I write having taken a Viking cruise in January 2024, and having greatly enjoyed it, but at this point having no plans to take another. in short, I cannot tolerate getting to the cruise port and home again.
First is the increasingly hideous and uncivilized experience of air travel. On this forum, this hardly requires expatiation, but at my age it is a painful experience, and in several ways.
Then there is the reality of the cruise port, in our case Port Everglades. After running the gauntlet of three airports, we arrive in a giant hall where the passengers are processed like cattle arriving at the Chicago stockyards.
{Insert two wonderful weeks on Viking Mars which met our every expectation, not including excursions, which are beyond Viking’s control in any case.}
The cruise ends, and our ship arrives back in Port Everglades at 0500 with at least four other cruise ships, all multiple sizes larger than our Viking vessel, with correspondingly larger numbers of passengers to disembark. We are shepherded off the ship ASAP, so that the ship may be replenished, cabins cleaned, and another batch of 930 human beings can be processed aboard so that the ship may depart at 1700.
The final experience, of course, was the journey home. Just the morning in FLL, with many of the thousands of cruise passengers going home, was enough to erase much of the previous two weeks’ enjoyment, being a complete ant farm, with dozens of people forced to sit or lay on the floor.
Since this little adventure, I have been thinking about ways around it. Travel from where I live to the major FL cruise ports is expensive and time consuming by rail, and of course bus service is a joke. It is possible for me to drive to the east coast and take Amtrak to FL, but hardly desirable. Then there are secondary cruise ports. I can go directly from where I live by rail to New Orleans, but no Viking there, and I have no use for cruise ships that are a floating circus or theme park.
Any thoughts / suggestions are welcome.
First is the increasingly hideous and uncivilized experience of air travel. On this forum, this hardly requires expatiation, but at my age it is a painful experience, and in several ways.
Then there is the reality of the cruise port, in our case Port Everglades. After running the gauntlet of three airports, we arrive in a giant hall where the passengers are processed like cattle arriving at the Chicago stockyards.
{Insert two wonderful weeks on Viking Mars which met our every expectation, not including excursions, which are beyond Viking’s control in any case.}
The cruise ends, and our ship arrives back in Port Everglades at 0500 with at least four other cruise ships, all multiple sizes larger than our Viking vessel, with correspondingly larger numbers of passengers to disembark. We are shepherded off the ship ASAP, so that the ship may be replenished, cabins cleaned, and another batch of 930 human beings can be processed aboard so that the ship may depart at 1700.
The final experience, of course, was the journey home. Just the morning in FLL, with many of the thousands of cruise passengers going home, was enough to erase much of the previous two weeks’ enjoyment, being a complete ant farm, with dozens of people forced to sit or lay on the floor.
Since this little adventure, I have been thinking about ways around it. Travel from where I live to the major FL cruise ports is expensive and time consuming by rail, and of course bus service is a joke. It is possible for me to drive to the east coast and take Amtrak to FL, but hardly desirable. Then there are secondary cruise ports. I can go directly from where I live by rail to New Orleans, but no Viking there, and I have no use for cruise ships that are a floating circus or theme park.
Any thoughts / suggestions are welcome.
