Cruises
Our Cruise Reviews
Grand Princess, December 2002, Western Caribbean
Norwegian Sky, December 2001, Eastern Caribbean
Norwegian Sky, May 2001, Alaska
Holland America Volendam, December 2000, Western Caribbean
Holland America Westerdam, November 1999, Eastern Caribbean
Celebrity Century, March 1997, Eastern Caribbean
Our Cruise History
After watching episodes of The Love Boat and designing copy for the Royal Viking Cruise Line brochures while working for a large San Francisco printer, I caught the cruising bug and booked my first cruise on Carnival Cruise Line’s Mardi Gras, in 1982. Since I would have to fly from San Francisco to Miami, I also booked my first trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando. Epcot was opening in October and I would be there the first week in December. Woo hoo! What a ride is right! I became hooked on both.
Five years later I combined a 4-night trip to Disney World with the Big Red Boat, for a 3-night cruise to the Bahamas. This was operated by Disney then so Goofy and other characters were onboard.
Five years after that I took a 3-day cruise out of Los Angeles to Ensenada on RCI’s old Viking Sernenade, cruising with a group from work where Rich and I met. Unfortunately, he was not part of that group. 
In 1997 just 7 months after our wedding and honeymoon on Maui, we took our first cruise together out of Ft. Lauderdale. This was on the Celebrity Century. Woo hoo – we were moving up and now Rich and I were both hooked on cruising.
Our next cruise wasn’t until 1999 (had to go to Hawaii in 1998) on HAL’s Westerdam – our best cruise to date. This was to celebrate Rich’s parents 50th wedding anniversary.
In 2001, we had moved to the Pacific Northwest so we decided to cruise to Alaska from Seattle with Rich’s parents on the Norwegian Sky and celebrated the real Millennium on HAL’s Volendam over New Year’s.
In early December of 2002, we were relocated to Ohio and, desperate for the ocean, we took our first Princess cruise on the Grand Princess out of Ft. Lauderdale.
By 2003, we finally fulfilled our Florida dream and thought we’d do nothing but go to WDW and cruise. Well, we did the first alright – in fact, that’s all we did. The irony is while living in Florida we lost all interest in cruising. It just seemed like more of the same. But now that we’re living in Las Vegas, we’re looking forward to booking our first cruise in several years.
