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Greetings from Host Jazzbeau


Host Jazzbeau
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I want to introduce myself as the new host of the River Cruise forums.

 

I have been an active participant on a number of Cruise Critic forums. As you can tell from my signature DW and I have been cruising a lot in the last few years, since I retired from a job as a higher ed administrator. Most of our cruises have been ocean but we enjoyed our first river cruise so much that we immediately planned another, and we have several more on the wish list for future years.

 

I found Cruise Critic an invaluable help in planning many of these cruises, especially the river cruise. The advice of so many knowledgeable cruisers helped us pick the cruise line, choose an itinerary, and figure out which of the excursion options to select. Because of this great advice, all those decisions worked out really well and I’m very grateful to Cruise Critic and the CC community.

 

The one area that I felt needed some help is the organization of the River Cruise area. I know that several approaches have been tried and that there is a downside to each. But I suggested a way that the existing arrangement could be made to work better, and since no good deed goes unpunished it was suggested that maybe I would like to become a host and handle it!

 

I will explain more about that in a separate thread, because I want to solicit your opinions before implementing anything.

 

So I’ll sign off for now, except to say that I can be reached at this Cruise Critic email address:

hostjazzbeau@cruisecritic.com

 

 

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Thank for taking this on as there seems to be a bit of a cause at the moment. I don't have a problem, maybe because I am a bit of an archivist so am used to doing research, I find you can always discover little snippets of useful information in the most unlikely of places, mind you it can be distracting. Good Luck EJK

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Congrats on your new appointment! :D The river cruise forum, ports of call etc. definitely need some improved organization! As river cruising is apparently increasing in popularity, I expect the river cruise forums will start to have an escalation in number of threads, posts and users.

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Congratulations on your new assignment!!!!

 

I agree that the River Cruise segment of CC will be growing as more and more people take RCs and realize they can learn and share SO much here!!!! You are SO correct about improvement being needed and admire you for "sticking your neck out" and helping!!!

 

Good Luck and I wish you much cooperation from everyone!!!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah!!!!!

 

Glad at least a look at the River Cruise Forum(s) are being contemplated.

 

Now if you could just get those posters (especially some newbies) that post a question/comment and never return - to follow-up, that would be great too!!! ;) - tongue planted firmly in cheek here -

 

As an new river cruiser (with more planned) I look forward to seeing what ideas / thoughts are considered.

 

Thanks for taking this on......

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  • 2 months later...

The biggest change I've seen is that lots of miscellaneous posts are being moved to their proper places from the "Ports" section. I think the rest is still a work in progress. Lots of discussion about making a separate heading for Viking posts as there are always so many to weed through !!

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The biggest change I've seen is that lots of miscellaneous posts are being moved to their proper places from the "Ports" section. I think the rest is still a work in progress. Lots of discussion about making a separate heading for Viking posts as there are always so many to weed through !!

 

Ah thanks for the update.... Admittedly I have not been on the River Cruise thread much recently as I'm concentrating on our upcoming Med. Cruise, but will be back in full swing after that.

 

Thanks again !!

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I'm back from my recent cruise and will now turn my attention to making some proposals. Please note that because of serious criticism to the last attempt to reorganize the river areas (before I became a Host), I expect that the admins will want to think long and hard before making any permanent changes.

 

If I understand it correctly, that previous reorganization split the river boards up by line. The problem was there was no place to post general questions, and many lines have so few Cruise Critic posters that they were dead areas (much like the non-Europe port forums when I took over).

 

A simple split between Viking and All Other might make more sense, but I can foresee lots of complaints about this. So I'm leaning toward something that we can do without getting the IT department to reprogram the site [so that I can take it apart later if it turns out to be a mistake :)]

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Thanks Nana!

 

Review to follow once I get my photos sorted and labeled (in the Crystal forum).

 

While in Venice we saw a Uniworld boat and Silver Wind. For some reason Silver Wind was able to dock at the near-in cruise terminal, but the Uniworld boat was out at the main cruise port with all the huge ocean liners!

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Hi Jazzbeau

Keep up the good work

Have used CC for 18 months, 120 comments etc, and about to go on our 2nd River Cruise.

I use CC extensively for research and would go on line almost every day to read threads.

My Personal view and the one thing that would put me off continuing to use CC in the future is the dominance of Viking related threads. I totally agree with your comment that Viking should be separate to all other lines.

Just my pennies worth

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Hi there - and welcome back!!! Next Friday - the 30th we leave for Venice for a few days then down to Rome to catch the NCL EPIC for our 7 day Med cruise.

 

Now on to the river cruise topic ideas. I have not been involved, nor have I really noticed any potential changes from before. I could see that having a section dedicated to one cruise line and having all the other cruise lines mixed together may not go over very well - especially with those companies.

 

One idea I had (may be impossible to do) was to categorize River Cruises by region/country possibly with subsections addressing specific cruises or cruise lines. Most of the (sometimes dozens) of cruise line brochures I seem to receive are broken down by region...ie: Russian cruises, China cruises etc etc.

 

When I start looking for information..... I generally go looking for information on where I am going first, what is available, who travels to/through the area, and then the specific itinerary's. I realize this is a simplified idea, but something like this may help determine what is available.

 

On a side note, is the fact that it seems as though most cruisers I have met (which are many), really have no idea that cruise critic exist. When I mention how great using cruise critic is, and how information is exchanged (I kind of compare cruise critic to a cruise 'Facebook') I have had many ask if it is a place to just complain about cruises. I wonder if the 'critic' part of the name really does confuse some people.

 

Anyway, I look forward to see what ideas, and implementations are made. I would really like to see more river cruisers get involved.

 

Thanks again for taking this on.

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I agree with Bill - I think it would be a mistake to separate out Viking from other lines. I got a lot out of the Viking China thread, even though we did not go with Viking. So many of the Cruise Lines have the same itinerary, I think the region is the most important separator. One of the more active threads used to be "Russia-All Line-2013" for example. Doesn't matter whether you're going Viking, Uniworld, Scenic, etc to Russia - your questions are just about the same. The Roll Call is where it makes sense to separate out by Cruise Lines, but not the main board. My 2-cents anyway.

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I agree with Bill - I think it would be a mistake to separate out Viking from other lines. I got a lot out of the Viking China thread, even though we did not go with Viking. So many of the Cruise Lines have the same itinerary, I think the region is the most important separator. One of the more active threads used to be "Russia-All Line-2013" for example. Doesn't matter whether you're going Viking, Uniworld, Scenic, etc to Russia - your questions are just about the same. The Roll Call is where it makes sense to separate out by Cruise Lines, but not the main board. My 2-cents anyway.

 

I agree also. I was able to get great information for our Seine cruise last year and our Rhine cruise this year from some wonderful Viking cruisers. As long as the word Viking is in the title if it pertains to a Viking cruise others can simply scroll down and keep on going. . . The issue is that with River Cruises the ports and the itinerary of the individual cruise are interchangeable since the excursions are included in the fare; ocean cruises are different that way.

 

Also, if you are going to work on something, the roll call boards are still a whacky mess. :p;)

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