excursion is simply a chance to get a taste of a place, and, depending on your guide, learn a lot. For example, I had no idea that ancient Rome’s monuments disappeared in part because the stone was “recycled” (stolen for reuse by later builders).
Some lines are starting to create itineraries that include two nights in a single port, such as Rio de Janeiro or Hong Kong. Still brief, but the vast majority of travelers would never otherwise visit there at all.
And in many smaller ports, one day or less is plenty. My wife and I strolled around Monte Carlo for three hours, which was more than adequate (alas, no James Bond sightings).
Myth No. 4: If you want to see anything, expensive shore excursions are essential. On the contrary, most port calls bring the ship close enough — either at a wharf or by tender — for passengers to wander on their own. That’s how I’ve seen Sitka and Ketchikan, Alaska; Nafplion, a lovely little Greek town with cobblestone lanes; Corfu; Venice; Ruse, Bulgaria and many more. In another Greek port my wife and I joined a lovely British couple, rented a car for $50 and drove to Olympia, the original site of the Olympic Games. We watched Dutch high-schoolers race on the same field that ancient Greeks used, then had lunch in a tiny crossroads town. A similar shore excursion would have cost $129 each.
Myth No. 5: Cruise food is dreck. No, it’s not. The salad bars on Holland America ships are excellent. The pizzas on Princess’s Golden Princess are among the best anywhere. Most cruise lines offer white-linen fine dining at no extra charge, and the modern wrinkle of paying a $25 surcharge in the premium restaurants gets you a very good dinner, such as in Holland America's Pinnacle Grill on the Nieuw Amsterdam. Options range from steak Diane to cedar-plank black cod.
There is almost always a decent array of fruit at breakfast; simple make-your-own sandwiches will be as good a lunch as in your own kitchen; the efforts every cruise chef makes to represent local cuisine are worthy if not resounding successes. On smaller cruise ships, such as the wonderful American Safari Cruises adventure boats that sail Alaska, Hawaii and the Sea of Cortez, you can make individual requests and suggestions to the chef in person.
Myth No. 6: The food is fabulous. Not this, either. Cruise-ship dining ranges from cafeteria average to very good in the premium restaurants, but when I say “very good,” I don’t mean world class. Yes, cruise lines have all signed up big-name chefs whose recipes are offered you on brass-embossed menus. But recipes alone do not make great food, and the task of provisioning and cooking for 2,000 people a night often overwhelms good intentions. As for the main dining rooms, chicken breast a la king or bacon left beneath an infrared warmer for a half-hour is overcooked. That’s cafeteria food, folks. Yes, there’s a lot of it. Those who ooze ecstasy about cruise food are confusing quantity with quality.
And the smaller ships almost always have other imperatives, such as wildlife watching or outdoor adventure, that make gourmet cooking secondary. Big or small, however well-intentioned, cruise food is not comparable to a gourmet restaurant on land. It’s good, but not great.
Myth No. 7: It’s all big boats these days. The cruise industry has gone gaga over boats big enough to conduct small-scale invasions: Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas sails with more than 6,000 passengers aboard, is divided into "neighborhoods," and offers activity and entertainment that far, far exceed any small city on land. Sail on this behemoth and you are in effect taking a vacation at a large all-inclusive resort that happens to float.
But there is an infinite array of alternatives. You can cruise the Inside Passage in Alaska with 2,000 other passengers on a midsize ship and have a great experience. Or you can sail Southeast Alaska’s scenic, wildlife-rich waters with just nine passengers aboard Dennis Rogers’ Alaska Sea Adventures M/V Northern Song, whose 84-foot length allows it to go where the big ships cannot, and whose flexible weeklong itineraries allow the captain to take travelers to the best weather, best wildlife and best scenery.
Many fine small-ship cruising companies offer adventure-based itineraries all over the globe. American Safari Cruises specializes in sensational wildlife watching and outdoor activities in Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico on 25- to 125-passenger boats. Compagnie du Ponant sails sleek, modern, 132-stateroom mega-yachts around the Mediterranean at remarkably affordable rates. Adventuresmith Explorations represents myriad small-ship cruise operators from Asia to Antarctica.
And what some would say is the only real way to sail the oceans — under sail — is available from Star Clippers, with its three tall ships in the Caribbean and Mediterranean carrying 170 to 225 passengers. These are the biggest tall ships operating today, and it’s worth remembering that while the big boys today carry 20 times as many people, it wasn’t long ago that ships like these were the standard of the seas.
Myth No. 8: I’d love to cruise, but the ocean is scary. Fine, take a river cruise. Long, low, highly maneuverable riverboats sail many of the world’s great inland waterways, from China to South America to the Pacific Northwest.
But the world capital of river cruising is Europe, where hundreds of boats ply the Danube and Rhine rivers. (Uniworld and Viking are the biggest operators on Europe's rivers.) These passages afford travelers the chance to see a vast expanse of the continent, from the Black Sea and the nascent democracies of Eastern Europe to the high-hill castles of Germany and the pastoral fields of Holland. Upper Rhine cruises are beloved for their passage by hillside vineyards and cathedral-spired cities; Danube cruises almost all start or end in Vienna, recently tabbed the world’s best city .
Myth No. 9: All-inclusive cruising is history. Cruises generally include lodging, meals, some beverages and most onboard activities and amenities. That’s pretty inclusive. Spa treatments, premium dining, liquor, specialty drinks, shore excursions, commemorative photos — all these are extra, and should be.
Most small-boat lines and today’s luxury-line inheritors of the glory days, such as Seabourn, Silversea, Regent Seven Seas and Crystal, offer even more inclusive pricing. On Alaskan Dream Cruises, not only are beer and wine at dinner complimentary, so are the shore excursions — and so is the foul-weather gear you need while traipsing around southeastern Alaska. On Silversea, the fare includes all dining options, beverages (even alcoholic) and port transportation.
All the whining about the end of the good old days of inclusive cruising has been from folks who miss the blessedly defunct all-you-can-drink days on the mainstream ships. But now there’s a new wrinkle: all-you-can-drink surcharges bubbling up on lines such as Celebrity and Oceania. Hand over $49.95 a day and you can down all the booze you want from the bar, all day, excepting ultraluxe champagnes and such.
Myth No. 10: Cruise ships are disease factories. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 80 percent of all outbreaks of the most common gastrointestinal illness, norovirus, occur in land-based institutions such as assisted living centers or schools. As for the other notorious supposed cruise danger, Legionnaire's disease, the CDC studied a six-month period in 2003 and found eight cases — total — from hundreds of cruises. Two patients died; in a similar six-month period, almost a quarter-million people die from smoking.
Cruise ships today fervently promote hygiene. Guests pass sanitizing stations entering every dining room and restroom; fact sheets and onboard instruction foster wellbeing; serve-yourself food buffets have been severely cut back. Taking a cruise is no more a risk to your health than going to a shopping mall — probably less.
Myth No. 11: The shopping is great. Face it, the trinkets, watches, baubles, paintings and booze you find on cruise ships are no better priced or higher quality than whatever you find on land. Same goes for the stores that glue themselves to cruise wharves, such as the innumerable diamond shops that have cropped up in the most ridiculous places, such as several Alaska ports. Your neighborhood jeweler at home will serve you better. Cruising has many advantages, but shopping isn’t one.
Myth No. 12: The industry is bad for the environment. Perspective is needed here. Compare cruising to, say, trucking. It’s true that not long ago, cruise ships were heedless about such things as waste and energy use, but change is sweeping the industry. Cruise lines increasingly are adopting sustainable travel codes that, for instance, govern shore excursions in Arctic environments; Silversea, Holland America and Celebrity, along with many smaller operators, subscribe to this. Recycling is vigorously promoted onboard ships, large and small. Waste disposal practices have improved markedly.
My favorite example, though, belongs to Princess Cruises: 10 years ago, the company partnered with Juneau to create the world’s first shore power facility. Today, Princess ships that tie up in Juneau plug in (literally) to the city’s electric system and turn off their diesel engines while in port. The line has 10 ships equipped for shore power, has helped five other ports install the equipment, and continues to expand the program. In a decade Princess has thus saved millions of gallons of diesel fuel and spared the atmosphere tons of pollutants.
Eric Lucas
