Cruises: a boatload of fun

Published 2:46 pm Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Ship cruises are gaining popularity like wildfire, for restful leisure trips or active leisure trips. You can be as lethargic or as active as you like. There are always new things to see or do, or to ignore. Your choice.

Choice, in fact, is what makes cruising both exciting and memorable. There’s a global range of ship tours, ship activities, ports of call, onboard entertainment and varieties of food service. While guests can still dress for dinners in the formal dining room, a more casual trend is surfacing, with meals offered in general ship attire.

The Northwest cruising industry has been bolstered by new opportunities to sail to the sunny Caribbean to escape wet, cloudy and stormy winters and by a fascination with cruising the Alaskan Inland Passage and its stunning glaciers all year around.

If you’re surfing the Internet to find a great cruising adventure, you’re likely to find yourself overwhelmed by waves of Web sites, gorgeous photos of ships, and destinations from Alaska to ’Zealand.

First, you need to choose where you want to go, what time of year and whether you want to cruise the Caribbean, Europe’s rivers or Alaska’s glaciers route. Then, start searching for the best prices and accommodations, a maze of numbers to sort out. Unless you’re booking space with a group that has everything planned out, you’ll probably begin thinking about finding an experienced travel agent.

Julianna Olmedo, luxury travel planner and consultant at Carlson Wagonlit Travel in Marysville, has a few tips to help find a good agent.

“Listening is so important,” she said. “There are so many options, but the travel agent needs to find out what the client thinks is important and not important. Then the agent can begin to offer suitable suggestions.”

She also recommends agents who have traveled extensively, preferably including a variety of cruise ship experiences. There’s nothing that helps more than talking to someone who has been on a ship, eaten the food, enjoyed the entertainment and sampled the ports of call and different weather conditions around the world.

Also, look for special packages and group rates. For instance, Carlson Wagonlit Travel is booking space on the Carnival Miracle for an April 17 six-day cruise from New York City to Bermuda. While the brochure rate for an inside cabin is $799 per person, a group rate is only $480. At the other end of the price list, an outside cabin with an extended balcony is $1,499 per person unless it’s booked at a group rate of $770 per person.

Olmedo said the convenience of cruising has been greatly improved with the development of Seattle’s two cruise terminals. The port’s 2008 season expects to welcome more than 200 cruise ship visits and nearly 754,605 passengers, up from six vessels and 6,615 passengers when the first cruise terminal opened in 1999.

“We book for multiple cruise lines that offer tours of Greenland, the Caribbean and all over the globe, including the Greek islands in the Mediterranean and across the Pacific to Australia. One of the newest cruising interests is on rivers, including historic river cruising in Europe such as the Danube, Russian river cruises and a Mississippi River cruise,” she said. “We’re already booking trips into 2010 and a couple in 2011.”

Today, she said, there are chef cruises for people who want to learn to cook, guest speakers on a variety of topics, Broadway-style shows and dance bands for entertainment, nostalgia cruises that play music from the 1950s and even cruises on three-mast sailing ships.

“They’re way past just offering deck chairs and shuffleboard,” she said. “There’s even Internet access and e-mail available.”

And, a final suggestion: don’t overlook having your passport ready for any trips outside of American waters.