Cruises
Overnight Ocean cruises
Want to set sail on an enormous, floating hotel featuring pools, waterslides, restaurants galore, and nightly gala performances? Then ocean cruising is for you. Cruise liners tend to be big and can carry thousands of passengers. They often provide children’s programs and activities, 24-hour dining, shopping, late-night entertainment, and days spent traveling through endless seascapes. A type of cruise ship built to more exacting standards than more conventional vessels, with substantially more solid designs and more resistant structures to withstand the especially harsh conditions of ocean voyages in long and world cruises. On the downside, liners can be crowded, with queues for embarking and debarking at ports. While ocean cruises may offer cheaper base fares, they also tend to charge for extras, such as the cost of visiting ports.
River cruises
River cruising generally involves smaller ships with fewer passengers and amenities than ocean liners. You’re unlikely to get extensive entertainment options or access to swimming pools and will probably have set meal times. There are smaller crowds and queues than on ocean liners, less likelihood of sea-sickness, and river cruises tend to be truly all-inclusive.
River cruises mostly travel at night, reaching a new place every day, meaning more time to visit different destinations. The scenery on a river cruise changes more regularly, and ports of call tend to be the main attraction rather than the ship itself, as it is on an ocean liner.
You can take a river cruise along the Danube and the Rhine in Europe among others. Always smaller than seagoing cruise ships, and with a capacity for no more than a few hundred passengers, these vessels are specially designed to navigate rivers and inland waterways, offering from exciting experiences on-board ultra-high-tech units, to nostalgic trips on paddleboats ships in rivers such as Amazon, Nile, Rhine, Seine, Volga, Mississippi, Yangtze, and many more in all the world.
Luxury cruises
Motor or sail-powered cruise ships equipped with the most sophisticated and technologically advanced nautical systems, high standard features, and luxurious comforts to meet the special demands of an exclusive clientele looking for longer itineraries and more exotic destinations around the world.
Luxury cruises offer VIP service, more refined dining, and better amenities. They tend to utilize smaller vessels and may include such options as flexible itineraries, a personal butler, larger cabins, more exotic destinations and they’re more likely to be all-inclusive.
Family cruises
Family-friendly cruises offer programs and kids’ clubs that will keep younger and older kids entertained. To find the right family-friendly cruise for you, look for one with age-appropriate activities for your kids, such as cartoon characters, pools and water slides, and kid-friendly evening entertainment. Make sure you look into which activities and services cost extra. If you have a baby, choose a ship that has an on-board crèche. Be aware that some cruises will set a minimum age of between six months and one year for babies, and others will have a minimum age for children participating in kids’ clubs.
Adventure Cruise Ship
Cruise ships are designed and equipped to provide services that include visits to remote destinations, most commonly out-of-the-way or inaccessible to larger vessels. Marketed to a very specific sector of clientele, adventure cruise ships are far smaller than mainstream vessels, usually sail-powered, and generally equipped with luxury features.
If you’re less keen on water slides and cabaret and more interested in nature-watching and remote villages, an adventure cruise may be a good choice. Adventure cruises tend to use smaller ships, which can access more remote destinations such as Antarctica, the Galapagos Islands, Arctic Norway, or the Amazon. Shore excursions are wilder – perhaps white-water rafting or mountain climbing. On-board, you may be treated to lectures from wildlife experts or historians.