Earl and I took our first cruise in January, 2001. It was a seven-day adventure to the Caribbean, and I wasn’t particularly enthused about it. But by the time we disembarked from the Grand Princess a week later, we’d put a deposit on our second cruise.
One of the things that changed my mind back then is captured in the following statement: “This is the type of vacation we can do when we’re older. We only have to unpack once, we’re in the same bed every night, and the staff speaks English so we don’t have to point at the menu to order our evening meal.”
I’m not sure which one of us put this together, but it has all turned out to be true. We’re almost fifteen years down the road. We like staying put on a vacation, and our command of foreign languages hasn’t improved.
There are other things . . .
In the beginning, we were content with traditional dining, which means you go to dinner at the same time every night and sit with the same passengers. I think the idea is that you get to know a small group of people more intimately, and when you see them around the ship in the coming days you nod. Maybe you even have a cocktail together.
But we no longer take the traditional route. In fact, we hardly take the alternative – Anytime Dining – either. Either way, your dinner is an hour and a half event; and we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t want to do that every night. We’re more content than ever to visit the Buffet and serve ourselves, cafeteria-style. It all comes from the same galleys.
On our early cruises, we usually ordered breakfast in the stateroom as a forced march toward waking up. Now, we’re prone to sleeping in. We sometimes take naps in the middle of the day too. And we – actually me – spend less money on incidentals like salon appointments, jewelry, and wine flights.
Do we enjoy it as much? Absolutely. It’s just that instead of telling ourselves we can cruise when we’re older, we’re there.
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