Travel Maven blog

Cruising on Disney's newest Fantasy

Fourth ship in fleet offers new twists

Imagine your drawing dancing on a wall

A child's makeover fit for a princess

The 80-year-old man had not drawn a picture of himself since childhood. That’s what his son said.

Aboard the new Disney Fantasy cruise ship, instructions made it easy: Here’s a magic marker. Imagine how you look.  On the paper placed at your table in the dining room, scribble in the white spaces, on the face, chest and tummy, shirt sleeves, trouser legs, and feet.

As his son tells the story, the old man sighed and acquiesced. He drew a simple line for a mouth, circles for eyes, some hair of which he had little, dots on the shirt, stripes on the pants. Finished quickly, he concentrated on his family in the Animator’s Palate dining room.

Then came the magic, and his eyes twinkled into a full grin.

To the music of a whimsical cartoon, the old man’s picture began to dance across the dining room walls, along with several dozen other characters from other tables.

Walking Wellington, comfy cruise port for eating, gazing, shopping for short pants

When travel offered me a second shot at visiting Wellington, I wasn’t going to miss a morning at Te Papa, a lunch of green-lipped mussels (right), and a pair of three-quarter pants that are all the rage in New Zealand and Australia.

Preparing a cruise ship for Aussies, Kiwis

Celebrity Century, a cruise ship that has spent most of its seagoing life in North America, is sailing around Australia and New Zealand this winter (summer in the Southern Hemisphere), getting a taste of what Aussies and Kiwis want to see and do on a cruise ship.

The Century is Celebrity’s first major investment into this part of the world, in preparation for one of Celebrity's newer and larger ships, Celebrity Solstice, which  arrives next fall.

That’s why, for instance, the Century has meat pies in the Lido buffet line and a jar of Vegemite next to the morning toast.

No food or water, no dirt on your boots in New Zealand

The last time I traveled to Australia, in the mid-1980s, I remember being fumigated on the airplane – flight attendants running around the aisles and seats with bug balms, spraying hither and yon – before they let us out, wheezing onto the tarmac in Sydney.

After six weeks of a recent trip to Australia and neighboring New Zealand, I can tell you that the rampant spraying has stopped, but no one in this part of the world is any less afraid of the insects, germy mud or contaminated food that travelers might accidentally introduce to these island nations.

New smoking rules clear the air aboard cruise ships

Travelers who loved vacationing on the Carnival Paradise, which once was a cruise ship entirely cigarette smoke free among passengers and crew, have reason to cheer. As 2011 draws toward a close, second-hand smoke at sea is dissipating.

With this year’s trend toward prohibiting smoking in cabins and in most gathering spots aboard ships, cruise lines slowly are catching up to the lifestyles of their passengers at home, where work places, public areas, restaurants, and bars are smoke free over much of North America.

As the number of smokers at sea decreases --  Carnival says that only 5 percent of its passengers say they want to smoke in their cabins – places to puff diminish.

Picture above: This outdoor section on the new Oceania Marina is one of only two places on the 1,250-passenger ship where smoking is allowed.

Cruising on Costa Favolosa, a slice of Italy

When chunks of parmesan grace the buffet lines in bowls the size of washtubs.

When dining room tables each burn a red candle for the evening meal.

When a multi-cultural group of cabin attendants greets you in the morning with a chorus of “Buon giorno.”

Then, you know you are cruising on a Costa ship.

If you are looking at a Mediterranean cruise out of Venice yet this summer or a 2011-2012 winter sojourn in the waters near Dubai, you might consider Costa’s newest ship, the 3,800-passenger Favolosa.

The vessel, Costa's largest, is an exhibition of design, materials and ingredients with a “Made in Italy” stamp.

Each time I picked out a chunk from the parmesan bowl, pictured above, I could only imagine the price tag for such an extravagance in the United States.

Read more about Costa and the Favolosa at TheTravelMavens.com.