One of the most common questions I find myself passionately answering both in person and on online communities (I’m looking at you Reddit), is about how to actually book a cruise.  Should you use a travel agent or book directly with a cruise line?  I’ll tell you right out the gate that whether you’re looking into your first cruise or well on your way to the highest levels of a cruise line’s loyalty program, I highly recommend using a good travel agent, but let’s talk about why by addressing some common questions and misconceptions...

This is the second in our new weekly video series keeping you up to date on the world of cruise news.  Be sure to follow us on Periscope so you can catch us live for these and other interactive broadcast.  We'll be live tomorrow from Port Everglades broadcasting sail-aways of ships from Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Princess, Celebrity, and Holland America.

Carnival Cruise Line announced this week that they're testing updated dining policies on the Carnival Glory and Carnival Conquest.  On those vessels, dining times which had previously been 6:00pm and 8:15pm have been updated to 6:00pm and 8:00pm. saying that the change will enhance the dining experience for all guests.  Makes sense yet?  This will help: Carnival also announced that persons arriving more than 30 minutes late for dinner will not be seated in the main dining room, and be referred to the buffet dining area.  Presumably, the fifteen minute-shorter gap between first and second seating will be easy to accommodate as they can now guarantee that no meal service will begin more than 30 minutes after the scheduled time, and the final meals should end a bit earlier.

I woke up at about 5am and decided rather than staying in bed, I’d give myself a final tour of the ship. I watched from the balcony as we slowly approached Dodge Island and Port of Miami. I finished up my packing and set out to walk around the ship.

As I walked past the shops on Deck 5, I saw a uniformed security officer who I assume was on her way to prepare the gangway for departure. I shrugged my shoulders and said “I just don’t want it to end.” 

As we continue to cover and review Ric's Celebrity Reflection cruise from last week, we thought it'd be a great time to give away some Celebrity swag.  Up for grabs this time is an insulated Celebrity Reflection tumbler and a Celebrity visor (pretty high quality material, actually).  We'll throw it in a lightweight Celebrity tote for good measure.  I highly recommend using that tumbler for your next pre-cruise coffee, as there are few times I desire to be highly alert than embarkation day.  Entering takes only a minute and is nearly guaranteed to be painless.

This was the cruise’s second sea day.  I spent a good portion of the day doing things that will become the subjects of a few individual posts to come in the next couple of weeks. These post will include the art collection on the ship, the ship’s venues, a conversation I had with the ship’s Hotel Director, Niyazi Korkmaz and Event Coordinator, Zsofia Bak, and a recap of the specialty dining restaurant Qsine, which I ate at on the last night of the cruise compliments of Celebrity and the Hotel Director. 

It's time to try something new.  We're going to start getting you weekly (or maybe bi-weekly) updates on what's going on in the cruise world.  This will take place live on Periscope and then get cross-posted to YouTube.  Take a look below and get all caught up.  We did run into some technical issues with the camera feed, but we'll work on that for next week.  Please subscribe to our new YouTube channel and follow us on Periscope so you can catch our live sail-away interactive broadcasts as well as next week's news.

Today was our day on Royal Caribbean’s private resort of Labadee, Haiti. As Celebrity is one of the brands in the greater Royal Caribbean corporation, Celebrity schedules ships to visit Labadee. The pier supports two ships, so sometimes, one ship is from Royal Caribbean and the other is from Celebrity (or both could be Royal Caribbean). For our visit, we were the only ship docked at the resort.

With no excursions booked, I decided to spend the day mostly napping. I took a tour of the ship that will become the basis for a couple of future posts on the ship and the art collection. The port facilities at Falmouth are all recently constructed and highly themed. If Disney or Universal were going to build a port in the Caribbean, what would it look like? Falmouth.