Thursday, March 7, 2019

Ocean Cruise Strategies

I didn't go on cruise ships until eight or so years ago.  That's if you don't count crossing the Pacific Ocean twice when I was in the army deployed to Korea.  Since then, I've been on five and will take my sixth soon.

My take is that there are three main types of cruise ship passenger motivations.  Some people are there mostly for the onboard experience.  That might include dining, pass-time activities, entertainment, and visiting with fellow passengers.  A sub-group might be folks with mobility issues, where those are minimized by being onboard while taking a break from being at home.  The purest way to do this is to book passage on repositioning cruise (to or from Europe or Asia, depending on the time of year): very few stops en route.

Then there are those who cruise with the goal of visiting specific destinations, and are indifferent to shipboard activities.

Finally, there are those who like the whole package: shipboard things and ports-of-call.

I fall into the destination-oriented category, selecting cruises on the basis of how many ports-of-call are both interesting and new to me.  Given that my main interest is Europe, it doesn't take many cruises to exhaust its potential.

However, my upcoming cruise is in the Far East.  That's because Hong Kong and Shanghai have always interested me.  It also stops in northern China and southern Japan, so at least those areas will be new to me.

But once that's done, I'll probably mostly do bus tours.  That's because they pack much more viewing items per day than any cruise ship offers.

Your results probably vary.

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