Where To?

Last week as I watched Top Chef in which the chefs had been placed on the Celebrity Infinity in Alaska and were told to cook in the ships galleys it suddenly hit me how much I would enjoy an Alaskan cruise.  I have always feared taking that trip since I hate being cold so much.  I have this vision of me getting all the way to Alaska spending all of that money and then after a couple of days in the cold drizzly weather,wanting nothing more than to come home for the rest of the trip.

But for some reason during this last Caribbean cruise, I started thinking about it quite a bit.  Then less than a week after coming home, the contestants on Top Chef were doing it and seemed to really be enjoying it and that's when I decided that I have to start planning this for myself.  One night last week I even went so far as to price it.  I priced it on Royal Caribbean rather than Celebrity even though after seeing that episode of Top Chef, I was completely convinced  that doing it on Celebrity was a necessity.  So this morning I have gone back and looked at the Celebrity option.  It seems that Infinity isn't doing Alaska in 2013.  The Millennium would appear to be the only option for doing a Celebrity Alaskan cruise this year.  That probably wouldn't be a problem.  The two ships seem to be about the same size and they look alike.  So, there would probably be no difference.  But this lead me to look at other Celebrity cruises and Oh! - The things I discovered!!!

I already had found this Celebrity cruise out of Seattle in September that does an overnight stay in San Francisco for the America's Cup race that is being held there this year.  The cruise ends in Ensenada, Mexico.  It is called the Wine and America's Cup cruise.  I really don't know what could be better.... combining wine and sailboat racing with a Celebrity cruise might just be a dream come true for me.  The price on this particular cruise isn't too extraordinary.  Balconies start at $1,349 per person.  I think you would need the balcony so that you could sit on it and watch the racing taking place in San Francisco Bay.  Of course, my concern would be that my balcony would end up being on the wrong side of the ship.  The only other thing that I really find to be a turn off on this cruise is that one of the stops is Los Angeles.  I can understand boarding a ship in LA, but why would you want to stop there during a cruise?  It just doesn't seem like a very "cruisy" stop to me.

When I originally found this cruise months ago, I actually went so far as to check airfare because I was really interested in doing it.  I find it strange that the cruise ends in Ensenada, Mexico, but you can't fly from there to anywhere.  So you would need to get back to San Diego which is the stop just before Ensenada in order to fly home.  I mean, if you can't fly out of Ensenada anyway, why not just make it a 9 day cruise instead of a 10 day cruise and have it end a day earlier when you are at a port that actually has an airport?  Well, here's why.... the US requires that foreign-flagged passenger vessels stopping at more than one US port per itinerary must stop at a foreign port as well to be in compliance with the Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886 (PVSA).  So going 50 more miles down the coast to get to Mexico is the only way this cruise is legal.  But anyway, that is what I can tell you about the Celebrity Wine and America's Cup cruise.

This same rule affects Hawaiian cruises pretty dramatically.  You see NCL has the only two remaining US flagged passenger ships.  So, they have the market cornered on the Hawaiian islands cruise scene.  If you want to do a Hawaiian cruise with any other cruise line, you can either leave Ensenada, Mexico by first flying into San Diego and then being transported across the boarder to Mexico and sailing for 4 or 5 days to Hawaii.  Your cruise ends in Hawaii and then you have to fly back from Hawaii which is a kind of expensive flight one way.  - OR - You can fly to Hawaii and cruise around the islands and then sail to a foreign country and fly back from there.  Either way, you are sailing across the Pacific for several days and flying into one port and out of another.  This takes a vacationer who only has one week to spend out of the equation unless they want to do the NCL Hawaiian Island cruise on one of it's two US-flagged ships.

Perhaps you are wondering about my aversion to this NCL cruise.  I have only sailed on NCL once, so I am not sure that I have given it a fair shake.  But the one cruise I did on an NCL ship was not among my favorite cruises.  Even though I loved the ports we visited, the NCL experience just wasn't for me.  I am not a fan of the whole "my time dining" trend and that is what NCL is all about.  It also seemed like much more of a Carnival Cruise Line type atmosphere with the "booze cruise" crowd in total control of the ship.  It could just have been that I was sailing out of New Orleans which is a known "party" city and in the summer time when the crowds are more into the cruise ship party scene.  But I really prefer a more relaxed, quiet cruising experience.  If you are into a cruise ship party scene then NCL might be right up your alley.

I was, at one point, really interested in the idea of a cruise that would take you all around the Hawaiian Islands and seriously thought about it until I began reading the reviews on the NCL cruise.  They got my attention quickly.  Most of the bad reviews center around the fact that a US-flagged ship is required to hire a certain percentage of Americans and the service is lacking as a result.  I have heard about this issue previously, but in some of the reviews I have just read, the reviewers go into detail saying that the people on board continually complained about their low pay and the cruise line's expectancy of them to work such long hours and multiple shifts.  Many of the reviews describe the quality of the food and cleanliness on board as being frightening with tales of dirty dishes stacked in dining room chairs for hours while they dined a few feet away.  From all that I have read, it doesn't sound like the PVSA law is likely to change anytime soon.  So, for me, that takes a Hawaiian cruise out of the equation.

While perusing Celebrity cruises, I also looked at the Galapagos Islands cruises.  The ship they have doing that itinerary carries 90 passengers and only the suites have balconies.  I've always wanted to go to the Galapagos but I just don't know if I would want to do it on a ship.  Viewing the itineraries, on a 7 night cruise you have 14 stops.  You have two stops a day every day.  You are at each stop for 1/2 a day and all of the stops are tendered.  After reviewing the list of excursions, it seems that they take you from the ship in Zodiacs so they probably don't hold that many people.  The excursions seem to be very limited, I suppose due to the ecological impact that they would have on the area.  Not all of the stops have excursions.  The nice thing is that the excursions seem to be included in the price of the cruise.

Celebrity seems to have a lot of Pacific itineraries.  They cruise around Southeast Asia a lot.  They also do a number of Australia and New Zealand cruises.  I found a transpacific cruise that takes you from Hawaii to Australia going through Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, New Zealand and the like.  I don't know if I could handle 19 days of that much luxury.  (Can you overdose on luxury?)  The good news is that I don't have to worry too much about it since everything on that cruise except inside cabins is sold out and you know me, I'm a balcony snob.

So yes, there are a lot of exciting cruising options out there - too many in fact for me to cover in a months worth of blogs.  I'm beginning to think I should just start working my way around the world in cruising options for the next few months and see where it gets us.  I'll have to consider it.  In the meantime, I'm going to check out some other Alaskan cruises.  Have a great Thursday!