Curious Question For Frequent/Long Time Cruisers

[miched]

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My wife loves to cruise and I like to drink. Can't find a place to drink at sea that has cheaper prices. :D

 

 

 

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[lois1112]

I love this site and I love reading all the tidbits of information some of you offer daily on cruising!! :)

 

I'm amazed, impressed, and jealous ;) of all the cruises many of you list on your signature. Some of you are taking several cruises a YEAR and for MANY MANY days! Wow! So here is my curious (nosy?) question. What keeps you cruising so often? Is it the opportunity to visit (revisit) amazing ports? Or do you just enjoy the actual cruising part? Do you ever take 'land vacations' and visit cities/islands that way?

 

 

 

The Mr. & I are taking our first cruise together this summer to Alaska. We are already thinking cruising might be an ideal way to see Hawaii and Europe!

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to satisfy my curiousity! TGIF!

 

Cruising is a wonderful way to get away...see the highlights of a place..and if you love it go back on a land tour. I did my first trip to Asia by cruise and have been back 6 times.

Land trip is the way to go to really see a country /tastes its food etc. that said nothing beats the relaxing pampering that happens on a cruise ship.

[cruiselover57]

I love this site and I love reading all the tidbits of information some of you offer daily on cruising!! :)

 

I'm amazed, impressed, and jealous ;) of all the cruises many of you list on your signature. Some of you are taking several cruises a YEAR and for MANY MANY days! Wow! So here is my curious (nosy?) question. What keeps you cruising so often? Is it the opportunity to visit (revisit) amazing ports? Or do you just enjoy the actual cruising part? Do you ever take 'land vacations' and visit cities/islands that way?

The Mr. & I are taking our first cruise together this summer to Alaska. We are already thinking cruising might be an ideal way to see Hawaii and Europe!

Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to satisfy my curiousity! TGIF!

 

If I listed all the cruises I've been on since 1972, I might run out of space! Anyway, I choose cruising over any type of vacation - to me, it's the ONLY way to travel! Unpack once, food is always plentiful and I like meeting new people. Sometimes it's not always about the places; more so, just being on the high seas! Very relaxing to say the least! I'll still continue to travel - always! Have 2 planned already for this year so I do average about 2 per year.

[windsor26]

Cruising is relaxing You can meet and keep as friends people who you would not speak to on a land holiday. From here in Australia it is expensive to try to go by air for a land based holiday anywhere else in the world so cruising is the way to go:)

[Bxc53]

For us, it's the ship experience plus the constantly changing scenery.

Not having to work all the travel/hotel/dining decisions is very relaxing to us.

Last, and it may sound strange, but the limited and high priced cell and Internet service on the ships helps us truly 'unplug' from our demanding jobs.

 

We also take land vacations occasionally and often remark that it would have been more cost effective to cruise..

[COMBOY]

I love this site and I love reading all the tidbits of information some of you offer daily on cruising!! :)

 

I'm amazed, impressed, and jealous ;) of all the cruises many of you list on your signature. Some of you are taking several cruises a YEAR and for MANY MANY days! Wow! So here is my curious (nosy?) question. What keeps you cruising so often? Is it the opportunity to visit (revisit) amazing ports? Or do you just enjoy the actual cruising part? Do you ever take 'land vacations' and visit cities/islands that way?

The Mr. & I are taking our first cruise together this summer to Alaska. We are already thinking cruising might be an ideal way to see Hawaii and Europe!

Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to satisfy my curiousity! TGIF!

 

The answer to your questions are YES, YES & YES. Maybe I just got lucky if life, but my Mom wanted to go on a cruise after many years of spending our summers at a cabin in Northern Wisconsin. We finally sold it cause Mom wanted to do other things and go other places. Anyway...Dad didn't want to go on a cruise so Mom took me. I was 19 yrs old at the time. We went on RCCL Song of Norway in 1980. It was most spectacular vacation I had every been on. I was hooked. I've been on so many cruises that I can't count then anymore. At least 30+. Maybe 1 a years. I do land trip too, but I love being on the ship. There's something special about being at sea and on an luxury ocean liner. You unpack once and sit back and eat great food, see wonderful entertainment every night, be waited on hand and foot, and travel to tropical ports of call. With land trips there is so much more you have plan once you get there...like figuring out where to eat, drink, find entertainment unless you do the all inclusive resort vacation...and with that you sort of stuck at one place for the entire trip. Cruising isn't for everyone and you can't see every place in the world. Once my travel agent told me someone called her office wanting to know if they could take a cruise to Las Vegas. :) True story.

[debshomespun]

We love to cruise because we love the variety it gives us. We love being able to pack once and board the ship, then each morning, we wake up in a different place. We have been able to do many cruises to the Caribbean, and have also gone to Hawaii twice, and made it to the South Pacific. We have plans to go to Australia, and Europe, and Bermuda, and many other places. We tease our kids and tell them we are spending their inheritance on cruise at a time. We love to venture onto the different islands and see what they each have to offer. We love seeing the beautiful beaches. Also love the beautiful sunsets we have seen from the cruise ships! To us, a cruise is a very relaxing vacation.

 

We have done the All Inclusive vacations with friends. By the 2nd or 3rd day, we are antsy and want to go somewhere. We don't like to get up in the morning, go out to the beach/pool, sit in a chair all day and drink down the drink of the day. To us, that is boring. We like to get out there and see different places all the time.

[gooch47]

It is simply the most stress-free way to travel, once you get to the ship that is. I always fret about the possibility of missing the ship, but once on board you can totally relax. Everything is taken care of for you.

 

The other thing is the variety of things we've seen. Things I would never have thought I'd see in person in my life: The Great Wall of China, the Acropolis, Venice, Pompeii, glaciers, volcanos ... the list goes on and on.

[abbydancer2003]

What a great thread!

 

We started with our honeymoon - my husband had cruised before but I hadn't. We went from Acapulco to San Juan PR through the Panama Canal, on the then-new Dawn Princess.

 

By the second day I was ready to jump ship - bored out of my skull. By the third day I was loving the pace of it, being outside, etc. At the end he had to drag me off the ship.

 

Yet, we didn't go back, partly because of other trips and then I lost my job.

 

In 2005 our dance studio did a group Mexican Riviera Cruise on the Sapphire and we went and had a blast. I then decided that in 2007 we'd like to do an Alaska cruise.

 

In 2006, I got a new job, and 3 days after the offer we got an email from Princess offering us a really good deal on a 2 day cruise from SF to Vancouver. Since it was right before my job, we thought it would be a great way to celebrate. So we did.

 

Now we do at least one coastal a year. We're lucky that we live on the west coast and coastals are easy for us. Every two years we do a major cruise, and in 2010 we did a Christmas Caribbean cruise.

 

We love it because we can relax all day. We love walking around the open decks and reading in the Patassiere. We also love to dance and where else can we get live music every night and practice on an open deck?

[Teacher_91]

MORE great stories & replies. LOVE it! Thanks for sharing with me!!

 

BTW.... Deb, if you were my Mom I'd tell you to 'spend away & enjoy yourself'!! :D

[lovevacadays]

I was introduced to sailing on a ship at a fairly young age when my Mom took my sister and I to and from Europe on a Norwegian coal freighter in 1955. It was brand new and owned by a friend of my parents, and we spent two weeks each way going and coming. By today's standards, it was very small (perhaps 350 feet long) and very, very bouncy. There was nothing to do other than what I could amuse myself with, so I did a lot of reading, spent time in the bridge, was allowed into the engine room and totally explored the ship. We ate with the ship's officers and there were no menu options; it was fish, fish and more fish. I loved every minute and still love sea days, the more the better.

 

My parents introduced me to traveling and allowed me to go places and do things many others haven't had a chance to do. I spent the summer with a friend in Caracas, Venezuela when I was 16; I lived for a year in France on my own when I was 19. I'm very fortunate to be able to have the means, time and interest to be able to travel the world. Some of that is luck but most of it was old-fashioned hard work. Now that I'm in my 70's, I know that your life can change overnight so while I have my health, I'm taking advantage of every opportunity. In the past five years, I've been to all seven continents and even sailed on a (small) cruise ship into the Arctic polar icecap.

 

I cruise now because I can go to many places and experience adventures I wouldn't ever have the opportunity to do otherwise.

 

Pam, I love this post. Very inspiring and interesting. We have to talk about that summer in Venezuela and that year in France.:)

 

I still have to say, though, I really love the ziplining pictures at Victoria Falls. You've made me decide to zipline while traveling with some friends in May to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. I was hesitant when they discussed it but now I'm going for it!:)