Small Ship Cruises

With cruising opening back up this summer and fall, there are some exciting bucket list destinations just begging you to visit. While some are relatively easy to understand how to book or who to book with, others such as South American cruises on the Amazon or Galapagos are far more difficult. With regards to Galapagos cruises, this is because while there are big names such as Celebrity, Azamara, or Holland America Line, this is really a special place that deserves a special type of cruise ship, training, and planning. Let's take a look at what you need to know before booking a Galapagos cruise.

Viking has announced an expansion of its Egypt fleet with Viking Aton, a new state-of-the-art river vessel. Inspired by the design of the award-winning Viking Longships® and built specifically to navigate the Nile River, Viking Aton is currently under construction and is scheduled to debut in September 2022. Sailing on Viking’s popular Pharaohs & Pyramids itinerary, the new vessel will join Viking’s existing Egypt river fleet, which includes its identical sister ship VikingOsiris and Viking’s first owned and operated ship on the Nile, Viking Ra.

Expedition voyages are one of the fastest-growing segments of the luxury cruise market. While once this was synonymous with Arctic and Antarctic cruises, I'm thrilled that new players are opening new markets. While some may not see the Great Lakes as being glamourous compared to cruising past penguins and thousand-year-old chunks of ice, the Great Lakes offers a unique and relatively unexplored part of our own country that are also are central to the science and history of our global climate history. 

We were on hand tonight for Viking's unveiling of their latest product - Viking Expeditions. With their incredible success with taking over the river and small-ship ocean cruise market, Viking Expedition is poised to have the same disruptive impact. Most importantly, the positioning is clearly a move away from traditional expedition offerings where the experience is secondary to the destination, Viking promises to bring a similar experience that we love from the river and ocean product to expeditions as well - including features such as large comfortable bathrooms as well as accessibility and comfort. 

There's a whole other world beyond just the big feature-packed cruise ships from the big-name brands you are all familiar with and that's the small ship luxury market. While I love sailing on ships like Norwegian Encore and Oasis of the Seas, the reality is that for many people the ship itself is getting in the way of enjoying a cruise. There are too many people, not enough personal attention, and the food ultimately suffers because you are cooking tens of thousands of meals each day. Plus, when you get to port there's always a long line waiting to debark and then once on shore there's more crowds to deal with. One increasingly popular alternative is small ship luxury cruises like those offered by Crystal Symphony, so we visited her in San Diego to see what all the buzz was about.

A visit to Antarctic is on the bucket list for most guys and cruising is probably the best way to get there. However, what most people don't understand is that many cruises simply float by, while others take two days of cruising simply to reach the continent. When time is money and you want to spend as much time exploring the destination as possible, there's only one solution - fly there! That's exactly what Silvesea's Cruises is now offering.

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?

Luxury is a word that is often abused when it comes to cruising. To some, quite literally any time spent on the water is a luxury. However, the spectrum runs from simple Caribbean cruises to something more exotic and that’s where Ponant fits in.

Have you ever dreamed about one-day sailing to the North Pole? This might be exactly the cruise you are looking for. This week as Poseidon Expeditions commences another sold-out season of voyages from Murmansk, Russia aboard the nuclear-powered icebreaker 50 Years of Victory, to the geographic North Pole, the company announces that reservations are now open for three departures during the summer of 2020.