cruises, like any vacation outside the US are subject to the cultures and legal systems of the territory they occupy. Operate under the assumption you are completely on your own and that any interaction with local law enforcement will probably be far less favorable even if you are the victim. Behave accordingly. Cashier overcharges you a couple bucks, let it go, someone gets pissy about something you are doing, stop, apologize, back off. Almost nothing is worth getting arrested/detained in another country. Police in many tourist heavy areas of mexico and the Caribbean do sometimes make an effort to play nice as the city governments know that a huge percentage of their economy is tourism, but a barfight of ambiguous fault can easily turn into a disaster of biblical proportion.
One woman I know was involved in a car accident in mexico where several people were seriously injured. It took her family about 7 months and around $100k in lawyers, fees, fines, compensation, bribes, etc to get her out of jail and back to the US.
I’m not talking about opportunistic scam or theft-type crimes that occur in ports of call. I’m talking about passenger-on-passenger or staff-on-passenger personal/assaultive crimes that occur on the ship when it is in international waters (and let me reiterate, at least 50 such sexual crimes occurred onboard in 2013). The ship has no police force of its own, and the authorities at the next port of call have no jurisdiction. Good luck with that!
Consider the ship its own little city, in its own little country. What I was trying to convey is, once you leave US territorrial waters, assume you are on your own. Dont expect anyone to save you, dont assume there are functional emergency services. American tourists often have no clue how much infrastructure we enjoy on a daily basis that just flat does not exist the second you cross a border.
Just as a side note, reported rapes for 2010 in the US, not just sexual assaults, runs about 25 per 100,000. There around 300,000 cruise passengers per year. Putting incidence of rape on a cruise ship as lower than in daily life in the US.
I love cruising, and I love going on long road trips across the country, and I love hopping a plane somewhere [last time was Germany for a week somewhat randomly, mrAru had the vacation time, and we had the money.]
I prefer Royal Caribbean. We were on the 8 PM seating in the main dining room, had the same waiter and busboy the entire cruise. Breakfasts and lunches were freeform [no set reservation.] One dinner we did at the expensive pay to eat restaurant as it was our 20th wedding anniversary, all the rest we did in the main dining room - we shared an 8 place round table with the same other 6 people [3 couples, one other couple was young, probably about 22 or 23, one couple was in our range, about 50 and the last couple was in their 70s.] We would buy a bottle of wine, and they would keep it and serve it to us until we emptied it - we went through 3 bottles of wine on the 11 day cruise - we are really not big drinkers, a single glass sor so with dinner is just fine. The food was excellent though in the buffet [free form, standard resort style all you can eat buffet] it was pretty standard casino buffet food - though they did custom omelets at breakfast, and grill to order steaks and burgers at lunch. We tended to do breakfast at the buffet, lunch as a sit down style restaurant in the lower main dining room [they had a killer custom chef run salad bar - one of the days they had a whole serrano ham they were slicing to order. Nom!] There were other places to eat onboard as well, and one day on RC’s private island off Haiti they had a BBQ on shore we went to that was fun.
If you like diving, you can bring your own equipment and avoid the rental fees, you know. I wouldn’t bring my own tanks, I would rent - but everything else, BCV, weight belt, snorkle and mask, fins and wetsuit can be packed and schlepped along - there isn’t a weight restriction like on airplanes and many people live near the port and drive there [we go out of Port Jersey which is all of a 3 hour drive. Our roomie drives us down and picks up upafterward.]
Cruising is fairly reasonably priced and if you don’t drink booze or tons of sodas, and allow for the cost of the tip at the end, and watch your budget it can be a fairly cheap vacation - especially if you can take advantage of some of the instant [like get to the boat in 8 hours before it sails] discounted cruises. [Hell, the cheap inside stateroom on the Queen Mary for a transatlantic one way is something like $1900 per person … that is cheaper than some plane tickets and I guarantee you don’t have some asshole hogging the armrest and the food is a hell of a lot better.]
Right, the difference is, when you go to Liberia, you usually know you’re going to a country that’s fucked 10 ways to sunday. Only experienced travelers would even consider such a trip. When you get onboard a cruise ship in Ft. Lauterdale flying the Liberian flag, legally speaking you’re vacationing in Liberia, but almost no one knows this so you get the kind of ignorant, inexperienced passengers who tend to think, hey, nice cruise out of Florida, I’m sure everything’s cool! We left from the US, right, so its probably the same as a resort in the US! I agree with you, the large majority of cruisers are blissfully ignorant of the fact they they are virtually without legal protection or safety regulation onboard the ship. They get a nasty shock when, for instance, their 11 year old is molested on a Disney cruise and all Disney does is ship the offending staff member home to avoid publicity.
Seriously, cruise ships are a complete fuck legally on so many levels, I just would not ever.
It seems that a lot of you are talking about cruises to the Bahamas. I think those are the McDonald’s of cruises. Be adventurous. Get a passport and go to Europe or Asia. Take a Mediterranean cruise.
Hanging out in Coco Cay is underwhelming. Hanging out in the Vatican is not. If you want to relax on a beach one day and golf the next, go to a resort. If you want to see the Sistine Chapel one day and The David the next, go on a cruise.
I’ve been to the Vatican - its a whole different vacation - but I wouldn’t do it as a cruise. For me, Europe is a train vacation over six weeks, where you spend more than eight or ten hours in any one city - or its at least a few weeks, with two or three cities. I have a friend who just booked a Northern European Disney cruise, but if I’m going to Noway, Sweden and Denmark, I want to go further than the coast.
For me, a cruise is a sit on my butt in a lounge chair, drink to near excess and read vacation - whole different thing than Paris, Vienna and Rome. Much more like Hawaii or an all inclusive in Mexico.
I’ve never been on a cruise, so I can’t speak to that, but I’ve done the resort thing and the private house thing. I like the house/car option best. I think it works well if you go with a bunch of people. I’ve done it with both family (usually 6-10 people) and friends. It’s nice to have a home base where you can hang out, cook, play games, socialize, drink, swim in the pool, gaze at the view, etc. From there, you can also walk or drive to whatever local amenities/attractions are nearby.
Cruises are good for testing cities, not knowing them. Our Baltic cruise had an excursion to Berlin which we skipped because we had been there already. We explored a nice smaller town just a train ride from the port.
Someone we met went to the Vatican on a cruise. He was a British pilot, and arranged transportation. (We went to Rome on the train.) It was Easter Sunday, but he timed it so he went in just as the masses were leaving. Not something I’d try to pull off.
Cruises and resorts have different pros and cons. In my experience:
The cruises we went on (Princess and Carnival) had small rooms but there was a lot to do on the ship. You get to go to multiple ports and can book excursions through the cruise company. On Princess and Carnival, you can pay I think $20 last time we went to basically get unlimited sodas during the trip; the only thing you really pay for is alcohol.
All inclusive resorts cover not just food like Cruises do, but also all the alcohol. However, there is a catch- all the resorts I’ve been to were ‘contracted’ by some particular company; at one place you could only get Corona if you wanted a beer (they literally had NO other variety) in another place it was Dos Equis. You can get mixed drinks/shots but its all well drinks of course. Still, if you enjoy getting hammered while sitting in a pool its not too bad.
Yep. And to me, testing cities is better done without the restriction of “can we get here from the coast and we need to be back on the ship by 5.” Even tour bus trips (which we’ve also done) are limiting in that you are on someone else’s schedule (but it was fantastic with little kids because hauling little kids around Europe with no real plans other than “lets see what Munich is like” would suck).
This was my biggest complaint about cruises. You’re always on someone else’s schedule. We still had a good time and we have seen some great places. I don’t regret taking cruises.
For the last few years and for the foreseeable future, we prefer all-inclusves. I don’t dismiss the objections that a lot of folks have about AIs, but, when I have limited vacation time and the biggest need I have on vacation is to decompress, AIs fit the bill just fine.
Perhaps when we get older and/or retire, I would like to do more exploring on vacation.
When our kids were little we went to London and Paris and rented places there to stay for a reasonable amount of time. We took our younger daughter on the two European cruises we took, but she was living in Germany and knows how to get around better than we do, so it is not quite the same.
Never enough time - for any city I’d want to come back to, anyhow. We stayed in Copenhagen three days before we departed, and I still feel I want to see more.
BTW, here is my number one hint about cruising - if you are departing from someplace far away, and the slightest bit interesting, plan to get there at least a day ahead. Our Alaska cruise departed from Vancouver, and we flew there from Oakland. The weather was terrible, and our flight was very late - but since we planned two days there we didn’t care. Others in the departure area had cruises leaving that day - and they were freaking out.
It is well worth an extra day.
We spent a day at Cape Kennedy for our last cruise. And could have easily spent two. The cruise part was a “sit on the ship or the beach with a drink” - we didn’t even get off the ship in Nassau (been there, done that - not a place I left wishing I had more time), but the pre-cruise was seeing the Saturn 5 and Atlantis.
I’m not a drinker so that isnt an issue. What I have heard though from people who really know their booze, is they can tell a more expensive rum in say a pina colada to a cheaper version. Plus with mixed drinks they can always do them up with more ice, juice, fruit, or whatever else that is cheaper than the alcohol component.
Even with soft drinks they can substitute some cheaper generic rather than say Coca Cola. I know the “free” ice tea on that last cruise was nasty.
Also when they advertise things free like snow cones or ice cream cones, its amazing how often the machine is out of order or empty.