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What made you decide to start cruising ?


Eglesbrech
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Friends of ours have just returned from their first cruise, which they loved. They decided to give it a try after hearing over the years how much we enjoy it as a holiday experience.

 

I should be on commission the number of people I have sent P&Os way. For Brits it's always a good place to start as it feels familiar and is generally an acceptable all round package.

 

For me it was watching the Love Boat which, at the time, seemed so sophisticated and thinking I would like to try cruising. For those of you too young to remember the Love Boat was an American TV series set on a Princess ship. It was a light hearted rom com. If I watched it now I would probably not be so impressed but this was back in the 70s when some uk hotel rooms were still not en suite and there were no fancy cocktails or pool parties.

 

So what gave you the cruise bug?

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Bit of a strange one, car broke down in Paris and the time taken to repair it wasn't worth the onward journey so we returned home. Went back to work early and took the next available holiday slot which was pretty close. Only last minute that we half fancied was a Thomson Cruise, been doing it ever since on various lines.

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We were on holiday and one evening was walking the coastal path down by the airport and sailing out of Arrecife was a cruise ship all lit up, it looked great and on returning home the sight of this stayed with me. So much that we booked a North sea ferry from Hull to Belgium a few times to experience being out at sea, which we loved even on a very stormy crossing .

That was it , we booked the Thomson Destiny and sat in the Sky bar sipping our drinks decided that this was going to be our new future holidays. Got home and was back on same ship in a few weeks.

Mrs Kalos declared this was to be our future regarding holidays. The rest is now history.

Edited by kalos
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Good friends of ours had been cruising for years and waxing lyrical about it. We wanted to do something special for my partner's 40th birthday in 1995 so booked a first class transatlantic crossing on QE2 from New York to Southampton. We loved it so much that two years later we went on P&O's Victoria for two weeks around the Med. Loved that also and cruised often after that. I am pleased that we did this as it meant I felt comfortable cruising solo after Tony died in 2012.

Cruising has changed so much since then but to my mind still provides a great product with decent food and - generally - fabulous entertainment. I personally prefer the more traditional style of cruising, with Formal Nights and fixed dining on a mid-size ship. I also like to cruise sometimes on older (proper) ships - hence going on Marco Polo next year, a 51 year-old ship.

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I just love the sea, but I think we 'got the bug' when we did a 3 day mini cruise to Egypt / Israel from Cyprus for hubby's 40th birthday. She was only a small Louis Cruise ship, the Princess Marissa, but we had an amazing time and the views from the cabin window were incredible. I remember sitting at the back of the ship under the stars with a pot of tea (yip, we have changed somewhat since then!) and decided there and then that we would look in to cruising for a holiday. I remember being docked in Limassol by what we thought was a HUGE cruise ship and never thought in a million years that we would have been able to go on so many cruises since. We've since noticed in our photos that the 'huge' ship was the Celebrity Millenium, so am guessing that the Marissa was smaller than we thought! :D

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We used to winter holiday in Eilat, Israel every year, for sunshine and birdwatching, until we started feeling a bit 'uncomfortable' because of the heightened security.........then John saw a weeks cruise of the Red Sea and Suez, so we booked it !!

 

That was it, we were hooked and in a months time we will go on our 37th cruise !!!!!

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When I was little, I was bought a set of encyclopaedias. The one colour photo I liked most was a photo of RMS Queen Elisabeth. Growing up I used to think of this and wanted to go on a big ship. In 2001 for our Silver Wedding we cruised on Aurora. It was clearly going to be a one off as you could not afford that sort of holiday very often.

 

So we have never been again.

 

 

Well not the exact Cruise. :)

 

 

 

 

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Mum and Dad started cruising back in 80's and when Dad died mum wanted to go on holiday and there was only me who could go with her. Kicking and screaming I got on Aurora in 2004. We did another 8 cruises together and I am now on cruise 24.

 

Funny old world.

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Our first cruise in 1992 was a 4 nighter Bahamas cruise on an old Carnival tub the Carnivale during the US spring break period, originally she had been the Empress of Britain built on the Clyde, despite this we enjoyed ourselves.

Five years later we did a Thomson 7 night Med cruise on the Emerald, another old ship but the Thomson entertainment was superb, and the food not bad either, and we had great table companions and were hooked completely.

Twenty eight cruises later and following my wife's stroke we are so grateful we found cruising early as this is now the only way for us to enjoy overseas holidays.

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Hi we started cruising in 2009 we had previously always had beach holidays in the Caribbean, but our daughter was now 17 and we guessed this would probably be the last time she would holiday with us as A levels and Uni beckons,we thought maybe something abit different for a hol so we sailed on the then new Celebrity Solstice

Eastern Med we all had a wonderful time and was hooked, our daughter

now graduated is cruising with her boyfriend one med plus one Caribbean and that's makes four generations in our family who have enjoyed cruising over the years

 

Mrs Blue Sky

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Our first cruise in 1992 was a 4 nighter Bahamas cruise on an old Carnival tub the Carnivale during the US spring break period, originally she had been the Empress of Britain built on the Clyde, despite this we enjoyed ourselves.

Five years later we did a Thomson 7 night Med cruise on the Emerald, another old ship but the Thomson entertainment was superb, and the food not bad either, and we had great table companions and were hooked completely.

Twenty eight cruises later and following my wife's stroke we are so grateful we found cruising early as this is now the only way for us to enjoy overseas holidays.

 

We loved the Emerald and its excellent entertainment - remember Lenny and Ashley ?

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We won a cruise on QE2 in 1991, a 2 night voyage to nowhere! Loved it, but it was 1995 before our first 'proper' cruise on Oriana, and then followed 26 further cruises on P&O. We fell out with P&O in 2009, and went to Celebrity for 4 years, then we took a sabbatical for a few years, and now cruise on Cunard, although our next one on QE may be the last, as age and health are making it very difficult to get travel insurance. Plenty of the UK to see yet!

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Mum and Dad started cruising back in 80's and when Dad died mum wanted to go on holiday and there was only me who could go with her. Kicking and screaming I got on Aurora in 2004. We did another 8 cruises together and I am now on cruise 24.

 

Funny old world.

 

A similar story to ours. My In-laws had been on several cruises and after mother-in-law was widowed she very kindly paid for us to join her on Ventura for 2 weeks to the Med in 2010. From the moment we stepped on board that was it, we were hooked!

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Our first cruise was in Dec 2010...had .been "thinking" about for a while then decided because a special wedding anniversary was coming up and my brother and his wife had already booked we decided to give it a go. It was simply a fantastic cruise to the Caribbean and doing the full Panama canal that we came back fully smitten with cruising. Haven't done any land based holidays abroad since ....only in this country....which we love

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Forgot to mention that our first 'real' cruise was on the Ocean Village 2 - the cruise for people who don't like cruising. Makes me laugh thinking about that title. We LOVED her and every second of the week onboard:)

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As we had a sailing boat, we used to look up at these cruise ships, shudder and say we would never do that.

 

Then we took a Kuoni holiday to Hong Kong and Bali and the last 4 days were on a tiny cruise ship called Oceanic Odyssey, about 80 passengers only. We went to Lombok, Komodo and Sumbawa. So we started thinking actually it was really good fun.

 

After that it was a little ship called the Athena out of Falmouth, all the way to the Caribbean. Only 15,000 tons. So I think that is why we will never sail again on a really big one. Oriana is about the limit. We really like her. Tried Azura as I have said somewhere else. Hated it.

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In 1985 we were looking at going to Florida but wanted to combine it with somewhere else and spotted a package that included 1week on the Carnival Holiday which had just been launched. We had a fantastic 10 days in Florida followed by an even better 7 days on the Holiday. 44 cruises later we are still cruising, 24 of those cruises have been on P&O and for most of those cruises we have had a wonderful time though over the last few years we have found ourselves complaining about falling standards. I really can't see us stopping cruising in the near future and being retired and now unable to fly it looks like P&O will be getting most of our cruise £s.

Strangely we have never been on another Carnival ship even in our 30s they were "too party" for us.

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In 1994, we moved to the Isle of Wight with my job (don’t ask, we have moved several times since). We used to regularly see the cruise ships going past Cowes, but didn’t think much of it as we were ‘too young’ for that sort of holiday.

 

Then, in 1995, we watched a documentary series on satellite TV called ‘Supership Oriana’ which, over around 4 hours, showed the design, construction, fit out, sea trials and maiden cruise of the ‘first modern ship built exclusively for the British market’. I still have a poor quality copy of it recorded on a VCR! We couldn’t believe how luxurious the ship looked and the facilities on board, so in 1996 we decided that we would abandon our then 2 year old with Grandma and Grandad for 9 nights as we did a cruise on Oriana from Southampton to Istanbul (fly home). Being in our early 30’s at the time, we were younger than all but around a dozen of the passengers, most of whom were complaining that it “wasn’t as nice as Canberra”. We were allocated table 1 in Club dining (no other choice then) and were sat with another couple and two sisters, all of whom were around our age. We had a ball and were nearly always last to leave the restaurant.

 

We didn’t manage another cruise for 10 years but then started again with our two children. The kids are now adults and have started, on occasion, coming with us again. Guess who pays?

 

Unfortunately, my wife has become disabled in recent years and is now a wheelchair user. She finds P&O Cruises to be near perfect for her as the ships are well set up for disabled guests and the staff are all fabulous with her. Although both still working, we are now managing around 3 cruises a year and we are planning on taking early retirement in 2 years time so will then start getting serious about this cruising lark - health permitting.

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I fancied to try it just the once and convinced hubby that 5 nights around the med would be a compromise as he really didn’t want to be at sea. I used my 40th birthday trump card. We both loved the different places to explore each day, and being spoilt on board. Been on one a year since then, although that is only 6 in all. Number 7 in less than 100 days, yippee!

 

 

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Like Linda I fancied cruising as it was always something I wanted to do but hubby really did not so having a special birthday that year I said I would do a three nighter on my own. He came along of course, and I had booked lots of treats thinking I wouldn’t be cruising ever again! That was five years ago and I think seven cruises ago, all except one on P&O. We were hooked straight away. There are four cruises in the pipeline so to speak! [emoji924][emoji924]❤️❤️

 

 

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