This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Gary Bembridge, the embodiment of the successful Tips For Travellers blog, podcast, and most notably, YouTube channel. Oh c’mon, ‘successful’ is an understatement. With 400,000 followers, and over a 140 million views, Tips For Travellers is the world’s leading cruise channel…by far.


I featured Gary and Tips For Travellers in Cruising Interrupted amzn.to/3seFU8y in a section called “The Cruise Communicators.” Gary founded Tips for Travellers as a pastime to occupy himself during his travels—two to three weeks out of a typical month—as a Marketing Vice President for a multinational firm. Gary has since retired as a corporate executive and now operates Tips for Travellers full-time. By the way, he has maintained his record that began during his corporate career of traveling every month consecutively for over 25 years!


Beyond cruising, Gary’s backstory is multifaceted, fascinating and diverse. With regard to cruising, his content is similarly fascinating and diverse. Gary sails a wide breadth of cruise brands from formal cruising on his beloved Cunard, to brash newcomer Virgin Voyages, the largest ships in the world, to ultra-luxury five-star small ship cruising. I suspect one reason Gary is able to draw and grow such a huge following on YouTube that he is able to talk about a five-figure per person cruise that most of his viewers will never sail, and yet they are transfixed to the images on the screen and Gary’s informative delivery.  Whenever I finish one of Gary’s videos, I feel like I am back in college—except learning about something I love!


Gary epitomizes the kind of individuals I wrote about in The Joy of Cruising Trilogy and/or interview on The Joy of Cruising Podcast—passionate cruisers who act on their passion in fascinating ways. From part-time blogger to the top in the world!

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I am delighted to welcome this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, Jamie Robins, creator of Travel Blog Jamie, a blog and YouTube channel. Let me set the stage by pointing out The Wave Awards is the UK cruise industry’s premier award; included are award categories for cruise lines, ships, travel agencies, and most pertinent to this The Joy of Cruising Podcast episode--Favorite Cruise Blogger. As you are aware I greatly appreciate cruise bloggers and vloggers and have written about them extensively. In the books, I call them “cruise community champions.” Several of the cruise personalities I have featured in The Joy of Cruising Trilogy, as well as The Joy of Cruising Podcast are previous Wave Awards winners and finalists. This year’s award ceremony will be held in London in November.

​Most of the 2023 Favorite Cruise Blogger finalists have been featured in the books and/or guests on the podcast. Travel Blog Jamie has not, and I thought this was a great opportunity to get to know Jamie and to share a passionate cruiser’s story with the cruise community.


Jamie is an educator by training—he has degrees in Spanish and French and a master’s degree in linguistics. Jamie has lived in both Spain and France and currently lives in London. He’s been involved with teaching Spanish and French/education leadership for 25 years. This is a special time for Jamie; besides being a Wave Award finalist, he is about to embark on a new chapter. Jamie is giving up all leadership roles, reducing teaching significantly, and pursuing vlogging as his primary career. 

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​I am delighted to welcome Christine Beehler this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast. I wrote about Chris in my second cruising book, Cruising Interrupted amzn.to/3seFU8y in a section called “More Joy of Cruising,” which was originally the title of the follow-up to The Joy of Cruising. Then the pandemic happened. Excerpt here: www.thejoyofcruising.net/cruising-interrupted-blog/excerpt-chapter-5-got-covid-onboard-cruising-interrupted-but-not-stopped
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I first encountered Chris when we became kindred spirits, so to speak. We were among a group of cruise enthusiasts interviewed by CNN. com during the pandemic for an article about interest in cruising as soon as possible, “Cruise Fans Explain Why They Can’t Wait To Cruise Again,” by Francesca Street (July 24, 2020). All the cruisers interviewed were eager to get back on the ocean again; well, all except yours truly! I came across as the most cautious of the bunch, in stark contrast to Chris. 
 
The article began with a depiction of Chris’ cruise which took place in March 2020—at the dawn of the pandemic—on the ill-fated Princess Cruises Coral Princess, which was denied docking after the pandemic declaration and then was stricken with a Covid outbreak. That opening to the article immediately caught my attention; then it said, “...Beehler returned home on April 6; she also tested positive for coronavirus. Beehler is 72, with a partial right lung. She also suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema.....”
Most remarkable of all, the article went on to point out, Chris can’t wait to cruise again! 
 
I knew I would have to reach out to Chris as she sounded like the kind of passionate cruiser I had come to love to interview. I was right; Chris has traveled extensively worldwide, and particular via cruise in the last ten years, and she agreed to be featured in Cruising Interrupted. In the process of interviewing her, we would spend hours with Chris telling me about the ill-fated Coral Princess saga—a high seas drama that I could easily visualize on the big screen. Of course, there’s a lot more to Chris’ cruising career than that Coral Princess cruise. It is a pleasure to host Chris on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, to get some insight into both her cruise background, and The Drama On the High Seas!

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I am delighted to welcome this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, Laura Pedlar, creator of Cruise Lifestyle Blog. I got to know Laura a few years ago when I featured Cruise Lifestyle in my second cruising book, Cruising Interrupted amzn.to/3seFU8y, in a section called “Bloggers: Cruise Community Champions.


When I started writing Laura’s story she was coming off a great 2019–a year of firsts. Laura had experienced her first river cruise, which was on AmaWaterways AmaMagna on the Danube; her first time on an inaugural cruise, the launch of Royal Caribbean Spectrum of the Seas with an amazing itinerary leaving from Barcelona, through the Suez Canal, to Dubai; and, she attended her first UK Cruise Lines International Association Conference, an indication that you have arrived as a UK cruise influencer. Perhaps most importantly it was Laura’s first year hosting Cruise Hour, as that is how I met her. Cruise Hour is a weekly online gathering of cruise enthusiasts who discuss fun topics about cruising including cuisine, fun things to do, excursions, destinations, etc. I happened upon Cruise Hour on Twitter and started posting responses to the fun questions posed by Laura, often proudly accompanying my responses with cruise photos, typically of my cruising partner granddaughter. I kind of thought Cruise Hour was a catchy Twitter name—and didn’t realize it referred to an actual hour! I was fairly new to social media, so I didn’t “get” live events early on. Despite being named Cruise Hour, I thought it was just an ongoing thread about various cruise topics. It took me a while to notice that my responses tended to be many hours, even days, after the Cruise Hour discussion ended and the participants had long moved on to other parts of social media, or were asleep—Laura was hosting the discussion group UK, a six-hour time difference from me in Florida! I told Laura that story when I was interviewing her for Cruising Interrupted, and she laughed, assuring me that others would respond even later than I used to. (I think she was trying to make me feel not so “duh.”)


Laura continued that torrid pace of cruise highlights into 2020 with a January two-week Southern Caribbean cruise on P&O Britannia to Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua, Dominica, Saint Vincent and Bonaire. Then the pandemic happened….
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This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Steph, the creator of one of the top cruise blogs from the United Kingdom, Cruise With Amber. Steph and Cruise With Amber were featured in my new release The Joy of Cruising Again in a section called Blogger, Vloggers, and Content Creators. Cruise With Amber was created by Steph just at the beginning of 2020. So, like me, publishing a cruising-themed book, Cruising Interrupted, as the pandemic set in, as well as several other content creators, I featured in my new book, Steph presented her brand, Cruise With Amber, to the cruise world as cruising was shutting down. Didn’t stop her though! 

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Steph sailed her first cruise as an adult, immediately became hooked, and went on to experience milestone after milestone on cruises—got engaged on P&O Aurora, then returned to honeymoon on the same ship the following year; Steph and her husband Neil celebrated their 10th anniversary on P&O Britannia, along with their kids who were on their first cruise. Steph went all out celebrating on that cruise with a huge suite and balcony; unfortunately it set an expectation on her kids first cruise that every subsequent cruise would come with a butler! At least the kids got hooked on cruising right away, and that was very important to Steph. And since, the kids, Steph and her husband have celebrated a number of milestones on the ocean.

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This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Jorge Solano. I’ve previously featured a Cruise Director, Holland America Line’s former top CD Jason Venner on episode #26. And, I have featured a cruise ship comedian, Carnival’s thought-provoking, hilarious Billy D. Washington on episode #8.


Jorge Solano can represent the perspective of both a Cruise Director and a stand-up comedian! He was a popular Cruise Director for Carnival Cruise Line for 10 years, and for over 35 years, he has been a stand-up comedian performing at comedy clubs, venues, and cruise ships worldwide. Jorge also appears often in and around his native Miami, a hotbed for comedy that I recall fondly from my days in South Florida. It was fun researching Jorge—as often his time as a Cruise Director would turn up in the searches and it was fun reading about cruises in the early 2000s. One said, “Carnival Triumph guests stop him to shake his hand and to tell him how much they enjoyed his shore excursion talk, his debarkation talk, but mostly how much they liked his introductions to the shows in Triumph’s theater. ‘You were much funnier than the comedian,’ they tell him, ‘Have you ever thought of becoming a professional comedian?’ Unbeknownst to the passengers, at the time Jorge was a professional comedian with many years of experience."


Comedy led Jorge to Carnival. While working the comedy club circuit he began to do guest performances on Carnival. The story of his introduction to working on cruise ships is both fascinating and hilarious. When Jorge heard Carnival was looking for Cruise Directors capable of performing an act, he pursued a new career that turned out to be successful—lasting 10 years—and helped establish Jorge as a comedy star. 


After a stint as Brand Manager of Carnival's Punchliners comedy club brand, Jorge transitioned to solely performing on Carnival ships and headlining other venues. He shares his poignant family story, and special friendships developed with a diverse set of individuals he met on cruises, that are just as moving to listen to. And throughout, Jorge is hilarious!

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This week I am delighted to welcome to The Joy of Cruising Podcast Dave Monk, the embodiment of the blog Shipmonk.Dave Monk is an award-winning cruise blogger and journalist who has written for the UK’s major publications. Dave created Shipmonk, the blog that cruise line executives, travel media, and passionate cruisers visit for up-to-date cruise industry news, ship reviews, and features. I wrote about Dave in the just-released The Joy of Cruising Again amzn.to/3lAfyON in a section called “The Cruise Communicators.”

Dave is a long-tenured UK professional journalist, and more recently the most prolific and keenly read cruise reporter on UK social media. Dave has been a journalist for over 40 years. In 2013, while still working at the newspaper Metro, Dave decided to establish a cruise blog, Shipmonk. In 2016 he was granted early retirement, which enabled him to pursue cruise writing in earnest. Now he was able to go on more cruises and to write about them at Shipmonk. He also began writing regularly for World of Cruising magazine, and travel writing for the Daily Mirror and Express, and then for the Daily Telegraph.
 
With 100 sailings, Dave has experienced an incredible diversity of cruises—from four-passenger motor yachts to the biggest cruise ships in the world. His favorite destination is Alaska, although Dave also loves the Norwegian fjords and the Caribbean islands. He cruises so much he has to turn down what would be bucket list sailing for the rest of us—like the Galapagos twice!

‘Any day at sea is better than a day in the office’—that’s the signature adage of the late John Honeywell, aka Captain Greybeard, iconic United Kingdom journalist, and cruise writer. It was the epigraph, the opening quote, to my first cruise book The Joy of Cruising. I thought it perfectly captured the essence of the book—the joy of cruising. I repeated it at the beginning of Dave’s feature in The Joy of Cruising Again because John Honeywell was a great friend and former colleague of Dave. Dave is an iconic UK journalist and cruise writer in his own right. And Captain Greybeard’s quote perfectly captures the essence of Dave’s story. He loves what he does—cruising and writing about it.

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On this bonus episode of The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome back to David & Stephanie, a married couple that performs as an intimate musical duo—David plays the guitar and sings, and Stephanie sings. In October of 2022, David & Stephanie attained their longtime goal of their first contract as cruise ship performers. They were assigned to Carnival Elation. They vlogged their experience and in watching, it was clear to me they were living their dream. Particularly touching was when David’s young son Ben, and David’s mother joined them for a week on the ship, and both were adopted by David & Stephanie‘s crew mates.

David & Stephanie recently completed their first contract as cruise ship performers on the relatively small, older but highly regarded in terms of guest experience, Carnival Elation. They just embarked on their new contract, on a different brand—Norwegian Cruise Line—on one of the world’s most anticipated new cruise ships, the amazing NCL Viva. Currently traveling around the Mediterranean, David & Stephanie are having the time of their life, seeing the world, enjoying the beaches, and doing what they love—playing music. The best is yet to come. David’s son and mom will be joining NCL Viva for a Thanksgiving transatlantic journey!

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​"I’m Nick, and you guys are the Dream Team." One of the several catchlines belonging to our precocious guest. I am delighted to welcome this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast ,16-year-old Nicholas Jackson, aka Nick Jay. Nick Jay is a content creator whose popular YouTube channel, and accompanying Instagram account Travels With Nick, mainly features Carnival Cruise Line content, sprinkled with content featuring Galveston, Texas hotels and cruise port. Galveston is close to Houston, where Nick was born and lives with his parents Nathan, Trecia, and older brother Nate. In a section called “Cruising’s Young and Restless, I wrote about Travels With Nick in the just-released The Joy of Cruising Again amzn.to/3lAfyON.
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A couple of things of note set Nick Jay apart from his fellow cruise content creators. One, of course, is age. Nick was 15 when I interviewed him—along with his parents—for his feature in The Joy of Cruising Again. The other, well-known to Nick Jay’s fans and followers, is his plan and desire to become a Carnival Cruise Director. That theme runs throughout his videos and posts. As you know, some established cruise directors have a staunch following who even influence cruises that people book. Long before Nick Jay is old enough to work on a cruise ship, he is developing his own following who believe in him, and fully expect him to realize his dream. I am not a prognosticator—my NFL and NBA predictions bare that out—but I closed Nick Jay’s feature with "I look forward to someday interviewing Carnival Cruise Director, Nick Jay."

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