Travel Maven blog

Romance on Oasis of the Seas cruise

Midnight at the Oasis, send your camel to bed. Shadows painting our faces, traces of romance in our heads. Heaven's holding a half moon, shining just for us. Let's slip off to a sand dune, real soon, kick up a little dust.

Or so I was singing (thank you writer David Nichtern), long about midnight, on the amazing new Oasis of the Seas.

Camels? Sand dunes? Dust?

No. But romance was in the salt sea air.

We were sailing off the coast of Florida. Most passengers had returned to their pillows, and the largest cruise ship ever --  a bustling, floating mall of bars, shops, restaurants, and sporty diversions such as a zipline -- grew quieter in the early morning, moonlit shadows, like a big city at rest for a few hours before the tumult of a new day.

Now, finally, the big ship was mine. And I went for a long walk.

CLICK for the rest of the story and pictures from Oasis of the Seas on TheTravelMavens.com

Oasis of the Seas, a Floating Island, says TIME

The $1.4 billion megaship--the largest passenger ship ever made, with room for 6,296 guests--is nearly half again as big as the last biggest cruise ship, RCL's Freedom of the Seas. She's as big as a supertanker or a container ship. Flatten the deck and you could launch F-18s off it. If you were sitting on the 20th floor of a high-rise next to the ship, you'd be able to talk to the sunbathers beside one of the pools.

via www.time.com

This is the best reporting on the cruise business I've read. If you wonder why the cruise industry keeps building huge new ships, such as Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, read on.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1945368-1,00.html#

Thy name will be Oasis of the Seas

By now, everybody knows her name.

Thanks to morning television, and twitters and blogs by the hundreds, Royal Caribbean's new giant of the seas is the talk of the vacation world -- a floating resort city, the largest cruise ship ever built, with beds for more than 6,000 passengers.

Today, she will be named officially Oasis of the Seas, as part of the traditional ceremony for the world's new ships. You know the routine: A woman, the celebratory godmother,  breaks a bottle of champagne over the bow and offers a prayer for the ship and those who will sail on her.

Who will do the honors for the Oasis? Not a single godmother.

That would ruin the story line:

This ship is so big.

How big is it?

Big enough for seven godmothers.

They are: Actresses Jane Seymour, Daisy Fuentes and Keshia Knight Pulliam; singer Gloria Estefan; and American Olympic sports  stars, ice skater Michelle Kwan, swimmer Dara Torres and gymnast Shawn Johnson.

The ceremony -- and spilling of champagne -- begins Monday afternoon, off the Florida coast, near Fort Lauderdale. Guests aboard bought their cabins for this one-night cruise by making a hefty contribution to the Make A Wish Foundation.

Driving to your cruise, ports closer to home

As airline prices, delays and travel hassles increase, cruise lines are adding new home ports so passengers can drive to their voyage instead of flying.

This winter (2009-2010), ships will be operating regularly, snow storms and all, from New York and Baltimore, on Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity cruise lines.

Even though this means the first winter day at sea usually is sweater weather -- at best -- the popularity of driving to the port, and letting the ship take you south, is rising swiftly.

Home ports for large cruise ships now dot the shores along the coasts of the United States, from Alaska to Massachusetts.

Depending on the season, you may cruise from Seward (Alaska), Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles/Long Beach and San Diego on the West Coast; from Galveston/Houston, New Orleans, Mobile (Ala.) and Tampa on the Gulf Coast; from Boston, New York/Bayonne (N.J.), Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk (Va.), Charleston (S.C.), Jacksonville, Port Canaveral (Fla.), Ft. Lauderdale and Miami on the East Coast. 

CLICK for more on cruises from new home ports and what's available this winter, at TheTravelMavens.com

Planning a winter cruise from a northern port

Bidding for travel bargains at SATW

If you like to travel and bid for bargains, the annual auction by the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) is a fun two-fer.

This year's auction is up, online, with bidding until 10 p.m. MDT on Friday, November 20.

Top items range from cruises on the Royal Clipper from Barbados and on Maine Windjammer's Stephen Taber, to a Germany getaway with roundtrip tickets on Air Berlin and four nights for two persons at hotels in Berlin and Dresden.

At SatwAuction, you will find deals on goods, hotels, resort and vacation packages in the U.S., Canada and abroad. Values of donated items range from $50 to $3,962.

Cruise passengers bob in the Atlantic

News from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean: Passengers on a trans-Atlantic cruise aboard the SeaDream II jumped overboard for a dip last week.

The 56-passenger cruise ship, one of two luxury vessels owned by SeaDream Yacht Club, was on a route from Spain to Puerto Rico.

Passengers said they wanted to swim, said SeaDream II’s Captain Terje Willasen.

 "At dawn on Thursday October 15, I knew that this was the day. The seas were as still as a pond,” said Willsen.

At latitude 26 degrees, 28 minutes, longitude 39 degrees 40 minutes, 958 nautical miles from the Azores and 1541 nautical miles from San Juan, a group of passengers slipped into the ocean from the ship’s special stern Marina and bobbed about in the sea, before continuing their journey to San Juan.

SeaDream calls its two small ships mega yachts. Information from SeaDream.com