10/17/14
We would definitely go again.
Taking a cruise is on my bucket list. Have no idea if I’d love it or hate it, I have friends that absolutely love cruise ships and take one or two a year and friends that have tried it once and absolutely hated every moment.
A cruise is no more expensive than going to a fairly high-class hotel, roughly $200 a day. It isn’t a big leap off a cliff or anything.
I would say 75% of all cruise line activity is in the Caribbean.
The short ones (3 days) tend to be drunk festivals, just avoid that activity (unless you are one!)
The long cruises tend to be long jaunts thru the Panama Canal or to Alaska, much older crowd doing THEIR bucket list. Most younger people don’t have the 12-days to take off.
I worked on a RCL boat for about ten months total, as a musician. I am glad I did it, I would never do it again. It is a gig for a much younger person. I quite enjoyed my European tours, Scandinavia & Russia & Estonia & Britain as our port.
The Caribbean, I can take or leave only because I’ve been there a hundred times, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable for most folks. All sun & Beach. No museums like Europe.
The absolute top tip I can give you, surpassing all others, cutting your risks of getting sick by 95%:
Wash your hands every hour or so. There are bathrooms everywhere. Be compulsive, obsessive about washing your hands. Just do it. In ten months, I never got sick. Virtually EVERY other person (in the crew) got sick sometime.
The immensely disgusting thought about cruise ships is that whenever you touch something that someone else touched, you become partially intimate with their hygeine habits. THAT is the source of almost all illness. I’ll leave it at that.
10/17/14
We would definitely go again.