First Cruise

[luv]

Looks like I won't be going to Baltimore. Something came up. Instead, I am going on my first cruise in September!

Tips? Already hearing about how to get liquor on board...lol.

[DaKCMan AP]

Originally Posted by qabbaan

Cruising is very American... overeating and getting drunk, slugging around all day. And for young people probably banging some stranger. You could see a new city in Europe for what you pay for a buffet and a deckchair on a cruise. Which will you remember more fondly when you are old - seeing one of the great cities in the world, or that week you shoveled unlimited crablegs and barfed daquiris in the toilet in your bunk?

I agree with your premise and prefer my international travel sans cruise - but your facts are way, way off. You can generally purchase an entire cruise for less than just the airfare to travel overseas. I'm lucky that I can travel wherever I want without concern for the price but most people (especially those my age) can't.

[Great Expectations]

Originally Posted by NewChief

No shit. I agree with the guy's general values he's espousing, but he clearly has no clue how much a cruise costs (or even better, an all inclusive somewhere in the Caribbean) vs. a trip to Europe. I'm all for adventure travel and dislike much of the culture of the All Inclusive homoegenization... but it's definitely economical (not to mention incredibly convenient) in comparison to trying to do it on your own.

The convenience is what I love about all-inclusive. I miss some of the fun with eating at local establishments, but it is so easy especially if you are traveling with a group to go eat and drink while not worrying about a thing.

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by Great Expectations

The convenience is what I love about all-inclusive. I miss some of the fun with eating at local establishments, but it is so easy especially if you are traveling with a group to go eat and drink while not worrying about a thing.

When I didn't have children and a demanding career, I would spend months leading up to my vacation (sometimes a year) planning all sorts of things. I would get online and try to interact with locals and find out places to go and things to do/see. I'd read books and literature and all sorts of stuff about my destination.

Sadly, I just don't have the time for that any longer. I can book my tickets and reservation, and I can do some minimum research. Beyond that, I'm usually not going into "travel mode" and seriously thinking about the trip until we depart our house for the airport or get in the car to start driving. As such, the ease of all-inclusives or just traveling to somewhere I'm familiar has greater appeal at this time in my life. At some point, I hope that I'll be able to really commit the time and energy to more interesting travel, but it's not in the cards currently.

[Donger]

Floating prison, that you pay for.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by Donger

Floating prison, that you pay for.

[Bearcat]

Some of the reviews online are pretty hilarious... from people who go on several cruises a year, yet bitch about every little thing (not that it's much different than reading reviews about anything else). One person said they "experienced minimal disdain" at one of the ports.

Insufferable people are funny.

[qabbaan]

Originally Posted by DaKCMan AP

I agree with your premise and prefer my international travel sans cruise - but your facts are way, way off. You can generally purchase an entire cruise for less than just the airfare to travel overseas. I'm lucky that I can travel wherever I want without concern for the price but most people (especially those my age) can't.

Fares to LHR in the $900 range are readily available. You'd have to get yourself to a major city first, but she is taking a regional flight to New Orleans just the same. Of course I don't deny that Europe would be more expensive but not that much more expensive, and so much more meaningful.

Budget Travel is a great mag, if anyone is interested in travel. There was a package on their website this morning for Aruba - 4 nights from $1100 per person for two, round trip air from Miami included.

[DaKCMan AP]

Originally Posted by qabbaan

Fares to LHR in the $900 range are readily available. You'd have to get yourself to a major city first, but she is taking a regional flight to New Orleans just the same. Of course I don't deny that Europe would be more expensive but not that much more expensive, and so much more meaningful.

Budget Travel is a great mag, if anyone is interested in travel. There was a package on their website this morning for Aruba - 4 nights from $1100 per person for two, round trip air from Miami included.

I guess it's different since I live in FL so it costs $0 to get to the port. I can go on a cruise for less than the $900 airfare. I don't disagree with your meaningful argument and I'm not stating otherwise. I've been on 1 cruise in the past 3 years (and only because it was a "family" trip over new years that didn't cost me vacation time from work) while in the same time I've traveled to Canada, Israel, Peru, and Spain.

[NewChief]

If you haven't ever read David Foster Wallace's essay about his experience on a cruise ship, do so.

http://harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/Har...01-0007859.pdf

Some classic quotes:

“I have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. I have smelled suntan lotion spread over 2,100 pounds of hot flesh. I have been addressed as "Mon" in three different nations. I have seen 500 upscale Americans dance the Electric Slide. I have seen sunsets that looked computer-enhanced. I have (very briefly) joined a conga line.”

“From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster.

All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea-vet who preceded me and is tied for first with 10/10. The two brothers are the only entrants even near my age; both got scores of 9/10 and are now appraising me coolly from identical prep-school-slouch positions against the starboard rail. The Greek NCOs seem extremely bored. I am handed the heavy gun and told to "be bracing a hip" against the aft rail and then to place the stock of the weapon against, no, not the shoulder of my hold-the-gun arm but the shoulder of my pull-the-trigger arm. (My initial error in this latter regard results in a severely distorted aim that makes the Greek by the catapult do a rather neat drop-and-roll.)

Let's not spend a lot of time drawing this whole incident out. Let me simply say that, yes, my own trapshooting score was noticeably lower than the other entrants' scores, then simply make a few disinterested observations for the benefit of any novice contemplating trapshooting from a 7NC Megaship, and then we'll move on: (1) A certain level of displayed ineptitude with a firearm will cause everyone who knows anything about firearms to converge on you all at the same time with cautions and advice and handy tips. (2) A lot of the advice in (1) boils down to exhortations to "lead" the launched pigeon, but nobody explains whether this means that the gun's barrel should move across the sky with the pigeon or should instead sort of lie in static ambush along some point in the pigeon's projected path. (3) Whatever a "hair trigger" is, a shotgun does not have one. (4) If you've never fired a gun before, the urge to close your eyes at the precise moment of concussion is, for all practical purposes, irresistible. (5) The well-known "kick" of a fired shotgun is no misnomer; it knocks you back several steps with your arms pinwheeling wildly for balance, which when you're holding a still-loaded gun results in mass screaming and ducking and then on the next shot a conspicuous thinning of the crowd in the 9-Aft gallery above. Finally, (6), know that an unshot discus's movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like -- i.e., orange and parabolic and right-to-left -- and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad.”

“I have pointed rhythmically at the ceiling to the two-four beat of the same disco music I hated pointing at the ceiling to in 1977.”

“Organized shuffleboard has always filled me with dread. Everything about it suggests infirm senescence and death: it's a game played on the skin of a void, and the rasp of the sliding puck is the sound of that skin getting abraded away bit by bit.

[Molitoth]

I just watched the movie "Titanic" for the very first time last night, and I have to say I'm not looking forward to a cruise anytime soon.

(Although I do realize that the odds of that happening in this day and age are like .003%)

ps: (and I wouldn't be cruising around up near icebergs)

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by Molitoth

I just watched the movie "Titanic" for the very first time last night, and I have to say I'm not looking forward to a cruise anytime soon.

(Although I do realize that the odds of that happening in this day and age are like .003%)

ps: (and I wouldn't be cruising around up near icebergs)

They have ~14 day transatlantic cruises...


Barcelona, Spain
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Fun Day at Sea
Malaga, Spain
Fun Day at Sea
Las Palmas,Canary Is
Fun Day at Sea
Fun Day at Sea
Fun Day at Sea
Fun Day at Sea
Fun Day at Sea
Antigua
St. Maarten, NA
Fun Day at Sea
Fun Day at Sea
Miami, FL

...that's a lot of cruising.

[Saulbadguy]

Originally Posted by qabbaan

Fares to LHR in the $900 range are readily available. You'd have to get yourself to a major city first, but she is taking a regional flight to New Orleans just the same. Of course I don't deny that Europe would be more expensive but not that much more expensive, and so much more meaningful.

Budget Travel is a great mag, if anyone is interested in travel. There was a package on their website this morning for Aruba - 4 nights from $1100 per person for two, round trip air from Miami included.

For a 7 night cruise I normally pay anywhere from $500-$700pp. Airfare to the port, no more than $300pp RT.

So, yeah, about the cost of an airline ticket to Europe.

[Rain Man]

I must say, I'm shocked at the prices of airfares to Europe these days. I've generally been able to go in the past for $500 to $700 round trip, and a ticket from Denver to Paris these days clocks in at over $1,400. That's painful.

[PunkinDrublic]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I must say, I'm shocked at the prices of airfares to Europe these days. I've generally been able to go in the past for $500 to $700 round trip, and a ticket from Denver to Paris these days clocks in at over $1,400. That's painful.

Yup, I paid abou $1300 for my round trip ticket to Madrid from Dallas that I'm going on next month and I bought it back in February. I would still rather do that than a cruise though.

[Joe Seahawk]

Originally Posted by Graystoke

You have to take the Ferry across...20-25 minute ride. I would go snorkel and lay on the beach at Punta Sur. But there is awesome food in Playa and great nudity.

The webcam is down.. bummer

http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showt...61#post2242761