Frequent World Cruisers

There are 151 passengers out of 550 who have traveled more than 150 days in total with Princess. What has surprised us was how many of these passengers have done long cruises before, and how many are considering doing another world cruise in the future.

First example is a single 46 year old eye doctor who is retired with a vision disability. This was his first world cruise, but he has already signed up for the world cruise from Princess next year. About half of the ports are different, and he plans a number of several day excursions that he sets up himself.

We personally know of 3 additional passengers who are considering doing the world cruise again next year. I’m sure there are more passengers who have signed up that we do not know.

Another couple who seem to be about 60 years old have taken 30 to 60-day cruises at a rate of about 2 per year for the past several years. They know details about any cruise line you can name.

Another couple that we have met, probably in their early 60’s, have done 2 or 3 world cruises before this one. It seemed like 2/3rds of the time in port they had “been here before,” so they have great suggestions, but often do something simple or unusual themselves because they have seen the big attractions before.

I overheard on elderly woman at lunch who must have been in her upper 80’s, who was asked if this was her first world cruise. Her answer was: “No, I think this is my 6^th world cruise, and I’ve been cruising since the 1940’s!”

We have met several passengers who went to Antarctica. There seems to be two ways to do this. If you go on a standard cruise ship, you go up to Antarctica, but you cannot step off onto the land. One had a choice to fly in, but that was blocked by weather. The other approach is that you take the trip on an ice cutter ship. Here you get onto the continent several times, get photos standing in groups of penguins, and have to add about 10 pages to your passport because each “landing” belongs to a different country’s supervision, so you need visas for each. There is some limit like 50,000 visitors on the ground that constrains how many people can go to Antarctica. (I’d love to do this one, but Kathleen will be a tough sell. Our daughter, Megan, on the other hand would likely kill to do this trip with me.)

This makes a rich environment to learn about other cruises. I like the idea of 60 days out of and back to Ft. Lauderdale that goes around South America and up and down the Amazon. No flights! Around Africa and to Antarctica also both sound very interesting. We’ll see.