wcook

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 4-7 night cruise on a mainstream line that had zero sea days. I think the best you can hope for is a cruise with only one sea day.

My grandparents all lived in Miami. We wore shorts constantly 🙂

Kinda wasteful don’t you think?

And here is baseball in the 40’s(?) Styles change. Fashion is arbitrary

Why not?

Random trivia: By far the biggest fee a cruise ship will experience is the Panama Canal toll

One of our favorite games is “I hope that’s his daughter.”

Wash your hands throughly. That’s all I ask. Don’t care how you dress.

The difference is I can just walk past those displays and be on my way. On a tour you are stuck. Imagine if Disney required you to spend 30 minutes in the gift shop once you get off Space Mountain.

Yes, they absolutely should say in the excursion description that they will be taking tour time for one of these sales pitches. And to be honest, you can usually tell. If there is mention of a jade factory tour or a pearl demonstration, experienceo cruisers know what the deal is. And while 95% of the time these are turnoffs and are one of the reasons I don’t often take excursions, every now and then I’m actually interested. On Curaçao I wanted to take the cheesy tour / sales pitch at the liquor factory.

MSC

And pants. If you show up just wearing a jacket and tie they will send you back to your room.

While it’s going to warn people about the possibility of ship time being different from port time, keep in mind that it’s pretty rare nowadays and will be heavily announced in the rage occasions it happens.

Whatever you do don’t book a cruise to alsaca. Who knows where you will end up. But I bet you would love a cruise to Alaska. Oh, and some useful information so the mods won’t hate me: 1) For bears and salmon, later in the season is better than earlier. August is ideal. 2) Don’t worry about the port towns that much. Unless you want something specific (train ride, lumberjack show etc) they are more the same than different. 3) While you can see some wildlife from the ship (bring binoculars) the best wildlife views are on excursions in port. Excursions in Alaska are typically expensive, so be sure to include that in your budget. 4) I was serious up above; from what you posted I suspect you and kid will love Alaska.

Spiked coffee/chocolate drinks. Bring a good insulated mug with you (or buy a souvenir mug on board.)

Oops!

For me the negative if using a TA is that if something goes wrong or if I need to make a change, I can take care of it myself.

90%+ of the “sales” in the cruise industry end up being the normal price repackaged to make it sound like a deal. Both from TA’s and direct from the line.

I would be surprised if the mainstream lines build a new ship carrying less than 2500 pax in the foreseeable future. Not only are bigger ships cheaper to run, but most of their customers prefer the larger ships with all the “stuff” and are willing to pay more to sail. I think the best hope for people who enjoy affordable smaller ships is for a new cruise line choosing to cater to that market. Need to keep an eye on Margarita at Sea to see how that works out. As a side note, I have been sailing giant 4,000+ pax ships lately and haven’t had a problem with crowds. If an area gets too crowded, there’s always someplace else to go.

Considering where this thread is, I’m going to say Princess 🙂 But in reality, nobody has stood out enough to be called “best at sea.” The only pizza that has really stood out is RCI… easily worst at sea.

I’ll be the weirdo. While I really like sailing MSC I found their pizza to be… pretty good. But not anything deserving of “best at sea.”

I’m far too lazy to decorate my door. But I do appreciate it when rooms near me are decorated. (A) It’s interesting to see and (B) It absolutely helps me find my room. Note to folks who don’t like door decorations: Whatever you do don’t set foot on DCL. Those folks are nuts.

A picture of a cactus or an actual prickly plant?

In the US, a business can’t discriminate against a person *because* they are in a protected class. So I can’t ban people from coming into my restaurant because they are old. I can ban people who support a particular football team, even if they are old. The tricky part is defining exactly what counts as a business. Also, as with all rights in the US there is an implied “without a good reason” exception. If I run a SCUBA excursion business, I can ban people over a certain age if I can show the risk of old people diving outweighs the harm of discrimination. Keep in mind that in the US, the rights of the individual are often held above the rights of other people. Something like Allemansrätten would never fly here. Many states do have open beach laws, but even those can be controversial as nearby landowners sometimes do everything they can to keep people from getting to the beach. Hope that helps, without getting into controversial issues that would get the thread shut down.

Giving another cruise line a list of passengers to ban opens the cruise line up to litigation, especially if there is a mistake. I wouldn’t do it. Note that a cruise line has two lists… a list of passengers they have banned, and (assuming a US cruise) a list from DHS similar to the no fly list.