For a variety of reasons I’ve been landlocked for about eight months. It hasn’t been that bad really, as I’ve spent some time golfing in Arizona, and lived through Kuki Jr’s bachelor party in Las Vegas, and then his wedding in the beautiful Okanogan Valley, in British Columbia, Canada. There’s certainly been some happiness and [...]

The FTC ruled yesterday that bloggers who accept free gifts from product suppliers must disclose their relationship to the supplier if they write a review of the product.
I am sure many of you remember certain travel web sites having people in their message boards and reader-submitted reviews who appeared to be average, paying consumers extoling [...]

What is is that attracts you to a specific cruise ship? Is it the itinerary, the decor, the crew, the memories? Is it an emotional bond on a deep and personal level. Or is it an intellectual decision based on researching different options and narrowing down your choices?
For that matter, how much time do you [...]

August 25 is the 10-year Anniversary of CruiseMates.com. We started in 1999 as the first ad-supported online cruise guide on the Internet. We have seen a lot of changes over the years, some good and some not, but we are still here and I can’t imagine ever going away.
Many of you know that Cruisemates was [...]

What does that mean? It means there are two sides to every story, but there aren’t many things in life receiving more diverse perceptions simultaneously than cruise ships - depending on who you are.
Right now a lot of our readers are talking about a book called “Cruise Confidential,” which was supposedly written by [...]

Where are you most likely to see the worst possible impressions ever about cruise ships? Only movies, television series and major newspapers.
My wife and I were watching the silly Pixar movie WALL-E recently. In the plot the planet earth can no longer sustain any kind of life. Our eyes were glazed over from this cartoon [...]

Every year the cruise industry conference “SeaTrade” has a panel of top cruise line CEOs called “State of the Industry.” Some of the funniest and most sobering exchanges I have ever seen occured at these sessions. I wanted to borrow the term for an update on how the cruise industry is doing right now.
Royal Caribbean [...]

I will be a guest on a travel radio show tomorrow morning, the Travel Queen Radio Show with Jane DeGrow. Jane sent me an email she received from a listener and said to me, “I guess it is time we covered the basics.” I agree, and so to prepare I printed pieces of the letter [...]

Naturally, we get our share of people who write in to express some extreme dissatisfaction with a cruise they have just taken. Most of the time they are first-time cruisers, but not always. Sometimes they are very experienced.
Obviously, we can tell the difference. The first-time cruiser will list things we already knew: the cabins were [...]

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 on [...]