Are you thinking about an Alaska cruise this year but are overwhelmed with all the options? You are not alone and that's why we've come together with our blogger friends to prepare some tips to help!

Let's just start this post by saying that I do believe in the scientific method of review and research, trusting experts but also verifying information against those things that I know are true for my personal situation. Right now, "The Media narrative" is that cruises are dangerous, covid is spreading everywhere and cruise ships are simply disease incubators. In fact, I had a friend post just that as a Facebook comment the other day. So why then did I just spend my own money booking a seven-day cruise to Mexico?

Cruise ships are an environment unlike any other when it comes to the spread of disease. You have sometimes as many as 8,000 people from all over the world crammed into a boat together for a week or more. That means that each elevator button, handrail, tongs in the buffet, countertops are touched thousands of times each day. Unfortunately, not everyone is 100% healthy. While you can protect yourself from others, sometimes it is YOU who is the sick one. Here's what to do if you catch a cold while on a cruise ship.

Choosing the right cruise vacation can be complicated but thanks to the diversification among big cruise lines the decision has been made easier in recent years. The world of luxury small ship cruising though is a different equation. Instead of looking at gee-whiz features like trampoline parks and unique specialty restaurants to draw cruisers, virtually all small ship luxury cruises offer superior service, gourmet food, exotic destinations, and a more personalized experience since the ships are designed for fewer than 1,000 guests and often only a few hundred. So, how do you pick the right small ship cruise for you?

Some people look at spending a week on a cruise ship as a vacation where they will only spend time in their rooms to change clothes and sleep - for the rest of us it's a time to relax. That includes being able to catch up on some of our favorite movies, TV shows, and other videos. Unfortunately, nearly all cruise lines have TERRIBLE programming available on their TVs (I'll give a pass to Princess though since I could never get tired of old re-runs of The Love Boat!). It's not that these TVs can't support HDMI inputs either. The cruise lines have actually gone and disabled them so you are forced to watch their programming instead.

Alaska is a land of incredible potential and a legacy of brave men seeing fortune and adventure here. Luckily, today we don't need to pack up a years worth of food and walk for thousands of miles through the wilderness to experience this. All we need to do is hop on a cruise ship and relax as we are pampered on board and seek adventure on shore. An Alaska cruisetour though is something that still needs research to make sure you select the right ship, ports, and activities that match what you and your friends are looking to do. Don't worry though, we've got some advice to help make it easy for you!

Take away some of the "home" features like a refrigerator that knows when you need more milk and instead, let's focus on the core system that we've all dreamed about. Despite our homes being stuff with IoT devices today, what still separates our "smart homes" from what we see in the movies is the system that runs it all and unifies the hardware, the software, and the brains. No matter if you're using Zigby of Z-wave, no consumer-level smart home today can genuinely call itself smart. For that experience, we're going to have to take a cruise. When Princess rolls out it's OCEAN system later this year, powering the Ocean Medallion, we're finally going to see the potential for smart home technology... it's just going to be on a cruise ship with waiters and crew instead of robots. In fact, this smart ship is so smart it knows that it doesn't even has to use that label :)

I've enjoyed my share of ocean cruises on a few different lines to different hot and cold destinations so I consider myself a pretty experienced cruiser. However, despite this I found river cruising a completely unique and wonderful experience that I wish more people would consider. After being hosted on an amazing experience by Viking River Cruises, I wanted to share my thoughts so you can better understand the experience.