“This was the worst cruise I’ve ever taken. People were rude. It was cold the first two days. My wife got sick and Medical charged us $500, and the cruise line won’t reimburse us! Food sucked. They skipped Grand Cayman, the only reason I took the cruise. Never again.”

There are a number of review sites for cruises – and other generic travel review sites, as well.

Many rookies depend on these sites to choose their perfect cruise. This is unfortunate since many of the reviews are misleading. Some are useless. Luckily, many rookies don’t find the review sites until after they get home. Unfortunately, they find them to blast the cruise line for all the “problems” they had on their cruise.

So, when you get back from your cruise, here’s the key points to writing a review that might make you feel better, but will help absolutely no one. If you’re one of the people looking for useful reviews and you see these, just move along and read a different one.

Weather

Believe it or not, the Captain of your ship does not control the weather! If your ship misses a port because of weather, it’s not really something you can blame on the cruise line.

Here’s an interesting fact – weather in the Northeast generally sucks in the winter. Christmas is in the winter. Therefore, sailing out of the Northeast for Christmas almost guarantees bad weather for the beginning and end of a cruise. Just fly to Florida to start your cruise there and you can skip the bad weather.

There are other people who believe in grand conspiracy theories that ports are skipped on purpose to force passengers to spend more money on board. These are the type of people the crew would probably really like to have off the ship for four to six hours.

There are also armchair meteorologists who see no reason why they can’t go ashore. Think of this – the ship runs tenders for two hours or more and unloads thousands of passengers onto a Caribbean paradise. Then, a storm comes up. Now, the tenders can’t travel. How do you get them back on the ship, Mr Forecaster?

Passengers

It always amuses me when people from anywhere else sail out of New York and are horrified (horrified, I tell you) that the ship is filled with New Yorkers.

I’m not sure why this surprises them. If you have a choice between flying somewhere or driving to a port, which would you do?

Some ships have reputations that are based on their home port, which means it’s based on the local population. Blaming the ship for its passengers is like blaming the ship for the weather.

Ports

This goes along with the weather complaint. “The only reason I was on this seven-day cruise was for the five-hour stop in <fill in the port>”. Ports get skipped. The weather can change, schedules change, things happen. We had one Christmas cruise that didn’t go to any of the original ports because of hurricane damage from months before we departed. If you only care about one destination, do yourself a favor and just fly there.

No Insurance

This has been mentioned elsewhere, but I think the main reason cruise lines offer travel insurance is to protect them against idiots. Passenger: “We can’t go on the cruise because my Mom is sick. We would like a refund, please.” Cruise Line: “Did you purchase trip insurance?” P: “No, it’s so expensive and we don’t need it.” CL: “Actually, you do need it specifically for times like this. Sorry.”

Vague Comments

My favorite complaints – “the food sucked.” So, was it taste? Quality? Portion size? They didn’t have your beloved corny dogs? If you’re going to lodge a complaint, do everyone a favor and be specific. If nothing else, provide a bit more detail than “sucked.”

So, comment by all means. Review your cruises. State your complaints. Just make sure it’s actually something where the cruise line was at fault.

There is an ongoing debate on whether you sail for the ship (which is one of the reasons all the major lines have megaships now) or whether you sail for the ports (which is why all the major lines still have smaller ships that can fit into the smaller, more interesting ports.)

We are taking our first cruise for the ship in a few weeks. The strange part is that we sailed on the Norwegian Bliss less than a year ago, on our first Alaska cruise.

Alaskan cruises are done for the ports and the scenery. So, while it was amazing being on a ship during her inaugural season, we didn’t really get to see that much of the ship! The port calls were intense, with early mornings (I hate early mornings) and so the afternoons tended to be on the balcony, watching the scenery pass by (often through drooping eyelids.)

After the Alaska season ended, the Bliss repositioned to Miami, where she is sailing Eastern Caribbean cruises. It’s a week-long cruise with three sea days and three ports – St Thomas, Tortola and Nassau. We’ve been to all the ports, so we don’t need to go there, but they’re fun. However, with three sea days, we may actually get to wander around the ship and see all the things we could have done if we hadn’t been napping in Alaska.

Megaships can be fun and there is a lot to do on them, but if you are on a port-intensive cruise (and you’re older), much of the bells and whistles are wasted. So, we will try to find all the activities we can fit into our time at sea, and see what we missed earlier.