Summer Is In the Air...or Grounded at Heathrow

 A British Airways 747 at Toronto's Pearson Airport.

Photo © Aaron Saunders

For many, summer means long evenings, warm weather, and cool drinks.  If you're Unite, the union representing British Airways cabin crew, it means another summer of strikes, the first of which is due to kick off next week.  This year, however, Unite may have bitten off more than it can chew in its bid to eke better pay and working conditions out of BA.

Europe-bound travelers have had to put up with a lot so far this year, mainly thanks to the eruption of a volcano in Iceland that, while more subdued in recent weeks, still continues to periodically cause chaos at many European airports.  It was an event that cost the airlines millions of dollars, and alienated as many passengers.  Horror stories were reprinted verbatim in papers and blogs around the world as stranded travelers fought airlines, insurance companies, and tour providers in a desperate bid to keep their vacations intact, or merely get home.

The BA strike is nothing new - Unite threatens to pull the plug on BA seemingly each summer.  What has changed, though, is the willingness of passengers to go along with these shenanigans.  The incident with the Icelandic volcano was the closest the airline industry has come to total collapse - not since World War II has the European airspace closed for so long.  So now, with passengers still on pins and needles and their employer in a precarious position, Unite has decided it's time to stick it to their employer again.

In threatening to pull the plug on many BA flights from London Heathrow for 20 days in May and June, many passengers who have to book travel to Europe will avoid BA at all costs.  Many other affected passengers - no doubt this group includes some poor fliers displaced last month by the eruption - stand to be affected again.  How many of those passengers do you suppose will return to BA the next time they're due to fly into Heathrow?

Unite has some genuine grievances with BA.  But by launching a strike at this time, they further cripple their employer and alienate another piece of their customer base.  No amount of advertising in the world could give Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic this kind of edge. 

Cruisers due to fly on BA to Europe have some options if your flight is indeed canceled.  BA will work with you to try to place you on an alternate flight, either with the airline itself or with a codeshare partner.  Because of the time-sensitive nature of cruises, if you are able to re-arrange your travel dates to arrive or depart a few days before your cruise, it will probably work to your advantage to do so.

Finally, like most passengers have regrettably discovered this year, check your insurance for your flights and cruise and see exactly what options are open to you.  As with the volcanic eruption, if your cruise is still on, but you are unable to reach the port of embarkation due to flight issues, many policies will leave  you high and dry.

Hopefully Unite and BA will be able to come to an agreement and minimize any disruption to passengers - those people whom this business supposedly revolves around, but who are usually forgotten.

Nickled and Dimed?

Time and time again, the same comment is often posted on sites like CruiseCritic: "they (insert cruise line here) are trying to nickle-and-dime me!"

If you've stayed at an all-inclusive resort, true - you may find paying for your drinks to be an additional expense.  Then there's the casino, photographs, shore excursions, spa treatments, specialty restaurants, and gift shops to consider.  However, no one is forcing you to actually purchase any of those.  At no time does any cruise line say "if you don't buy the photo we took of you on the gangway with your eyes shut we won't let you board!"

To read comments from some posters, you'd think the line took them by the heels and tipped them upside down to see what loose change fell out.  The only conclusion I can draw is this: those people have never stayed at a hotel.

After spending a weekend at a major upscale resort hotel - which has been very nice, but which shall go unnamed for various reasons - I appreciate cruises all the more.  The beds are comfy here, and the staff are polite and attentive, but opening the mini-bar in the room might bankrupt me.  The inescapable charges are also beginning to pile up.  Parking is $28 per day.  Sure, I could park up the hill and walk fifteen minutes back, but that's going to get tiresome - and the hotel knows that I, like most of the guests, am lazy.  Wireless internet: $20 per day.  OK, fine.  Wait - I just spent almost $100, not including applicable taxes, and I haven't even had my first dinner. 

Feel like a little pre-dinner martini?  Amble up to the bar and discover the cheapest, simplest martini on the menu is a whopping $17 - plus 15% gratuity, plus applicable sales tax (another glorious 13%).  You know, I'm not as thirsty as I thought.  Maybe something small - whisky on the rocks.  Will you look at that?  It's the same amount for a tumbler of whisky as it is for two days worth of parking. 

The most expensive Martini I ever had on a cruise was $10, which is well on par with most land-based restaurants and bars.  Everyone knows the mini-bar in a hotel is a crapshoot that you're better off shutting and never opening, so no surprise there.  It's in the little charges - the extras, the things you need and can't do much about - that reveal the 'nickle-and-diming' aspect of a hotel stay.

Local calls?  $1.00 - per call - even if you get an answering machine or a dial tone.  I never fully understood that.  Long distance - that makes sense.  You don't want a guest calling Dubai for three hours, but why nail you for making dinner reservations?  Now that most people carry a cell phone it's a moot point, and I compensate for it by making off with all the little soaps and stationary I can reasonably cram into my luggage.

Hungry?  Sure, you can dine in the hotel.  The menu looks delicious.  However, like most guests, you'll drop it like it's on fire once you scan the prices.  This is done for two reasons.  Hotels hold thousands of guests, and their dining spaces rarely seat more than a few hundred.  If they dropped the prices, they'd have a line of angry guests out the door a mile long who are tired of waiting.  So they raise the price to discourage throngs of people from coming - and it works.  I've dined in a couple hotel restaurants, mainly after long flights - and can only think of maybe two experiences where I felt it was worth the money.  One in England, one in New York.  That's it. 

Compare that to a cruise, where you're treated to a multiple-course meal with attentive service, including dessert and coffee - that you don't have to pay for!  Sure, arguably you already paid for it, but therein lies the biggest difference between a land vacation and a cruise vacation:  the land vacation has a cheap price supplemented with a lot of add-ons, and the cruise price is more expensive with fewer add-ons.

So are you nickled-and-dimed to death onboard a cruise ship?  Not even close.  We enjoyed our little weekend getaway - but it has made me appreciate the value of a cruise vacation all the more.

Now where's that cart with those little soaps on it?

The Best Competition At Sea

In an age where cruise lines seem content to continually one-up each other in terms of outrageous onboard diversions – from big top tents to boxing rings, aqua theatres, levitating bars, even an actual city street – it’s refreshing to see one line in particular adopt a different view of what constitutes onboard entertainment, one in which both passengers and performers alike stand to benefit.

Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, best known for their luxurious fleet of five-star ships featuring world-class cuisine and service coupled with some of the most innovative itineraries available, will be hosting their second-annual classical music competition at sea.

The “Stella Maris” International Vocal Competition is designed to bring up-and-coming talent from the most renowned opera houses throughout the world together for an incredible event at sea that is completely unique to the Hamburg, Germany-based line. Where other lines focus on their lounges or fixed amenities, the defining factor here is the incredible talent that will be embarking on the five-star EUROPA in Istanbul, Turkey on November 6, 2010 for a ten-day journey through Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, and Jordan.

Also embarking in Istanbul will be the distinguished jury of famous classical music personalities. Under the direction of Canadian tenor Michael Schade, jurors Christina Scheppelmann (Washington National Opera), Daniel Goodwin (Deutsche Grammophon), and Martin Engstroem (Verbier Festival), the jury will decide on the recipients of prizes including a guest engagement at the Washington National Opera, a concert at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, and a test recording courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon.

The major prize, however, and one which performers will be strongly vying for, is the €15,000 grand prize. This incredibly generous amount is provided courtesy of the cultural foundation Hauck & Aufhaeuser. Perhaps most impressively, the audience onboard the ship will get to determine who walks away with this honour.

Featuring competitors culled from some of the most renowned opera houses around the world, this unique voyage promises to give passengers the musical experience of a lifetime while whisking them in style and comfort to some of the most historic ports in the world. Boasting private balconies on 80% of her staterooms (and not a single cabin under 290 square feet), the 408-guest EUROPA features an astonishing number of public rooms for a vessel her size. From the magrodome-covered pool to the open-grill cafe, two specialty restaurants, and the newly-renovated OCEAN SPA, EUROPA combines the elegance of days gone by with the all the modern comforts and amenities expected by today’s cruiser.

Prices for this unique experience start at $6,570 per person based on double occupancy. Sounds expensive? Maybe, but remember: this is an ultra-luxury line. The amount of money you could reasonably expect to pay to see performances of a similar calibre in London or New York could easily creep up into the thousands. The opportunity, though, to see truly great performances by some of these talented, up-and-coming individuals while experiencing a magnificent ten day cruise to the cradle of civilization, surrounded by every comfort – is a bargain, and one that will likely sell out quickly.



For more information on this incredible itinerary, departing November 6, 2010, visit the Stella Maris Competition website.

Let's Ban Common Sense While We're At It

 Is this "Ruining the World"?

Photo © 2010 Aaron Saunders

There's an interesting article on AOL's Travel News page that asks the question: Are Cruises Ruining the World?

Come again?

The article points squarely to the monstrous Oasis of the Seas and notes how many provisions need to be loaded onto the ship - as well as how many tonnes of sewage are produced, grey water from sinks and showers, and hazardous wastes etc, and makes the case that cruise ships are simply an unsustainable part of our society.

These facts and figures come once again from the environmental "grassroots" group Friends of the Earth, who have successfully provided misleading, one-sided figures to journalists from major publications who salivate over them.

Curiously absent are any facts pertaining to the onboard waste treatment systems, which have the ability to purify waste water into a form of water that would be safe to be ingested by humans.  Would you want to?  Probably not, but pumping "safe" water over the side of the ship - or using it to cool machinery spaces - is light years ahead of the practice of ships not so long ago, when waste was routinely pumped by the gallon over the side of the ship.   Think of the number of transatlantic liners one hundred years ago - that fleet vastly outnumbered today's cruise fleet. 

Now imagine all of them, some carrying in excess of five thousand passengers thanks to tightly-packed steerage quarters, pumping all of their raw, untreated refuse into the ocean.

Nor is there any mention of the shoreside power hookups like that available at Canada Place in Vancouver.  By plugging into the power at the pier, the ship can shut down her diesel engines, thus reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Also missing is any talk of the ships incinerators, or how the heat produced by burning their waste materials is used to heat not only the ship, but the boilers that provide hot water to the sinks and showers onboard.

What the article does mention is that the city of Charleston, South Carolina is up in arms over the decision by Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines to base their Carnival Fantasy in the city.  Rather than embracing the potential tourism dollars that both the vessel and its passengers and crew stand to bring to Charleston, the South Carolina State Ports Authority (SCSPA) - in an unusual act of biting the hand that feeds them - has chosen to support activists complaining about everything from the potential pollution from the ship, to the fact that its nine-hour turnaround will obliterate their historic skyline.

In short, they'd rather the ship hauled anchor and left.

The ports of Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles might raise their eyebrows at such comments, given that the last few years have seen them loose cruise traffic left, right, and centre due in large part to the economy and the Alaska State Head Tax. 

The article - and quotes from the SCSPA's Project Manager - read like a doom-and-gloom list of all the horrible things the cruise industry is doing to their fair city, with the most bizarre being a comment that tourists will actually avoid the city when a cruise ship is in town.  Two cruise ships, to be exact: Charleston isn't exactly Ft. Lauderdale in terms of departures.

It is curious that one relatively small, low-passenger count cruise ship has caused so much ire from the Port Authority (again, based on pressure from "activists"), when tankers and bulk carrier ships - just as large as the Carnival Fantasy and not nearly as stringently regulated - pass through their waters every day.

Perhaps the Friends of the Earth forgot what happened to the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

New Ships for Princess

Princess Cruises announced yesterday that they have placed an order for two new ships to be built by Italian shipyard Fincantieri.  Weighing in at 141,000 tonnes, when they debut in 2013 and 2014, they will become not only the largest vessels ever built for the line, but will also serve as the company flagships.

Details are still largely under wraps, but both Fincantieri and Princess say that the ships will incorporate a number of popular features, such as the Piazza-style atrium and relaxing Sanctuary first seen onboard Crown Princess.

While Princess states the ships will be evolutionary - loosely implying they will be derivatives of the wildly successful Grand-Class of ships, Fincantieri's press release offered up that in addition to focusing on the known past successes of the line, "an in-depth review has been carried out in order to develop a ship of superior quality."

What does that mean?  Specifically, that all ocean-view cabins will have balconies - eliminating the standard "picture window" oceanview cabin, and offering 80% of the total accommodation with private balconies.  The remainder are - presumably - all inside cabins.

Fincantieri also hints that the wellness centre (spa), dining rooms, and "main hall" will all be enlarged and feature "luxury decor." 

In the end, given the tonnage of the new ships, and the emphasis on enhanced luxury and refinement, it's not hard to picture the newest Princess ships as something resembling the Crown Princess, but QM2-sized.  With a maximum capacity of 3,600 - only roughly 500 more passengers than their largest ship currently supports - Princess has remained committed to its current brand and passenger base, and resisted going the route travelled by NCL and Royal Caribbean's 5,000-plus-passenger leviathans.

More details will be made available by the line at a later date; until then, look forward to some more new and innovative ships from Princess arriving in the next few years.

Unique Itinerary: A Winter Crossing

The classic Transatlantic Crossing.

Illustration courtesy of Cunard Line

When Charles Dickens sailed to America onboard Cunard's Britannia on January 3, 1842, he initially thought his cabin steward was playing a joke on him; surely the small, cramped cabin that stood before him was not to be his home for the next week-and-a-half. 

In fact, it was - Dickens described the cabin as "utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless."  Even the act of trying to get his luggage through the stateroom door was no more possible "than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower pot."  The man who gave the world Oliver Twist and Ebeneezer Scrooge would describe the entire ship with a phrase Cunard probably wouldn't be using in their 1843 brochure: "a gigantic hearse with windows." 

This endorsement coming from a man who lived year-round in the fog and soot-choked confines of nineteenth-century London.  To paint a picture, fifteen years after Dickens' crossing, the stench wafting off of the sewage-soaked Thames would finally become so unbearable that parliament was temporarily abandoned. 

While Dickens' initial voyage to America might not have won him over, one can't help but wonder what his reaction would be if he were shown one of Queen Mary 2's impeccable staterooms.  While the steamer trunk might still be a problem to store, he surely wouldn't think there was any joke about sailing across the ocean at a whopping 25 knots in comfort the great author could only have dreamed of.

Departing January 3, 2012 - one hundred and seventy years to the day Dickens embarked on the Britannia, guests can join Queen Mary 2 for a rare 7-day Eastbound Winter Crossing from New York to Southampton. 

These popular crossings are not for the faint of heart - winter on the mid-Atlantic can be a rough, stormy affair compared to the relatively calmer summer months.  And that's exactly how QM2's winter crossing guests like it.  No ship in the world is better built to withstand all that the rugged North Atlantic can throw at her than this modern maritime marvel.

Prices for this unique voyage start at just $1,359.75 per person for an inside cabin - appropriately named, perhaps, Britannia Class.

For more information, including itinerary, booking information, and extended pricing, be sure to visit Cunard's website.

Princess Reduces Ships in Alaska for 2011

 Pacific Princess, sister to Royal Princess, in Vancouver.

Photo © 2009 Aaron Saunders

Last week, Princess Cruises outlined their itineraries for the 2011 Alaska season, and as expected, that release included the announcement - or, rather the omission - of one ship and itinerary in particular.

There are two reasons why this announcement shouldn't be too shocking.  The dropped itinerary and ship in question was the 14-day Alaska Connoisseur Voyage operated by the smaller Royal Princess.  In 2011, she will be transferred to UK-based P&O Cruises, where she will be re-christened as Adonia (ironically replacing the existing Artemis - which also used to be called Royal Princess.)

The other factor here is the itinerary itself.  As one of the few 14-day Alaska cruises around, the itinerary should have frequently sold out, if only because few lines offer a comparable voyage.  Instead, bookings for the voyage have been tepid, and the line has been offering it at some very attractive prices.  The June 7, 2010 sailing, for example, is currently going for $1758.90 per person in an oceanview cabin - roughly the cost of a 7-day Alaska cruise in a balcony stateroom.

But wait!  Didn't the State of Alaska reduce the head tax?  Shouldn't cruise lines be adding sailings for 2011, not taking them away?

While the State of Alaska did agree to reduce the contentious head tax which was arguably responsible for the drastic reduction in capacity of sailings to that date, cruise lines often set their deployment schedules years in advance, which means 2012 or 2013 are the likeliest years to see more ships start returning to the Alaska run.

If they return at all.

Despite the relatively high operational costs, Europe cruises have exploded in popularity in the last few years, and 2011 stands to be one of the largest seasons for North American lines eager to position their ships "on the continent."  Ironically, only ten years ago, many lines would send one or maybe two ships to Europe in an effort to test the waters.  Compare that with Royal Caribbean, which plans to position a whopping eleven ships in Europe next year.

Canada and New England cruises are now operating earlier than in previous years, effectively extending that short season, and some lines even offer alternating Bermuda and New England sailings, maximizing the number of cruise destinations sailing right from New York.  Some lines - Princess included - also offer jaunts to the Caribbean during the summer months.

Given the multitude of options available to them, the question isn't if Princess can increase sailings to Alaska, but if they will.