The Joy of Cruising quoted at CNN.com: Cruise fans explain why they can't wait to cruise again7/25/2020
0 Comments
More than one potential reader has contacted me about the photo on the cover of The Joy of Cruising (by Alonzo Davis and Jodi Kohn). It is the iconic Grand Canal in Venice Italy, the most beautiful city in the world. Thanks to the magic of Morgan Wright this beautiful photo now comes to life! See some of Morgan’s other gorgeous book cover animations here www.morganwrightbooks.com/morgan-wright-book-cover-animations  Marcus Adams lives in Winchester, Hampshire, UK, about an hour from London, where he commutes each day to work as a Policy Advisor to the Mayor of London. Marcus is creator of the cruise blog Sparkx (Marcus’ nickname during his youth.) Marcus was introduced to travel early on as his dad, a bank executive, did a lot of travelling in conjunction with his work as his responsibilities included developing and organizing all the management incentive trips. Consequently, Marcus got to visit a number of interesting and exotic places. Part of this exposure to travel at an early age included accompanying his parents on cruises. Marcus sailed on his first cruise ship, Majesty of the Seas, at just nine years old. He considers it a life-forming event and has been hooked on cruising ever since....
As a young adult Marcus continued to return to what he refers to as “my happy place,” cruising, and increasingly wanted to share his experience with others. I asked Marcus, “At what point did you develop your passion for cruising? Was it right away in those first couple of cruises as a young boy or did it develop over time? How did you know you were hooked?” Marcus responded, “I think to be honest that first cruise hooked me—I was hooked straightaway. I was the one who suggested the second cruise....” Marcus has a particular fondness for Celebrity and Viking cruise lines. Nevertheless, Royal Caribbean will always hold a special place in Marcus’ heart. First, he got engaged on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. In 2014, Marcus was the first person to propose in the North Star on board the new Quantum of the Seas. The North Star observation tower is a glass-walled capsule that extends on a giant robotic arm out over the ocean and takes groups of up to 14 cruisers to more than 300 feet above sea level.... Marcus has sailed across the world including the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Northern Europe. His most recent and upcoming cruises are of particular interest to me. Marcus’ last cruise of 2018 was a nine-night New York, Canada, and New England cruise on Anthem of the Seas. I was anxious to get a review from him, given my own plans to sail Anthem three months later. At the beginning of 2019, Marcus is booked for Celebrity Edge, perhaps the world’s most anticipated new cruise ship which launched officially in December 2018. Just a couple of months later, Marcus will cruise on the maiden voyage of MSC Cruises stunning flagship MSC Bellissima, with its bowling alley, Cirque du Soleil at Sea, and virtual cabin assistants. MSC Bellissima will be christened in Southampton, UK, becoming by far the largest cruise ship ever launched there.... Marcus is the answer to a trivia question: Which The Joy of Cruising subject has been seen by the largest number of YouTube and television viewers in the world? To find out why, read the complete story of Cruising’s Young and Restless in Chapter 13, The Joy of Cruising. Available now at Amazon and everywhere online....  He had me at The Cruising Baker. With that name, that clever “mash-up” of passions, I just knew The Cruising Baker needed to be in The Joy of Cruising....
Danny’s introduction to cruising was on Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas. Independence had been warmly welcomed into the hearts of Britain’s cruisers. Independence of the Seas was christened a little over a year earlier during a ceremony in Southampton by its godmother, Elizabeth Hill of Chesterfield, UK (profiled in Chapter 4 of The Joy of Cruising). Among the world’s largest, most advanced ships, the Independence sailed Danny and his family to the Italian Mediterranean, with port of calls including Rome and Pisa. Despite the fantastic locations at which the ship docked, Danny was even more awed by the Independence itself, with its ice rink, boxing ring, royal promenade with shops and restaurants, climbing wall, FlowRider® surf simulator, and West End London-style entertainment. The grandeur of Independence left a lasting impression. Ever since his first cruise only ten years ago, Danny has been passionate about cruising. Since then he has cruised another twenty times.... ....an August 2018 “bucket list” transatlantic cruise with Cunard on Queen Mary 2. I write this with a mix of intrigue, envy, and joy on behalf of my new friend; Danny gets to check off one of his bucket list items before he is 30! Danny’s cruises have sailed to Norway, Scandinavia, Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, Iberia, Canary Islands, and throughout the Caribbean; quite remarkable for someone who ten years prior had never travelled out of the UK. Clearly, Danny’s thirst for exploration was ignited and his passion for cruising inflamed by that first experience on Independence of the Seas. Danny has made up for lost time; not yet 30 years old Danny has cruised more than the average traveler cruises in a lifetime. Danny cites his cruises to Norway among his personal highlights. He has been fortunate enough to cruise around Norway numerous times. Danny loves Norway and it is his favorite destination—he suspects what might account for part of the reason he loves it there so much is because he is nearly a quarter Scandinavian, according to AncestryDNA! Danny has sailed as far north as Longyearbyen.... ....in August Danny flew to New York, spent a couple of nights in Time Square and got to experience a little of New York City before embarking on Queen Mary 2 for a transatlantic cruise back to Southampton. “New York City was amazing. I only had a short amount of time to spend so had to prioritize what I wanted to do. But my absolutely highlight was going to The Top of the Rock…breath-taking! The views are simply stunning and it was an experience I will never forget.” Top of the Rock is an observation deck atop Rockefeller Center, considered the best panoramic view of New York City; coincidently.... ....mixed in with the cruise trip reports, interviews, features on existing and upcoming ships, and yes, recipes for lemon drizzle surprise, is something that caught my eye and is worthy of mentioning. From a young age, Danny and his family have worked with and been surrounded by children and young adults who have various special educational needs and disabilities, and this extended on to Danny’s psychology studies and work with autism. Danny notes on the blog, “A topic close to my heart is accessibility and inclusion for everyone.” Danny has several posts on his blog pertaining to accessibility at sea.... ....besides cruising and blogging, Danny, of course, loves to bake, hence The Cruising Baker. I know that I had a little fun with the name earlier, but Danny is very serious about his baking.... Read the complete story of The Cruising Baker, Cruising’s Young and Restless in Chapter 13, The Joy of Cruising. Order soon....  Jason Leppert was a 10Best Readers’ Choice New Media Award for Best Cruise Blogger finalist for the Popular Cruising blog. Prolific is the word that comes to mind with Jason—both in terms of the sheer breadth of his writing and videography that ranges from cruising to an extensive knowledge, experience and coverage of Disney theme properties—to the frequency and diversity of his cruising.
At only 30 years old Jason Leppert was a 10Best Readers’ Choice New Media Award for Best Cruise Blogger finalist for Popular Cruising. Today at 34, the indefatigable cruiser and writer is now up to 138 cruises, and in addition to serving as editor in chief, “the captain”, at Popular Cruising, Jason is the Cruise Editor at TravelAge West, founder of Popular Cruising and its successful YouTube channel, and contributor to other outlets such as Cruise Travel, Porthole, and Oyster.com. He also annually attends “Comic-Con International: San Diego,” the 50-year old entertainment and comic convention which draws over 130,000 over three days to Jason’s home town. Jason is the epitome of a passionate cruiser who manifests his passion with driven, concerted action personally and professionally. Given the amount of time he dedicates to cruising, both sailing and writing about it, one would be tempted to conclude that about sizes up Jason’s life. However, all things Disney round out much of Jason’s personal and professional life. As a native and resident of San Diego, California—having never lived anywhere else despite having traveled the world—Jason enjoys spending leisure time at Disneyland Resort with his wife Heidi, and professionally covers Disney parks and resorts domestically and abroad for TravelAge West, Oyster.com and MiceChat.com. In addition to Disneyland, Jason has visited Walt Disney World in Florida, Disneyland Paris, Shanghai Disneyland, and Aulani Disney Resort and Spa in Hawaii. Jason has also experienced several Adventures by Disney trips; Adventures by Disney provides a series of planned vacations across various parts of the world where guests are taken on expeditions featuring activities designed for families. In a mash-up of Jason’s duel passions, he has cruised on all the Disney Cruise Line ships.... ....How can a 34-year-old accumulate 138 cruises? Well, beside the fact that cruising is both Jason’s passion and his profession, he started early! Jason sailed on his first cruise at only two years of age. He is an only child, and his parents wanted to share their passion for travel with Jason early on, taking him on his first cruise aboard the original Royal Princess—the one launched in 1984, named by Princess Diana, and occasionally a stand-in for the Pacific Princess as the setting for the television series The Love Boat. There were two later cruise ships christened the Royal Princess. I asked Jason about the first cruise he could remember. “My next cruise was actually another one aboard the original Royal Princess only a couple years after the first. And I actually do remember bits and pieces from that ship, especially its observation lounge. It was a quiet place that I enjoyed roaming as a little one. Perhaps that’s why to this day I cherish ships that still feature such venues. It’s also been quite neat to sail on the current-generation Royal Princess that is in operation today, coming full circle.” Growing up, Jason also sailed a lot with his family on Crystal Cruises and on Celebrity Cruises. Recognizing the difficulty of singling out memorable cruises out of dozens, I asked Jason what comes to mind. He said, “That is a challenge, but I must say that expedition cruising has really proven to be a memorable experience for me. The opportunity to visit some of the most remote destinations in Alaska and Micronesia with Silversea Expeditions (Silver Discoverer) and UnCruise Adventures (Safari Endeavour and S.S. Legacy) has just been a blast. Of course, any time I go on a Disney cruise is always special too, given my affinity for the brand overall.... Read the complete story of the Captain, Popular Cruising’s Jason Leppert in Chapter 11, The Joy of Cruising. Order soon....  "I don't live in a lavish house, I definitely don't speak the Queens English and I still have many things to learn in this life, but I'm pretty confident in my cruise knowledge—I could put a few people under the table. You see, that's what I do, that's what makes me tick and brings me life, so for me, that's all that matters." Drops mic.
Danielle Fear, known to many with a passion for cruising in UK and beyond as CruiseMiss, is the author of the above quote. She didn’t really “drop the mic,” but I could picture her doing so as I read her quote. To make such a self-assured statement, you have to be recognized as someone who knows of what you speak. Let’s see, earlier I mentioned CruiseMiss as being one of the winners in the USA Today10Best Readers’ Choice New Media Award for Best Cruise Blogger, one of only two UK bloggers to join that venerable list, and many other cruise blogger accolades have been accorded CruiseMiss: Best Cruise Blogger; Top 25 Socially Shared Cruise Blogs; Top 10 Cruise Bloggers You Need To Follow; Top 50 Cruise Blogs To Follow in 2018, and more including finalist and highly commended recognition in other major awards such as the UK cruise industry’s The Wave Awards. Perhaps even more of a testament to CruiseMiss’ credibility and esteem in the cruise writing world is the frequency with which her perspective and insight is sought for expert commentary, quotes, and articles in media such as World of Cruising, Cruise Critic UK, Porthole Magazine and more. Danielle has done radio interviews, email interviews, and provided content for numerous online travel sites.... .....After launching CruiseMiss, one of Danielle’s most memorable cruise highlights was the first time she was invited to a cruise ship naming ceremony. Danielle was chosen to attend because of the sailings she had previously been on with P&O Cruises and because of the credibility of CruiseMiss.com. The naming ceremony was for P&O Cruises Britannia. All cruise ship naming ceremonies are special, but this one was particularly so as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 2 had been named as Godmother to Britannia, her second time being selected by P&O as a Godmother as the Queen was selected in 1995 to christen Oriana—the very first ship Danielle sailed. The naming ceremony was held at the Ocean Terminal in Southampton on March 10, 2015. Danielle said she felt like a kid at Christmas! “I couldn’t believe it. Me, at this big, flashy event. I loved every second of it. I love, and I mean love cruise ships, and one of my favourite times of the year is Christmas. When you are passionate about something, so passionate that it literally is what you eat, sleep and breathe, to have the honor of being included in such a momentous occasion that involves your passion is a massive privilege. I couldn’t believe I was there. I could see the Queen and it still didn’t feel real. I have been to a few more naming ceremonies since then and for me, they are always a great privilege.” Danielle loves cruise ships of all kinds, but prefers the smaller, more traditional vessels. Her favorites are the Fred Olsen Balmoral, Fred Olsen Black Watch, P&O Oceana and Saga Sapphire. Danielle’s longest cruise was on the Black Watch: a 108-nights world cruise from Southampton traveling to the Azores, the Caribbean, Central America and the Panama Canal, Easter Island, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East from January 5 to April 24, 2018. In total the world cruise visited 23 countries on six continents. Black Watch is.... Read the complete story of CruiseMiss: Danielle Fear in Chapter 10, The Joy of Cruising. Order soon....  I first became aware of Sheri Griffiths in the spring of 2018 when she was named one of the “10 Travel Influencers Changing How We Vacation” by Porthole Cruise Magazine for her popular YouTube series CruiseTipsTV. Porthole Cruise Magazine stated, “When it comes to planning the best cruise vacation, there’s no better follow than Sheri Griffiths.” CruiseTipsTV was created in pursuit of Sheri’s passion for family cruise travel, and to share videos with other cruisers looking to make their cruise experience the best it can be. The CruiseTipsTV channel now has close to 500 videos, 60,000 subscribers, garners over 600,000 monthly views and has grown to 11 million total views. While Sheri is the host and on-camera presence, CruiseTipsTV is a family production along with her husband and ten-year old son, referred to affectionately by her audience as, respectively, Mr. CruiseTipsTV, and Junior Editor. The family production originated out of another family event—conversation over family dinner when Junior Editor was only five years old. Their conversation went something like: “We’re going on a lot of cruises. What if we made a little cruise packing video helping people to learn about packing for a cruise…it will be terrible and no one will watch it…. I’ll hate it…let’s just do it, why not?….
CruiseTipsTV started off with modest intentions and modest production values. Sheri nor her husband had any formal training in broadcasting, although they did have videography training from their years as wedding videographers, and had video editing experience from editing their family vacation videos. Furthermore, Sheri, the sole on-camera presence, was terrified of public speaking, although it did help that Sheri danced until 17 or so, so she wasn’t totally new to the “performance” aspect of being in front of the camera. It also was beneficial that Sheri had studied media and communications in college where she earned a degree in communication studies at University of California-Santa Barbara. It was with that media and technology background that CruiseTipsTV premiered with “What to Pack for a Cruise” in October 2013. “When I tell you it was terrible…it was so bad. I can’t even watch it now.” Despite Sheri’s declaration to the contrary, ratings from the 84,000 viewers of the video over the years are overwhelmingly positive and Sheri and her family were definitely on to something as people started commenting and awaiting more videos. Increasingly, CruiseTipsTV received a lot of demand from its viewers first to vlog, that is, to video and write about their cruising exploits beyond just offering tips; then the CruiseTipsTV viewers implored Sheri to turn the camera around. “In our early days, all of our episodes were filmed in the studio—my house—and were pre-recorded. When we reference that our subscribers wanted us to turn the camera around, they were referring to showing our surroundings, and also turning to selfie mode and showing ourselves in the cruise environment. Things really started to change for us when our community said, ‘Hey, we want you to take us on vacation.’ So, we started filming vlogs. That was the big turning point for CruiseTipsTV—when we started letting people into our lives.” ....Sheri’s cruise on Seaside also produced one of her family’s most memorable experiences on a cruise—an excursion to the Blue Hole in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The Blue Hole is a breathtaking series of waterfalls with scenic views and photo-friendly vantage points for the less active traveler, and for the adventurous—from swimming, climbing the falls, swinging from ropes into the water, to cliff-diving. Yes, Sheri and family chose jumping off cliffs!.... Sheri cited several other memorable cruise experiences that were as unforgettable as those in Ocho Rios: The simple pleasure of enjoying the hot tub with 5-year old Junior Editor in 40-degree weather on the side of the Diamond Princess in Alaska while approaching a glacier. Or, on a stop in Loreto, Baja California while on a Star Princess cruise, Sheri and her family took a private tour on a panga (small fishing type boat) to Loreto Bay, near Isla Coronado. “Out of nowhere, hundreds of dolphins surrounded our boat and surfed the wake for what felt like hours. We plunged our GoPro into the sea and captured video of the dolphins following the boat. The camera also captured their vocalizations, which was a beautiful surprise when we arrived home and pulled our footage in to the editing bay.” ....While Sheri is an influencer that many thousands of cruisers, fans, and followers on her multitude of social media platforms look to for cruising advice and to experience cruising vicariously through Sheri and CruiseTipsTV, she maintains what seems an ideal work-life balance and is able to compartmentalize the various aspects of her personal and professional life. “The core of my life is that I am a wife and a mom.” Despite being a busy professional with a couple of disparate careers, Sheri thrives spending time gardening vegetables, or in the kitchen cooking with her son, with loud music playing. In her non-CruiseTipsTV professional life Sheri is a busy managerial employee for a Southern California firm that she has worked for 21 years. Despite being somewhat of a “mini-celebrity”—after all she has many thousands of fans and followers, and is a recognized influencer—Sheri told me that at work her cruising versus professional life is separate and largely unnoticed. There are a handful of fans, but for the most part her co-workers may know about Sheri’s cruising life but are not really cruisers themselves. Although, for colleagues who are about to go on a cruise, she is recognized as “that lady, Sheri, she knows things!” Read the complete story of Sheri Griffiths: CruiseTipsTV in Chapter 6, The Joy of Cruising. Order soon.... |
RSS Feed
