Mystery at sea: Italian Chef missing from cruise ship

by Scott Carmichael on

Colombian maritime authorities are searching the seas for Italian chef Angelo Faliva. Mr. Faliva was working in the galley on the Princess Cruises “Coral Princess” two weeks ago, when he walked out. He was last seen on a deck at 8:30 am the next morning, but that is the last they have seen of him.

A life preserver was also missing, and its nighttime flares were torn off and left on the ship. His family has been notified, and unless he’s hiding on the ship somewhere, chances are something pretty tragic has happened.

The ship was heading to Cartagena, Colombia from Aruba on a two day voyage.The Coral Princess is due in LA today, and the current investigation is being conducted by the FBI and Italian foreign ministry.

Caribbean cruise is 60% off and kids travel free

by Jamie Rhein on

If you’ve ever thought about taking a Caribbean cruise, here’s a deal for you to consider. MSC Cruise Lines is offering 60% off on a 7-night Caribbean cruise that departs from Ft. Lauderdale and stops at the following ports: San Juan, Puerto Rico; Basseterre, St. Kitts; Philipsburg, St. Maarten; Cartagena, Colombia, Puerto Limón, Costa Rica and Cristóbal, Panama. There are other itineraries as well, so check out the options. Prices range from $349 per person for an inside state room to a few hundred more for a balcony room with an ocean view.

To sweeten the deal, children 17 and under who are accompanied by a paying adult are free. That’s right, free. There needs to be one adult for each child, however. This cruise line is one that offers activities for kids of a variety of ages and the rooms are big enough that four people can share.

This summer I took an MSC cruise on the Musica from Venice to several Greek islands with my 7-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter. All of us loved it, and up until this summer, I was not a cruise type person. In case you’re a cruise type person or wondering if you might be and are looking for a deal as winter cold looms, I didn’t want you to miss this one if it strikes your fancy.

Unfortunately, this sale ends today–November 30, but I’ve noticed MSC cruise line offers deals often so get on the mailing list. If you miss the 60% off, try for 50%.

Icebergs target New Zealand

by Andrew Evans on

Hundreds upon hundreds of menacing chunks of ice are headed straight for innocent New Zealand–a country that couldn’t hurt a fly even if it had flyswatters for hands. Shipping companies haven’t been this fretful since the pirate times of . . . this summer, while the Antarctic tourist industry is rubbing its palms like Mr. Burns.

But is it news? Probably not. It’s springtime for icebergs in Antarctica. Also, Icebergs happen. The real concern is that icebergs are evolving into a major tourist attraction, right up there with sharks and poor people. Every year, more and more tourists are pouring into the polar regions and getting stuck in the ice or struck by the ice. Which reminds me of this movie I saw once where the largest cruise ship in the world (at the time) ran into an iceberg right after dinner and the hot guy drowned. Consider yourself warned: if you play with ice, you’re gonna get burned cold sitting in a lifeboat waiting to be rescued.

Dispelling the top myths about cruise ships

by Scott Carmichael on

Cruise ships have a bit of a bad reputation. Those that love cruising really love it, and will have 10 or 20 voyages in their past. Those that hate it, will claim they’d rather be shot than take a cruise. There are lot of myths about cruise ships, so Gadling is here to help dispel some of them.
You will get sick on the ship



Yes. And you will get sick in your hotel, at the theme park, the grocery store, the train station, the airport, the airplane and the restaurant. Anywhere you are surrounded by people, you’ll always run the risk of catching something. With cruise ships, ship wide outbreaks of illness are pretty rare, but they obviously do happen. And when they happen, they make the news. Thankfully, many thousands of people cruise yearly and never catch anything worse than a nasty hangover.

Take the same precautions you do at any public place – wash your hands regularly, use paper towels to open bathroom doors and if you feel sick, contact the doctor to prevent spreading whatever you may have caught.

(Photo: Bratha @ Flickr)

All you can do all day is eat eat eat

Well, yeah. But is this really a bad thing? Seriously, if you don’t like good food, then you are going to be pretty miserable anywhere you go. Sure, the buffet may not appeal to you, but most cruise ships offer far more choices than just a buffet line.

On many cruise lines, the buffet and main dining room are just two of the dining options available. Some ships now offer fresh Indian food, deli sandwiches, sushi and more. If the main dining room doesn’t appeal to you, you can often pay a small cover charge for an alternative dining experience.


Bad weather means everyone will get seasick

You are on a ship – and even though it is a massive ship, bad weather is going to make it rock. If you have never sailed before, then the first couple of hours will quite simply suck. But most people take a Dramamine or wear a sea sickness wristband and deal with it.

Eventually, the captain will (hopefully) find some calmer waters and the fun can go on, but if you are sailing through a bad storm, you could be in for a couple of nasty days.


You’ll be forced to spend money everywhere you go

Nobody forces you to do anything. Yes – there are quite a few additional things to do on the ship that cost money. But like a trip to Disneyland, you can stay away from the giftshops and other paid attractions and enjoy what you paid for. Fact of the matter is, cruises are cheap. So cheap in fact, that the cruise lines need to add some additional services in order to make a profit.

Thankfully, you can have plenty of fun on the ship without spending money at the art gallery or the spa. Almost all entertainment is free, and dinner is free. If you don’t want to pay for booze, stick to the free tea and juice provided by most cruise lines, or invest in a soda card for unlimited free soft drinks.

If you do like spending money, you’ll be happy to know that it is made really easy. Your room key is usually also the key to your shipboard credit account, and all you need to buy drinks and lose money at the casino is that piece of plastic.


The ship is filled with old people who just want to sit and play bingo all day

This one is only partially incorrect – yes, there are some cruise lines that cater to a “more mature audience”. But for every passenger that would prefer a cruise on a ship with some younger people, there are probably older cruisers who’d prefer fewer youngsters on their ship. Read reviews on the cruise line, check out the target audience, and pick your voyage wisely.

Obviously, lines like Disney will be catering to families with kids, so you may not enjoy that as a single traveler looking for some hot action, but other cruise likes like Carnival and Royal Caribbean cater to a very wide age range.

All you do is stay on the ship, with only a couple of days at port

You say this like it is a bad thing (Mr. Frommer, are you listening?) To me, getting on a ship and unpacking once then relaxing for a couple of days is just fantastic. There is nothing “dumbed down” about leaving port, then heading up to the top deck for a game of mini golf, or to take a dip in the hot tub, followed by a formal dinner and some late night entertainment.

Sure, if your idea of a vacation involves climbing mountains and hiking for days then yes – a cruise ship will probably seem like hell. But cruising is all about relaxing and having a good time. It obviously doesn’t cater to everyone, but then again, neither does mountain climbing.

Thankfully, you can plan your time any way you want it. If you’d prefer to sit on your balcony with a nice drink, then by all means, enjoy it (and order some free room service). If you’d rather sleep in all day and go berserk at night – nobody will stop you.

The stateroom is tiny, cramped and uncomfortable

The quality and size of your room all depends on how much you are willing to spend. If you go for cheap, you’ll get an inside room with no windows. But if you planned to spend all your time having fun, all you’ll do in your room is sleep. If you spend a little more, you can get a room with a window or a balcony room.

Cruise ship staterooms are surprisingly well designed. They are not like the rooms you saw on The Love Boat. Most rooms nowadays have a desk, flat panel TV, fold out sofabed, multiple closets and shower/bathroom.

I hate being told when I can eat and who to sit with


Yeah, and so do I. Which is why most cruise lines have started offering anytime dining, and the freedom to pick a different table each night. Sometimes, a preassigned table and tablemates can be fun, you do run into some great people, but you always have the risk of being placed next to a real jerk.

When you book your cruise, you’ll usually be asked to pick a dining preference, but don’t worry – a quick word with the Maître d’ will usually allow you to make changes to your dinner times.

With all those people, the ship is going to be crowded 24/7



You’d think so. But once everyone is on board, and everyone is settled in, you’ll be amazed at how quiet it can be. Even on a ship with 3000 people, you’ll often be able to walk up to the outside decks, and not run into a single person. In fact, in my experience, the opposite is true – things can sometimes be too quiet. I’ve wandered around the ship sometimes wondering just where the hell everyone is. Think of the ship like a decent hotel – even with 6000 people at the hotel, things can be nice and quiet.

Obviously, dinner time and shows can be slightly crowded, but these people are in the same vacation spirit as you – so make the best of it, and have a good time.

On board the Oasis of the Seas: What’s it like?

by Jason Cochran on

Okay. You know it’s big. So let’s set aside that superlative, even though it’s absolutely true. The Oasis of the Seas is ginormous: the longest, the tallest, the widest.

More of interest is how it measures up as an experience. I’m writing this from the press lounge on Deck 4, which Royal Caribbean has set up for the journalists that it invited to test out its glorious new $1.4 billion mortgage-cum-cruise ship. When you’re talking about 17 decks and 2,700 staterooms, you need a lot of time to nose around and even more time to process.

So far, though, this ship is astounding, partly because Royal Caribbean threw some of the old strictures overboard. It’s no longer concerned about width restrictions — the Oasis is too fat to ever go through the Panama Canal — and once rules like those are jettisoned, new designs can sweep in.

The most obvious twist on this ship is its central atriums. Imagine a ship with the inside pretty much hollowed out from near the front all the way to to the stern, and then lined with interior cabins overlooking things like trees and a carnival-style carousel. That layout makes the Oasis entirely self-absorbed, like a floating mall or a resort on the waves. Almost nothing is geared toward drawing your attention to the water or to the ports you might pass, something that has already irked travel writers such as Arthur Frommer.

What’s more, the Oasis is so large, with so much going on, that many passengers simply won’t care about the ocean. It’s a mere set piece, a picturesque backdrop to a week-long marathon of tropical cocktails, pizza bars, and souvenir shopping. That may not a quantum leap for travel, but it’s definitely a leap for the cruise industry. Ports no longer matter. They’re merely a place where a ship stops to pick up ice cream and shrimp cocktails.

A few thoughts about the on board experience:

* She’s actually beautiful

How many times have we seen renderings of a ship that were nowhere as lovely as the reality? Somehow, in the telling, cruise ships tumble into tackiness. Somehow, the Oasis largely escapes that. Scalloped with swooping lines and theatrically lit with thousands of cobalt and scarlet lights, she’s very much the theatrical display she was foretold to be in those dopey architectural promises. Maybe it’s because she’s new.

Also pleasing is the fact that it’s very easy to get around the decks. On many ships, not every staircase leads to where you want to go, and you may have to loop around to get somewhere. Here, though, everything seems to connect logically, and there are plenty of elevators to service the hordes. It’s a ship designed with passenger motion in mind, starting with the extraordinarily wide avenues. There’s even an antique car parked in the middle of the Royal Promenade (the 4th-deck shopping mall), and barely anyone pays it mind.

Another much-needed addition: touch-screen boards near the elevator banks that tell passengers what’s going on at every moment and give directions to their cabin from where they’re standing. I wonder how long they’re going to work properly.

One of the ship’s most eye-catching features is the Rising Tide cocktail bar that slowly levitates and falls between three decks in the middle of the Promenade (acting as a de facto elevator to the open-air Central Park above). Most of the time, it’s half-empty, not because it’s a dull experience but because there’s just so much else to see on board. When your levitating cocktail bar doesn’t get much play, that’s saying something.

* This time, the atriums aren’t the ghetto

On other Royal Caribbean ships, the interior, atrium-facing staterooms are a mere novelty, or at best a consolation for not being able to afford an oceanview stateroom. Here, though, atrium rooms are so numerous that the old class system instantly grows less relevant. In fact, it’s the repetitive honeycomb of countless atrium rooms, almost all of which have balconies overlooking the spectacle, that makes the atriums so astounding.

Gadling’s cabin overlooks Central Park, an open-air atrium stocked with plants, trees, and adultish nightspots. It’s quiet, but hardly isolated. (If you’re thinking of booking an atrium cabin, in Central Park the airflow is a little stiff, while the Boardwalk has more glimpses of the sea, but it’s noisy. Both areas are open to the natural sky.)

* Crowds will be an issue

This press sailing is only half full, which surely contributes to the general elation on this floating kingdom of amphitheatres and glassy man-made caverns. But when she takes on her full complement of 5,400 passengers, prepare for battle. Royal Caribbean is already warning guests to make advance reservations for everything they want to do, be it a show, a specialty restaurant, a comedy act, boogie boarding on one of the two FlowRider sheet-wave machines, or zip-lining high above the Boardwalk section at the stern.

I’ve already seen the effect on this half-full cruise. The churlish young ladies running the FlowRider kiosk, for example, allowed long sign-up lines to build before notifying the waiting group that there were no more slots available. Likewise, wait time for Johnny Rockets shot from zero minutes to 45 minutes between 11:30 and 11:40am. The mini-franchise has been such a success on other Royal Caribbean ships that you’d think the company would double the space given to it, but it didn’t.

The atrium layout also means there’s no top deck spanning the ship. Instead, there are two parallel areas over the cavern, and it’s on those slivers of real estate the mail pools have been installed. The steel drum-type bands have to perform on a sky bridge linking the two areas. There seem to be plenty of deck chairs, but when things get busy on board, I wonder if there will be a scrum for pool access, especially since the quieter Serenity pool area, under a conservatory in the prow, can be oppressively hot when the sun shines

If you’ve even been on vacation to Disneyland, you’re used to queuing up for every thrill. Cruise fans, though, may find that crowd overload runs counter to their aspirations for a relaxing time away from home.

* She’s not quite finished

There’s scaffolding along the jogging track that loops around Deck 5. Some of the hot tubs, including one that juts dramatically over the ocean, are still dry. And two of the ship’s signature productions, a pared-down version of Hairspray and the water-themed show at the after outdoor Aqua amphitheatre, aren’t ready to be unveiled. If the ship’s fantastic ice skating spectacular is any indication, though, Royal Caribbean hasn’t cut corners to meet the note on this expensive vessel.

Now, I’m no cynic, but I do know when I’m out of my element. I was on the Carnival Dream last weekend, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was what a New Jersey Housewife would look like if she were to become a ship: all shiny gold and bangles and cigarettes and beery midnights. Many journalists are the first to puncture holes in the latest hyped product, perhaps because they see it as a service to their readers.

But I have to say that I’m really loving this ship. The size of it, which enables many of its innovations, may ironically be its biggest drawback, and depending on how it absorbs a full house, its Achilles Heel. Still, if I were thinking of bringing my family on a cruise, having seen this wedding cake of a seagoing resort, as a safe place to take everyone off the leash and forget about reality, I’d look here first.