The '
Cigars & Cruises' thread made me look and see if there was a dedicated thread for cruises and cruisers (NOT Tom Cruise.
). There are several discussions about them but most are at least a decade old. So I thought I'd start one.
Do you enjoy cruises? What's your favorite cruise line? Best/worst cruise you've been on? Are you thinking about taking your first cruise and have questions? Ask away!
Our first cruise was in 2007 when we were stationed in Europe and we've been fans ever since. It was on the Costa Concordia which was made infamous five years later when the drunken captain ran it aground and capsized it while trying to impress his girlfriend.
We've been on 15 total ocean cruises:
- 10 Norwegian
- 2 Carnival
- 1 each MSC, Costa, and Holland America
We've also taken two Viking river cruises, on the Danube and Rhine.
We've got a backlog of cruises on the horizon due to the craziness of the last few years. We'll be on NCL in July going out of Reykavik to Greenland and back around Iceland and again on NCL next January going to the Southern Carribean. Then we have two "special occasion cruises", one next April on Oceania out of Tahiti going around French Polynesia in celebration of Steph's 50th; the other is February 2024 on Viking Ocean going up the coast of Norway to above the Arctic Circle in search of the northern lights for my 50th (3.5 years after I actually turned 50).
Favorite cruise line: NCL. We like their itineraries, life on the ship, the food, and we love the Haven.
Plus we've sailed on them so much that with our rewards level they toss a whole bunch of freebies at us every cruise.
Least Favorite: MSC. The ship was old and creaky and the crew was apathetic at best. The itinerary (Eastern Mediterranean) was great, though.
Best cruise: NCL out of Sydney, Australia going around New Zealand. We splurged on the Haven so went in style. Every stop was fantastic. The only downside was flying to/from.
Itinerary we want to repeat: Glacier Bay, Alaska. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time overseas during my military career and have been in 50 different countries. I don't think any place I've been matches the beauty of Glacier Bay. We did it in 2016 on Holland America (they sail a smaller ship on this itinerary so they can get closer to the glaciers than other lines) and when we disembarked after the cruise I turned to Steph and said "We're doing that again."
How about you?