Never been. I want to do a cruise to Alaska (or in Alaska?). I almost did a Travels of Paul cruise in the Mediterranean this past fall, but my church dropped the ball on promoting it, and this is not the right time in my life to be that far out of pocket.
We’ve done seven, including a crossing on the QE 2 (in 1980, so old style transportation) three in Europe, two in the southern Caribbean and Alaska. None were bad. I’d hate giant fun and sun cruises in the Bahamas.
Our Viking river cruise on the Rhine was great. Few enough people that it is social, no dress up, no parties, and for the most part you can walk into towns.
Cruising is like a buffet where you can try lots of cities and go back if you want. We found that we didn’t much like Rome, but loved Stockholm, where we docked down the street from the metro and so could go to the Vasa museum on our own. And, as mentioned, the big plus is no packing and unpacking and no transportation hassles.
And we’ve never gotten sick.
In my experience, I usually leave the ship around 9 a.m. and return around 5 p.m. So if I go to bed around 11 p.m., that’s maybe an hour for breakfast on the ship and an hour for supper on the ship, with a few hours of free time in the evening. Is that a “good chunk”? YMMV
Yes, this means that you can’t have supper (or strolls at dawn/dusk) in most of the ports. I don’t think anyone would deny that there are disadvantages to being on a cruise (or other organized tour) to organizing your own vacation!
Have not and it’s not so much “want to” as “would not object to”. Though as someone who lives and works in San Juan I get to regularly encounter the MV Bloody Huge Sucker cruise kind of crowds and, well, do I want to spend a week with them? Though if as mentioned it’s a smaller scale event/theme cruise or something like a river trip between European historic cities I could see myself there…
My late wife and I used to call those "Once in a lifetime experiences. As in ‘Never again!’ ". 
Is that where the Swedish Chef works?
Royal Clipper is the ship I’d really like to go on a cruise on. @StainlessSteelRat did that last month, and seems to have enjoyed it. (If you think a five-masted ship is too big, they also have a pair of four-masted barquentines.)
Those look really nice.
Never been on a cruise and it would never be my first choice (although I kinda want to rent a cabin on a cargo ship across the Atlantic), but I wouldn’t veto a cruise suggestion if a partner wanted it.
I have a feeling that a lot of people who say they aren’t interested in cruise ships because they dislike crowds assume that all cruise ships are like this:
That is my idea of hell, too.
But what about this:
That’s looking forward in the Explorer’s Lounge on a Viking ocean ship (>1,000 passengers). And while at certain times, like entering or leaving port, it may be a little more crowded than in this picture, it’s still a far cry from the photo above it. No drunk and rowdy party bros; the average age of your fellow passengers is around 60.
As I and others have said above, on Viking and other smaller ships, the “crowds” are no worse than you’d experience in an upscale hotel or restaurant in any large city. There are shows and parties, but they’re entirely optional.
If you sign up for an on-shore tour or excursion, you may be hanging around with a few dozen people in a minibus or motor coach for a few hours, but that’s also entirely optional.
As far as socializing, there’s no required socializing of any kind. You won’t be forced to eat meals with people you don’t know. And if the pool, spa, or hot tub are too crowded, it’s usually not hard to find a time when they’re practically empty. Lots of people go to the shows and the parties, but attendance is not mandatory.
Someone may start up a conversation in the bar, by the pool, or in one of the lounge areas, but a fierce scowl should be enough to scare them off.
I grant that there are reasons why people might not want to take a cruise, but on the better and smaller lines like Viking, crowding shouldn’t be one of them.
Sadly that entire “book passage on a freighter” oddball travel mini-industry was mostly killed a few years ago.
These folks are the experts: Cargo Ship Voyages. By their own home page’s admission, the whole idea is all but dead. Only a very few coastal freighters remain and that’s about it
If that’s typical – which I somewhat doubt – then I suggest that the Viking line must be losing money because huge amounts of space with no one in them doesn’t seem like the route to profitability.
But no matter. The problem for me is still the formalized artificiality of it all. I am a Nature Dog – a lover of the wilderness, of the lakes and forests of northern Ontario, which are known as “God’s country” for a reason. Yes, I enjoy fine dining once in a while. I enjoy staying in nice hotels. But I cannot tolerate an excess of it, especially when socializing with strangers is involved. A cruise seems to me like an expensive concentration of artificially constructed excess that you have to share with strangers.
You’ll never talk me into going on a cruise, and I’m sure I’ll never talk anyone into talking a wilderness canoe trip in Killarney Provincial Park. I’m just expressing a preference. Interestingly, my older brother was the exact opposite of me – he just adored living in Manhattan, attended live theater on Broadway all the time, dined out almost every night, thrived in the social scene, and considered outdoor events like picnics and camping to be basically “dirt and bugs”. But he also had no use for dogs or cats. Make of that what you will.
Ultimately, personal space on a cruise ship is just like personal space on an airliner. There’s only so much to rent. At a very high level, the company does not care whether 1 person rents all 6 million square feet of interior space on a big cruise ship or 6000 people rent 1000SF each. As long as the ship brings in the total revenue the beancounters need.
Each company decides the price point they’re aiming at, and that drives the number of square feet each customer expects to receive. Both in their cabin and in the public spaces. And along the way, price point also drives whether the customers are expecting pancakes for breakfast and hotdogs for dinner with canned beer, or filet mignon with shirred eggs for breakfast and lobster tails (plural) with vintage Champagne for dinner.
Uncrowded ships are full of people who are paying for the lounge chairs to be spacious, far apart, and many of them left vacant. Fill all those chairs and those customers don’t come back. At least not at the price point they were willing to pay before.
Same as first class on an airliner. Shrink the seats to coach size but keep the slightly better meals and there’d be a customer revolt.
As a practical matter, there are not the volume of people willing / able to pay serious money for lots of personal space on a ship. So it makes more sense for those cruise lines to operate smaller ships. e.g. …
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Carnival may be able to attract 6000 people to go on a $100 / day / person jaunt.
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One of the high end lines can only attract 600 people at $1000 / day / person.
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The serious fatcat lines that charge $5k / day / person use megayachts with accommodations for a couple dozen passengers total. Those folks get lots of space and pampering per passenger.
No. It’s fine because the passengers are paying several times what they do on the crowded mega ships.
We may take a Viking cruise when we are old enough, but the ten day trip will be the most expensive vacation we’ve ever taken.
Another thing that is giving us pause is that you can apparently not be able to travel the whole route in the boat if water levels are too low. In which case you’re on a bus going from city to city. Paying $15,000 for two people that would really stink.
I voted “never did, don’t want” but because of factors more basic than the crowds, disasters, and the specific mix of activities. I don’t think that there would be enough activities to interest me for more than a couple of days no matter which ones they are, and I don’t know if I would enjoy a potentially careening vehicle for that long since I’ve never been on a boat or an airplane for more than 12 hours at a time.
If I were a multi-millionaire who nonetheless still could not afford a private jet all the time, I might consider an ocean liner across the Atlantic rather than flying first class, but I’m not sure if the length of time would make up for the more comfortable travel process and conditions. But one good thing about being that rich is that I would still have an option to work on the boat if I got bored since I’d be able to splurge on the big Internet upcharge.
I can confirm that that is typical for that lounge most of the day. There are times when there might be a crowd for pre or after meal drinks, but that just means there are other parts of the ship that are nearly empty that a misanthrope can escape to. And, yes, you do pay more for that kind of luxurious elbow room.
That would only happen on a river cruise. Viking offers both river and ocean-going cruises. I’ve been on both and the river cruise had children allowed and a single dining hall (no buffet). I think it’s their ocean cruises that are where they made their reputation as a more all-inclusive, uncrowded, child-free, smaller ship alternative to the mega party vessels.
I voted “never been, do not want”. Aside from my general distaste for travel (I’m a homebody), I do not have the wealth/privilege to spend that much for an extended hotel stay, minus my pets and probably with a husband who dislikes cramped and unfamiliar quarters, in a place full of rowdy partiers and a higher chance than in my normal daily life of catching some nasty contagion (norovirus sounds horrible). Not many of the activities I’ve heard of on cruise ships sound that great to me, either.
Speaking as a fairly intensive European traveller (I’m sitting in a hotel in Palma de Mallorca as I write this) let me give you the received perception of this process, so far as I understand it, from the places cruise ships visit. Tariffs are being imposed on cruise ships because they rock up, utilise berthing, and dump tourists who have already eaten too much into the city. They spend a few hours wandering around, cluttering the place up, contributing little if anything to the local economy and then they piss off back to the ship for their next meal, rinse and repeat.
Barcelona and Venice spring to mind as cities where we were aware of hostility towards cruise ships, but if I thought about it I’m sure I could name many more. Basically these cities want something (economically) out of the process, hence the tariffs.
It’s not how I want to visit somewhere. We’re here for the week, we’ve used restaurants, bars, trains, buses, shops, the hotel… We’ve contributed to the economy and taken time to get to know the place (somewhat). I like that.
Cruise? No, for all the reasons above. Plus I even hate the few hours that I have to spend on a boat to get across the channel.
What happens when you’re too old to do this? (Mrs Trep asks). I hate to think about that.
j
I wish to deny the accusation that I am a misanthrope! I cite the example of Johnny Carson, the most successful talk-show host in television, famous for his easy-going warm conversational style with almost anyone on the show.
But IRL Carson was notoriously reclusive, avoiding parties and reluctant to talk to anyone but close friends outside the highly structured environment of his TV show. I doubt that Carson ever went on a cruise other than on his own boat.
There was also a little digression on one of the shows where someone, in an apparent attempt at semi-serious humour, accused Carson of not really caring about whatever his guests were talking about. Carson’s response, again semi-humorous but again I think containing an important grain of truth, was (very loosely paraphrased) that indeed he did not care, but he was pretty good at pretending that he did.
I’m not good at pretending, which is such a complex human construct.
There are itineraries that cruise from, say, Vancouver (which suffices for the foreign port) to Hawaii, around the islands, then debark in Honolulu.
You just talked me into it, sounds great! When we going?