Cruises Are Fun

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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?