Captain Greybeard - Page 159 of 209 - Your expert guide to cruise ships and cruise holidays

A ‘hideous’ encounter at sea

Writing in the Daily Telegraph today, Sharon Osbourne (left) bemoans the Transatlantic crossing she once made on the Cunard liner QE2 to New York. It wasn't the worst holiday she's had - that, apparently was to the South Pacific island of Bora Bora which she re-named Boring Boring. She said the sea voyage was an experience she would not want to repeat. "It was hideous. You had to sit at the same table with the same people for every meal. There was no bloody escape." That's actually one of the aspects of cruising which most lines are gradually changing, with [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:30+00:00 20 March 2010|Cruise Gossip|0 Comments

Win a cruise on board Epic

Here's a spectacular prospect - a giant waterslide, or rather two giant waterslides. They are at the top of one of the biggest cruise ships to be launched this year, the Norwegian Epic. So to ride the slides, intrepid passengers will have to climb to the height of the funnel, hundreds of feet above the sea before hurling themselves down for a splash landing. This is only a model, on show at the Cruise Miami convention this week. The real thing will not be launched until the summer. Thanks to the Daily Mirror, together with The CRUISE Show, you could [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:30+00:00 20 March 2010|Cruise Deals|0 Comments

Top cruise deals of the week

It's official - cruise holidays are becoming more and more popular, and 2009 saw continued growth in the number of passengers, despite the belt-tightening recession. Figures released this week show that 1.53 million Brits took a cruise last year - up four per cent from 2008 - and a record 1.75 million are now predicted to holiday at sea in 2011. Almost 600,000 Brits started their cruise from a UK port, while 939,000 flew off to join their ships in destinations such as the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Bill Gibbons, director of the Passenger Shipping Association, told a conference in [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:30+00:00 20 March 2010|Cruise Deals, Cruise News|0 Comments

Slower crossings ahead

Gene Sloan's report on his USA Today Cruise Log about Cunard extending the length of its transatlantic crossings to seven days has been exciting lots of comment. Micky Arison, boss of Carnival Corporation which has owned Cunard since 1998, recently confirmed the longer crossings were being introduced in order to save fuel. Queen Mary 2 is the only ship sailing regularly scheduled services between Southampton and New York, and in 2011 only one of those voyages will be of six days. When I travelled to New York on QM2 in 2006 the crossing took six days. In the 1930s, the [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:30+00:00 19 March 2010|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|4 Comments

Room to manouevre as more cruise ships arrive in the Med?

My item yesterday about fears of cruise ships overcrowding the Mediterranean struck a few chords around the world. First to get in touch was a spokesperson for cruise.co.uk reminding me that the more ships there are sailing in Europe, the more chances there are for British passengers to grab a bargain. Which is true - provided the experience is not diminished by having to fight your way through the crowds to get to the sights or the shops. Another contact alerted me to the fact that there were five ships visiting Roseau, capital of the charming Caribbean island of Dominica [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:30+00:00 19 March 2010|Cruise Destinations, Cruise News|1 Comment

It’s getting mighty crowded

This week's release of deployment details for the 11 Royal Caribbean cruise ships which will be sailing in European waters next year was just the latest in a flotilla of similar announcements. Carnival, Celebrity, Disney, Holland America, NCL, Princess . . . they'll all be flocking here next year to join our own P&O, Cunard, Fred Olsen and Thomson. Not to mention Italian giants Costa and MSC. More ships are being built, and the cruise lines are pulling out of Alaska because of excessive taxes and stringent regulations, so the vessels have to go somewhere, and they won't all squeeze [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:30+00:00 18 March 2010|Cruise Destinations, Cruise News|0 Comments

There’s nothing austere about life on board the Via Australis

The first thing to realise about expedition ship Via Australis, on which I recently travelled to Cape Horn, is that the name has nothing to do with Australia, except both share the same etymology - from the Latin for "south." The second thing I discovered was just how well this little vessel - a mere 2,716 tons and carrying just 125 passengers - could handle itself in the wild waters of the south Atlantic. The seas of Drake Passage, between South America and Antarctica, are some of the roughest in the world, and have claimed hundreds of ships and thousands [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:30+00:00 17 March 2010|Cruise Destinations, Cruise Ships|0 Comments

Inside Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth

It will never float, but this unique model has been giving visitors at the Cruise Miami convention this week a sneak preview of the interiors of Cunard's new ship, Queen Elizabeth. So far, we've seen only artists' impressions, architectural drawings, and photographs of construction work at the Marghera shipyard near Trieste in Italy. But here's a chance to see the real thing, albeit in miniature, accurate to the last detail - apart from the fact that there are no passengers or crew to be seen. I wonder what Cunard president and managing director Peter Shanks (right) is saying to Guiseppe [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:31+00:00 17 March 2010|Cruise Ships|0 Comments

Finnish allure for Becks

Until this week, the Finnish city of Turku meant only one thing to me - it's the home of the giant STX Europe shipyard where the biggest cruise liners in the world have been built. Now it has become famous for another reason, thanks to the world's most famous footballer. When David Beckham's ruptured Achilles tendon put an end to his hopes of playing for England in this summer's World Cup, he was immediately flown to the Mehilainen sports injury clinic in Turku for treatment. Specialist surgeon Sakari Orava operated to save his career, and Beckham is expected to leave [...]

By John Honeywell| 2010-03-17T11:07:19+00:00 17 March 2010|Cruise Gossip|0 Comments

Cruises squeezed in Miami vice

Confirmation that cruises have never been better value comes with the admission from Carnival's president, Gerry Cahill, that his line - and others - cut from 10 to 20 per cent off their fares last year in order to keep bookings coming in. Fares are starting to creep back up, as consumer confidence increases, but cruise bosses meeting at Cruise Shipping Miami this week still think it will take a while for prices to recover to their levels before the start of the recession. "Consumers are starting to open their wallets again," said Dan Hanrahan, president and CEO of Celebrity [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:31+00:00 16 March 2010|Cruise News|0 Comments