Feature

For families with school-aged children and college students alike, cruises are a popular way to spend spring break vacation.

What better way to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life than relaxing on the adults-only sundeck while your kids hang out in the youth clubs? Or getting a group of friends together for a weekend of drinking, dancing, and eating before (or right after) midterms? 

The Main Dining Room beats dining hall food, that’s for sure. 

If you’re like me, you might not live within driving distance to a lot of cruise ports. Sure, I could hop the subway and sail out of New York or Cape Liberty, or I could take a train to Boston. But what if I’m just itching to explore ancient Mayan ruins or bask in the Mexican Riviera sun?

2022 was a huge travel year for me. Between pandemic-delayed cruises, leisure trips and work opportunities, I felt like I was constantly on the go and living out of a suitcase.

Throughout the year, I traveled to 12 different countries during 8 different cruises. I flew over 70,000 miles with 47 flight segments, including 3 separate trips to Europe in 2022.

People love to cruise for a variety of reasons, but one is having access to so many amenities and activities in a single place. There's so much to look forward to, and sometimes you can't get to it all!

Depending on what cruise line and ship you're sailing on, you can learn to surf, go skydiving, ride a roller coaster, play a round of interactive and tech-immersive mini-golf, race around the longest go-kart track at sea, or bounce around a SkyZone trampoline park. 

Over the last decade, the cruising industry has been transformed through innovation and technology. 

Cruising was once considered a fairly posh, traditional and exclusive experience. In fact, the cruise industry goes back all the way to 1901. The most infamous cruise ship, of course, is the Titanic, which was pretty revolutionary for its time. The ocean liner had an impressive design that featured pools, restaurants and onboard activities. 

Thinking about taking a cruise but not sure if it is right for you?

Cruising comes in a variety of forms, some of which you may not have considered. Preconceived ideas about hoards of people and massive lives don't match up to the reality of cruising. There is a reason why millions of people cruise each year and why they keep coming back.  

Where to go, what cruise line, and the type of ship are all considerations in planning a great cruise vacation. 

My very first cruise was onboard the Disney Magic in 2005 when I was five-years-old. On the first night, my dad took me to a Cinderella meet and greet, and I made him return every night to see if she was there again (spoiler alert: she wasn't). 

It wasn't until 2014 that my family started to cruise more frequently. Growing up, my mother had some health issues that made most travel difficult. We loved cruising because she could rest during the day while my sister and I stayed active onboard. 

Following the ongoing global pandemic, 2022 was a big year for the cruising industry with the launch of many new, exciting cruise ships.

With supply chain and labor shortages plaguing the industry over the last few years, numerous cruise ships set to debut in 2021 were finally launched within the last year. 

Additionally, many delayed and cancelled cruise itineraries finally took place in 2022, including my much-anticipated Israel cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Odyssey of the Seas. 

2022 was a big travel year for me - I calculated that I spent nearly 5 months away from home during the last year. Most of those journeys were on cruise ships; I took a 8 cruises in 2022 and spent 55 nights at sea. 

That's a lot of cruising, if you ask me!

Some of these cruises were for work purposes, such as ones that we document here on CruiseBlog. Some work cruises included our content from Carnival Ecstasy and Carnival Celebration.