It’s that time of the month again as far as this website is concerned where I try to bash out an update covering what’s changed around the site in terms of functionality and content, what bits of travel-related news have been happening out in the real world, and anything of passing interest that’s caught my eye online that can be shared.
Site Changes
If you’re a regular visitor to this site – I know you aren’t but humour me, okay? – then you might just have spotted that the menu bar is completely new. Gone are the vertically-stuck icons from the left of the screen and the expandable sidebar content from the right of the screen, replaced now by something a little more standard in appearance and functionality. Why? I’m glad you asked. This came about after a discussion with someone on Instagram of all places where I was asked about things I knew the answer to – cruises – and wanted to point that person in the general direction where they could get more detailed information – this website – only to realise that saying things like “So, follow the link in my bio then look to the left of the screen and click the fourth icon down that looks an anchor, then…” pretty much defeated the point of this site. You can’t be a diary of travelling and a repository of useful information if people can’t find things without what sounds like a riddle in a Dungeons & Dragons game to help them along.
New menu, therefore, and what I hope is a sensible structure to it with cruises and destinations prominent and arranged hierarchically and all other content grouped with a new emphasis on the Blog pages and a revamped About page to round it all off.
Another couple of chats with people on Twitter led me to installing another tiny plugin on the site as well; this one simply forces non-SSL inbound traffic to SSL. While this site has been protected by a free SSL certificate for some time there was nothing in place to stop someone browsing to the insecure version of any page. Not any longer.
New Content
I’ve tried to make more of an effort in putting up blog posts to break up the monotony of cruise and port portfolio items. Unlike portfolio items, blog posts will feed through to the WordPress Reader aggregator so it does provide another avenue to highlight portfolio content to that audience. Looking ahead I’ll try to add more blog posts that cover notable milestones in portfolio updates just for that reason and I’ll possibly change the titles of these monthly updates moving forward so that they more accurately represent the content.
The latest set of portfolio items added to the site very nearly complete our Diamond Princess cruise from last October. Taiwan is covered in these posts:
- Taiwan: Keelung To Jiufen Fushan Temple – Arrival at the Taiwanese port and the bus ride up into the hills to visit the rather garish temple.
- Exploring Jiufen, Taiwan – The fabulous former mining town is now a maze of twisting alleys lined with shops and tea houses.
- Diamond Princess Cruise Ship At Keelung, Taiwan – Views of Keelung from the ship and a dusk departure out to sea.
Our final port stop in Okinawa is covered in two more posts:
- Diamond Princess Cruising Into Okinawa, Japan – Views of Naha City from the ship on our approach and a lengthy wait for Japanese immigration to clear us.
- Kokusaidori Street, Naha, Okinawa, Japan – A central street in Naha that was closed off in order to allow a martial arts demonstration to take place.
There is also a single post covering the first of two sea days following our Japanese stop as the ship made for Yokohama:
- Diamond Princess Sea Day Activities – A culinary show, a walk through the galley, some dancing in the piazza, a bit of a swim, and a couple of competitions around the ship.
There will be one final sea day to cover on the site before an overall review of the cruise, then that should be the end of the Diamond Princess cruise posts for a while (although there are bound to be follow-up posts in the future when there is a lull in content production for the site (if that ever happens)).
New Cruises
First up, a change to an existing, upcoming cruise. In the last monthly website update I mentioned that we’d booked a back-to-back aboard Crown Princess for next year (which will take the number of times we’ll have cruised on her to four). Since booking those two cruises, Princess Cruises have introduced their 3-for-free deal in the UK which included those particular trips. This deal was something that we’d been able to use on our cruise earlier this year hitting South and Central America on Star Princess (no posts covering that cruise are on the site yet but it shouldn’t be too long before they start appearing) and it was disappointing to see that not only had we missed out by booking a few weeks early but that the price we’d paid had dropped too in the meantime.
What I’d not realised before – because we’ve never had cause to look into it – is that Princess will allow you to initiate a Move Over deal by yourself. There is a flat fee to arrange this and it can only be done once per booking. Discovering this I was able to cancel then rebook the same cabin for the first of the two cruises (the 11-day cruise, not the 4-day cruise) and pay £100 to do so. In return, we saved £300 on the combined cabin price, gained an extra £250 onboard credit between us, got one free speciality dining meal each and one voucher towards the cost of wine each. We didn’t bother with changing the shorter cruise as the benefits compared to the cost weren’t really worth it. Well worth the effort for the longer cruise, though, although it’s a shame that the fee couldn’t be waived within, say, 30 days of booking if you’re Platinum level passenger for instance as it really is a crapshoot as to whether or not you’ll book just before a good deal gets activated. Just a suggestion for Princess I’m putting out there to show they’ve still got the best loyalty programme at sea. Hint, hint.
And now to new cruises. Plural.
Our last cruise was a taster cruise aboard Celebrity Silhouette (small review here: Celebrity Silhouette: Disappointments And Redemption) and because it fell across a bank holiday in the UK we got to try out the new cruise line for us without eating up any of our annual holiday allowance. This got us thinking and this got us looking ahead a year to see what we could see of interest that might benefit from bank holidays too.
The first new cruise we booked, therefore, was a week-long cruise aboard P&O Cruises‘ Britannia. The ship won’t be going anywhere we’ve not been before (a bit of France and a bit of Spain). The ship is a Royal-class ship and we weren’t impressed by what Princess did with that design when we were on Royal Princess a few years ago. That said, tastes and attitudes change, we want to see how P&O have used the space aboard, we love P&O’s food and drink, and the price was really good for a balcony. All that and only uses up four days holiday. We almost had to.
The second new cruise we booked was on what will be a brand new ship making its preview cruise from Italy to Southampton. That will be Enchanted Princess. Another Royal-class ship so here’s hoping we discover we like that design after all. We’ve never done an inaugural cruise of any sort before (and that wasn’t the reason we went for this cruise) so this will be interesting. We’ve also never had the situation where we need to get to the airport to fly out but will be getting home via the train or taxi. A logistical puzzle to solve nearer the time. We booked this after noticing that the price on the Planet Cruise website was quite a bit cheaper than the Princess website price and also included the flight and transfer.
This leaves us with just four days of annual holiday allowance to play with during 2020. Short, tempting cruises seem to be in short supply so we might just have to take breaks some other way. European city breaks? I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
CLIA Conference Cruise News
The CLIA Conference has been taking place. I know this because I follow a lot of people on my travel-based Twitter account who are apparently there. Conferences, like meetings – to me – are things that can easily (and, therefore, should) be substituted by an email. There’s a reason I’ve never gone to any conference even remotely related to the industry in which I work: they’re all complete wastes of time and money. Maybe there is a point to the CLIA one beyond the back-clapping, Megachurch-style, occasionally cult-like self-reinforcement of beliefs and statements of goals that everybody already knows. Doubtful, though. This near-religious feel to these sorts of things was only enhanced when a flood of photos of acolytes in the throes of ecstacy were released on the net upon the surprise arrival of Richard Branson. He of Virgin Voyages fame. The sickeningly sanctimonious marketing behind the new Virgin cruise line obviously fits in well with the messiah making an appearance in my home town on this occasion.
I’m not a fan in case that’s not been clearly expressed but as with all things I am open to having my mind changed and await the reviews in the years to come.
But the news from Richard’s appearance at the conference is that the new Virgin ship will be visiting the UK next year and hitting a few ports too. Originally, it was due to only cruise the Caribbean. I know of some people who booked (the somewhat highly-priced) cruises on it out there because that was the only option available and they wanted to say they’d been on it. I hope they’re not too pissed off that they could have waited for it to come across this side of the pond instead and saved themselves at least the air fare.
UPDATE: This turns out to be a couple of port stops (Dover and Liverpool) after the ship has been built and before it is delivered to America and will be limited to VIPs, the media, and travel agents so won’t be indicative of the actual cruising experience aboard a Virgin cruise ship.
Social Updates
And finally, the usual array of things travel-related that have caught my eye on the internet over the last few weeks.
In REVIEW: MSC Meraviglia – One Cruise, Two Stories Tom recounts a short, hosted cruise aboard the MSC ship in Italy. The good bits were very good but the bad bits were very bad. MSC is a line we’ve not cruised with yet and this isn’t the first time we’ve read about embarkation issues. Your first contact with a cruise line and ship is at embarkation; it needs to be done right.
A completely different form of travelling now in an article from last year about the Airlander 10 airship. Shared just because it looks like a flying arse. Since that article was posted the prototype airship has been retired but there are still plans to go into production.
Finally, a video review of the Crown Princess by Rich and Helen. This has all the usual high production values and accompanying witticisms we’ve come to expect from their videos plus it’s a ship with which we’re quite familiar. For the most part it’s a review with which we’re in total agreement.