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If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Disney has finally come out with names for their new ships - Disney Dream and Disney Fantasy. The Disney Dream is scheduled to launch in 2011 and the Disney Fantasy in 2012. Construction on both ships began on March 2, 2009, at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany with a special steel-cutting ceremony. We will provide updates as more information on the new ships is available! Yesterday, March 2, Disney Cruise Line began construction on their two new cruise ships! The official moment took place with a steel cutting ceremony at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. The two new ships are scheduled for completion in 2011 and 2012. “When we launched our business in 1998, we recognized a need in the marketplace for a cruise experience created just for families,” said Karl L. Holz, president of Disney Cruise Line and New Vacation Operations. “With these new ships, we are continuing to build upon that vision of providing more families with an unforgettable cruise vacation and the chance to explore new destinations with Disney.” The first piece of steel cut for the new ships was part of the art deco inspired scrollwork that will grace the bow of the ships. Similar to the scrollwork on the Disney Cruise Line ships, Disney Magic and Disney Wonder, the intricate pattern is reminiscent of the classic ocean liners of the 1930s, designed to reflect the glamour of the golden age of cruising with added touches of Disney whimsy, such as the Mickey Mouse medallion in the center of the design. Disney Cruise Line and Walt Disney Imagineering have created a truly distinctive design for the new ships. Over the next few years, construction will continue, bringing the design to reality. The design details will be unveiled at a later date. Stay tuned for more updates! Although just about all of the details of the two new ships are top secret, we do know that the new ships will have 1,250 staterooms and weigh 128,000 tons. Similar to the Disney Magic and Disney Wonder, the new ships will be purpose built with families in mind, with specially designed areas and activities for each member of the family to allow for both quality time together and wonderful individual experiences. Disney Cruise Line and Walt Disney Imagineering have created a truly distinctive design for the new ships. Over the next few years, construction will continue, bringing the design to reality. The design details will be unveiled at a later date. Stay tuned for more updates! A Family Cruise for Everyone & Now Kids get 50% Off on Disney Cruise Line! Everyone of every age finds a special kind of magic created just for them on a Disney cruise. Young cruisers are off to the most spectacular kids’ area afloat, where they can party with pirates and play with Disney princesses. Teens get their own private club, parties, activities and more. While adults escape to exclusive areas whether it’s a pampering spa treatment, dancing to the music at a cool club or enjoying a romantic dinner. Everyone can enjoy their very own cruise; then, gather together to share the most magical moments of all, family time. Yesterday, March 2, Disney Cruise Line began construction on their two new! The official moment took place with a steel cutting ceremony at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. The two new ships are scheduled for completion in 2011 and 2012. “When we launched our business in 1998, we recognized a need in the marketplace for a cruise experience created just for families,” said Karl L. Holz, president of Disney Cruise Line and New Vacation Operations. “With these new ships, we are continuing to build upon that vision of providing more families with an unforgettable cruise vacation and the chance to explore new destinations with Disney.” The first piece of steel cut for the new ships was part of the art deco inspired scrollwork that will grace the bow of the ships. Similar to the scrollwork on the Disney Cruise Line ships, Disney Magic and Disney Wonder, the intricate pattern is reminiscent of the classic ocean liners of the 1930s, designed to reflect the glamour of the golden age of cruising with added touches of Disney whimsy, such as the Mickey Mouse medallion in the center of the design. Although just about all of the details of the two new ships are top secret, we do know that the new ships will have 1,250 staterooms and weigh 128,000 tons. Similar to the Disney Magic and Disney Wonder, the new ships will be purpose built with families in mind, with specially designed areas and activities for each member of the family to allow for both quality time together and wonderful individual experiences. Disney Cruise Line and Walt Disney Imagineering have created a truly distinctive design for the new ships. Over the next few years, construction will continue, bringing the design to reality. The design details will be unveiled at a later date. Stay tuned for more updates! After working with several site hosting platforms with CruisesAreFun.com we have decided to move over to a Wordpress hosting platform vs. the previous SandVox platform. The new Wordpress platform allows better Web 2.0 connectivity while also providing a wealth of customization options with it’s huge libraries of various Themes and Plug-ins. While the SandVox platform is probably one of the best web design and management applications I have ever used and hands-down the best Mac-based web design applications for RAD website development, Wordpress just offered a subset of features via it’s Plug-ins that were not currently available for SandVox without extensive customization. We have selected to use the Wordpress Atahualpa 2.21 theme by BFA Webdesign which offers a flexible 3-row design along with a rotating header which we have customized with images from some of our recent cruises. Pictures include sunsets, the mountains of Cuba, and our off-ship adventures at Key West and other exotic places in the Bahamas and Caribbean. We have also altered many of the menu, header and title colors to reflect the many shades of blue and turquoise you will see in and around the Bahamas and Caribbean. At this moment we are still working on getting the cruise schedules for 2009 and 2010 back online but when we do it will be via a database-driven, interactive environment vs. a static listing as it was previously. This will allow for better searching, sorting and filtering capabilities when trying to narrow your search to find that perfect cruise to match your criteria. Please feel free to leave some comments and we look forward to working with you on planning your next cruise vacation. Below is a list we have been compiling of the top cruise blogs. We tried to only include the blogs which were reasonably current and had relevant news, information or an active community subscriber base. Blogs that were under construction, not deemed on topic, or that did not appear to offer any significant value, were not included. This list was created because there wasn’t any one location or resource that had all of these blogs in an easily accessible medium. The people behind many of the blogs in this list are among the top names in news, information and editorials within the Cruse industry today. Many of these blogs serve as vital lifelines to the ever curious and resourceful, internet-savvy, cruise travel related consumer. We hope you enjoy the use of this free resource! If you like this list or believe that we have left off any deserving top cruise blogs, be sure to leave a comment or send us an email. Don’t forget to bookmark this permalink so you can see our latest changes and updates to this list when you are looking for that special tidbit of cruise travel information. Top Cruise Blogs: The Carnival Cruise Blog: http://carnivalcruiseblog.com/
Tim Stark is the webmaster and co-owner of CruisesAreFun.com which specializes in Bahama, Bermuda and Caribbean Cruise Vacations. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, some of the airlines recently announced that they will be trimming their fleets which means about another 25% reduction in flights which had already been significantly trimmed back after September 11, 2001. This, coupled with the rising fuel prices, means that flights will be more expensive, fuller, and will sell out even more quickly then ever before. As if that weren’t enough, the airlines are also trying to change the ticketing model so that you pay by weight and are only allowed a single checked bag or in some cases you may even have to pay for that. Now add in the ever increasing hassles of traversing your local airports TSA security checkpoint, (having to take off your shoes, display all liquids which must be in 3oz containers, remove your laptop from its case, take everything metal out of your pockets and once on the other side put everything back together again) and we have a real problem in the making. How many people are going to continue to put up with this? How many people will still be able to afford air travel? It’s one thing if you have to travel for business but this isn’t a good way to start or end a vacation. The bottom line is that the days of easy and affordable air travel are fading away and it is becoming too costly for a medium to large family to fly any more. This is the driving factor behind starting this website and in promoting local cruises that are within a closer drive to where you are. Many of the people that cruise live within a two hour drive of a port that offers cruises of some sort, and the other folks who are land locked, maybe you can find a cruise to your liking at a port that is much closer then having to drive or fly all the way down to Miami, Florida as well. Or, maybe you have a friend or relative near a popular cruise port that you have been wanting to visit. Happy sailing! -Tim Stark (webmaster)
Beginning September 2009 the Port of Baltimore will have three cruise lines sailing from the port; Norwegian Cruse Lines, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, and just recently announced, Carnival Cruise Line. In fact, Carnival Cruise Lines will be the first to offer a year-round cruise program from the Port of Baltimore with the Carnival Pride. Currently, Norwegian Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line sail from Baltimore several months each year. The Port of Baltimore welcomed a brand new cruise terminal in 2006. The new terminal is just 200 yards off Interstate 95 making it a convenient drive-to port of embarkation and it has on-site convenient parking. Royal Caribbean’s passengers have been so pleased with their boarding experience at the Port of Baltimore that Royal Caribbean awarded the port with its worldwide “Best First-Turn” award for customer satisfaction during the pre-board experience at a port. Baltimore topped all international cruse ports served by Royal Caribbean to win this honor. With over 40 million people living within a six-hour drive of Baltimore, coupled with it’s close proximity to Washington, DC and Annapolis, MD for pre or post cruise mini-vacations, the Port of Baltimore is destined to become a very popular East Coast Cruise Port. With the pending delivery of the first Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Oasis Class ship in late 2009, the question of where these behemoth ships will visit seems to be a matter of size. At first glance of the proposed ‘09 itineraries, I was bit surprised to see the Oasis of the Seas calling on the very typical Eastern and Western Caribbean ports of calls. My initial though was, well there is so much to do and experience on the ship itself, it really doesn’t matter where she goes. But after reading an article about Grand Cayman, one of my favorite ports, not being part of the Oasis of the Seas itinerary, the actual reason became apparent. The sheer size of the ship is going to dictate the ports she can call upon. Grand Cayman does not have a port large enough for a 220,000 ton ship to dock and it is estimated that it would take upwards of four hours to tender the 5,400 passengers who will be onboard. Therefore, the Oasis class ships will only visit ports large enough for her to dock. The cruise ports have decisions to make. If their port is already large enough to welcome the Oasis of the seas with open arms, is the port city ready to accept over 5,000 cruisers from just one ship when potentially, there could be several other ships with several thousand other cruises ready to visit? If the port city does not have the necessary infrastructure already in place, what needs to happen to make it ready? What about excursions? Can the port excursions handle the sheer number of visitors? On a recent trip to Sting Ray City, there were so many other tourist ships there at one time that the overall experience was disappointingly less than previous visits. Will some shore excursions will have to be limited or not offered at all. Would it make sense to offer a shore excursion for 100 people to a ship of over 5,400? All of these questions will be worked out of course. But we, the conusmer have even more decisions to make. Do we cruise on smaller, more traditional ships for the opportunity to visit new and less croweded ports? Or, do we cruise on the mega ships to experience its unique features and grandness? For Immediate Release Bernadette Stark bernadette@vacationdreamstravel.com 22 Year Travel Industry Veteran Launches Specialty Travel Websites Lake Ridge, VA - July, 2 2008 - 22 year travel industry veteran, Bernadette Stark, CTA, launches two new speciality travel websites. VacationDreamsTravel.com specializing in Walt Disney World vacations and CruisesAreFun.com featuring “Nearby Cruises”. Stark says experience and expertise led her to focus her vacation planning business on the two areas of vacation travel that she is most passionate about and experienced in; Disney Vacations and Cruising. “Consumers need an expert to help them get the most value from their travel dollars especially today” explains Stark. “By focusing my efforts exclusively on Disney Vacations and ‘Nearby Cruises’ (unique cruises at ports close to most major metropolitan areas), I can stay up on the latest promotions, news, and enhancements enabling me to offer my clients the very best service. My clients benefit from the inside knowledge and first-hand tips I share with them” Stark added. Both websites, VacationDreamsTravel.com, specializing in Walt Disney World Vacations, and CruisesAreFun.com, specializing in “Nearby Cruises”, are officially open for business. Bernadette Stark, CTA is a 22 year travel industry veteran. Her credentials include: Graduate of the Wilma Boyd Travel School, Certified Travel Agent (CTA), Graduate of both the College of Disney Knowledge and the College of Disney Knowledge Agent Education Graduate Program, and has reached Expert Plus (currently the highest lever achievable) in the Royal Caribbean University of WOW. She is also a member of the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) and often conducts travel seminars for community groups. # # # We are starting to see the rebirth of a convenient practice in cruising; nearby cruises or as the industry refers to it, “Home-port Cruising”. Cruise lines are beginning to move more of their ships to seaports around the United States, making cruising more convenient and accessible. You have probably seen the flurry of articles lately about the state of the airline industry, and the recent changes in services. Most airlines are cutting back the number of flights, cutting out complete cities, laying off workers, increasing prices, and charging for the basics of travel, that rightfully should be part of the ticket price. It seems the cruise lines have recognized this and realize they need to bring their ships closer to the consumer. If saving hundreds of dollars per person in airfare costs, while avoiding long lines, hassles, and wasted time at an airport sound appealing to you, there are great cruises to be found within a few hours drive of many Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf Coast cities. As an added bonus, you can take much more with you in your car than you can on an airplane! Additionally when returning home, you will find it much more convenient to transport your duty-free liquid (aka alcohol), large (think authentic Mexican sombrero), or fragile treasures in your car than in the single 50lb suitcase most airlines now allow you to check in. So don’t wait. Take advantage of a nearby cruise, have a fantastic vacation, save hundreds of dollars in airfare, and don’t worry about that 25 year old bottle of scotch breaking in your suitcase! Cities with nearby cruise ports around the US:
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