Originally posted by pdxfive Get started!
Our cruise experience consists of 1) taking a Carnival ship: Long Beach - Mazatlan - Puerto Vallarta - Cabo San Lucas - Long Beach; and 2) watching parades of cruise passengers disembark from numerous ships at Skagway over a week. Neither was a positive experience.
Samuel Johnson called sailing, "imprisonment, with chance of drowning". I call cruising, "imprisonment, with certainty of obesity". Mediocre food, and lots of it. Mediocre orchestrated activities. The ports-of-call are generally tourist traps. (I'd driven to Mazatlan the year before; it's much better when seen independently.) Without going into detail, I'll just say that the shore excursions generally suck.
My in-laws had much better cruise experiences around Alaska, the Baltic, elsewhere. They also went on small ships that cost about US$1k-2k per day. Ouch! Small ships can go into fjords; big ones stay safely offshore. I think our next cruise will likely be on a 10-passanger trimaran from Guatemala to the Cays. That scale is much better. But I'd better get some WR lenses, eh?