Crickett.Net

Norwegian Pearl, October 30 2011

Last month, I was able to sail with Norwegian Cruise Line for a full seven days on their Norwegian Pearl. Let me tell you all about it.

Don’t come crying to me.

I’m going to be blunt here from the very beginning, because honestly, if you can’t handle straight talk, you shouldn’t be reading this in the first place. So, are you ready? Here goes: If you take a cruise and you don’t purchase travel insurance to go with it, you’re a fool.

Educated Consumer vs. Ignorant Cheapskate

I love educated consumers. I try to be one as well. And when one is spending a couple thousand dollars on a vacation, I do believe in getting the best possible deal out there. Thing is, I don’t believe in screwing anyone over to get it. Service is valuable, and sometimes people won’t realise that until it’s far too late.

There’s Only One Guarantee With A Guarantee Cabin

One of the confusing aspects of booking cruise travel is all of the various cabin categories on offer. Each line has different category codes, and telling an E1 from a BB can be challenging when all you know is that you want a balcony cabin. However, the most confusing one of all seems to be the “guarantee” category.

Tipping – Not a city in China

If there’s one topic that’s sure to spark a firestorm of chatter among cruisers, it’s the topic of tipping. All of the mass market cruise lines and some of the luxury lines as well charge some sort of daily fee for the services provided to you as you’re being pampered on the ship. Some call it a service charge, some call it a gratuity, but no matter what it’s called, it’s being automatically added to your shipboard account. Here’s a few things you need to know about tipping on a ship.

NCL Epic – The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

In all, I have to say that I enjoyed the tiny tiny amount of time I had on the ship immensely. Because of the fact that she’s such a huge ship and there was so little time, it was really impossible for me to get to try out all of the things I wanted. Either the reservations were booked up (Cagney’s, Le Bistro), it was reserved for media only (Spiegel Tent for Cirque Dreams & Dinner), or it just seemed too chaotic to even try to get in on standby (Ice Bar). Still, I was given the opportunity to have almost full run of a brandy-new ship that still had that New Ship Smell, and that’s something for which I am eternally grateful.

The motion of the ocean.

People often ask, “What about motion sickness? Won’t I be nauseous on a cruise ship?” The short answer is: Not necessarily.

Yes, you’re on a ship, and by their very nature, they move. The difference between a modern cruise ship and, say, a ferry or a sailboat is vast.

Falmouth, Jamaica

Any update on Falmouth, Jamaica? Is this port likely to be ready for my Jan 23rd cruise? If not, will they substitute another Jamaica port? Thanks in advance! – S.C. – North Carolina

As of right now, they’re saying that the port will be ready for January. Matter of fact, there are a number of Holland America and Royal Caribbean itineraries that include that port through the end of the year. They’ve found recently, though, that the port is not quite up to their standards. As such, they’ve been re-routing to either Ocho Rios or Montego Bay. With such large ships as Allure Of The Seas scheduled to be coming in to that port and having it not be a tender port (meaning they’ll be able to dock right there instead of having to drop anchor a ways out and use tender boats to transfer people to and from the island), I imagine that the cruise lines are becoming rather anxious indeed for not only the port itself to be passing inspection but also for the dock to be complete.

While it is highly unlikely that your ship would skip Jamaica entirely (there are a few that re-route to Grand Cayman instead, but it’s rare), should the port at Falmouth not be up to snuff in time for your sailing, you’ll likely wind up in Montego Bay or Ocho Rios.

Thank you for your question, and please feel free to stop back here when you return from your voyage and let me know what they decided to do!

Carnival Dream

What have you heard good and bad about Carnival Dream? I’m going on her Jan 1 and I’m just a little curious. – J.A., Minnesota

When she set sail in 2009, Carnival Dream was the largest ship in their fleet at 130,000 tons and housing 3646 passengers. Many of the cruise lines are electing to build ever-larger ships, and are discovering that sometimes, bigger may not always be better.

Hello, and welcome to the new crickett.net!

It’s past time for an overhaul to this site, and I finally found a reason and a way to do it that made sense.  YAY!

As of now, this is going to be about questions and answers.  Mostly about travel, I think, because I’ve been in the industry for years, I’ve certainly got a few stories, and I’ve found that whenever I tell people what I do, they have questions.  So here, you may ask at will.