With reference to the growing trend of cruise lines to charge each passenger $10 per day for gratuities to shipboard staff, we booked for September ’03 an 18-day Mediterranean cruise on Cunard’s Caronia and noticed in their brochure that they would charge that much per day per passenger as a gratuity for shipboard staff.
In the January ’04 “Boarding Pass,” the editor asked readers to comment on the trend among cruise lines to automatically add $10 per day for tips to shipboard staff.
Thank heaven for Norwegian Cruise Line and its imitators who have initiated Freestyle Cruising (Aug. ’03, pg. 33). I enjoyed Freestyle Cruising on my 12-day cruise from Dover to St. Petersburg, June 3-15, ’03, aboard the Norwegian Dream, booked through Grand Circle Travel (800/221-2610).
by Kevin Keating
We took a 55-day voyage around South America, February-April ’03. We’d taken a similar trip 10 years before on an old, slow, former Matson ship, but we were ready to do it again.
I took a Panama Canal cruise on the Norwegian Sun, departing Miami April 12, ’03, and arriving in Los Angeles April 29. The ship line provided an e-mail address where we could be contacted aboard ship. I gave this to family members so they could reach us if they had to. Two of them sent messages and we never received them. Fortunately, they were not emergencies, but what if they were?
This is in response to a warning by a reader on page 115 of the November ’03 issue re cabin selection on a Norwegian Coastal Voyage cruise.
My husband and I booked a “Grand European River Cruise” with Vantage Deluxe World Travel which offered a voyage from the North Sea to the Black Sea. Our departure date of Aug. 15, ’03, coincided with the hottest and driest summer in Europe in the past 150 years.
Re the letter “Yangtze Cruise Curtailed” (Nov. ’03, pg. 34), about a cruise that was to begin in Chongqing, China, on April 8 but ended up being curtailed on two sections of the river, it is just by coincidence that on April 9, ’03, we were leaving Yichang and heading upriver on the MV East King to Chongqing. . . we thought.
I read ITN reader Helmut Richter’s letter, titled “Yangtze Cruise Curtailed” (Nov. ’03, pg. 34), about the river cruise portion of his trip “Imperial China, Tibet and Yangtze” with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT), and have some comments to add.