In last week’s Blog we talked about the “Demise of Traditional Cruise Dining”, and included some discussion of the moves being made within the industry that I viewed as moving closer to a amusement park or resort mentality/atmosphere onboard. Somewhat in that vein, this week’s Blog follows up on those thoughts talking about the possible [...]

What you may not know about the Cruise Crime Bill of 2009 – and why you need to follow this issue. Among a laundry list of other “improvements” to cruise ship safety, the Cruise Crime Act of 2009 will require cruise lines to process and report every single baseless, uninvestigated and non-adjuducated complaint ever reported [...]

I just came back from a cruise on a luxury ship where we had a butler who had the facility to serve us complete dinners in our stateroom. he would bring us the evening’s menus from the dining room and take our orders. Soon he would arrive with trays full of linens, cutlery and covered [...]

Over the weekend Celebrity Cruise Line became one of the last hold-outs amongst the major cruise lines to amend their dining room arrangements to include a version of “unstructured” dining times ,rather than assigned times and  specific table seating assignments for passengers. No doubt there will be many cruisers out there bemoaning what may be [...]

This Sunday is Father’s Day, so I wanted to share ideas with you on what it is men enjoy about cruising. Why should you give a cruise to the main man in your family? Travel industry polls indicate that women make the majority of vacation decisions, especially when it comes to destinations for the yearly [...]

The subject of choosing a cruise that’s right for you may be one of the most covered topics for cruise related web sites, and cruise advice columns. In fact this could be my own third or fourth version discussing this issue, so my goal was to discover a new approach to the old topic. You [...]

CruiseMates will be celebrating its tenth year on the Internet this August. We were the first cruise consumer-focused, advertising supported web site on the Internet, although there were other good cruise sites on the web in 1999. Those sites included “The Wheelhouse” and Cruise2.com. It did not include Cruise Critic, which was available only on [...]

We admittedly live in rather odd times, with continuous bombardment from the media on troubling world and local events;  the all too familiar issuing of Amber Alerts for missing children;, dysfunctional families with issuing leading to tragedies which unfold in the public eye; job loss and other financial factors making a mess of people’s lives, plans and dreams. [...]

CruiseMates started recommending that you book your summer cruises last March. People are booking now, especially trading up to luxury. The primary reason we gave was lower airfare, generally running about 20% to 33% lower for almost all destinations, but especially for flights overseas. The secondary reason was unprecedented bargains in cruise fares, but everyone [...]

The Caribbean is the most heavily cruised area of the world, and that’s most likely to continue in the near future as more cruise lines are leaving more ships to sail the Caribbean waters for longer portions of the year. It’s really not difficult to understand because Caribbean sailings are normally rather carefree; with the [...]