Gloria Mundi

I'm thrilled for them!  I have high hopes for the cruise I've booked with them in October- Belize and Guatemala.  It will be my 6th.

18 hours ago, George C said:

My very first job when I was 17 in 1967 was for I believe the last cruise lines based in USA , US Lines . 

UnCruise is American-owned, headquartered in Seattle and all but one of their vessels is US-flagged.  The exception is s a very small ship chartered in Ecuador and used only in the Galapagos.  I'm booked on my 6th cruise with them in October, 2021.

We did an Uncruise trip to Hawaii 2 years ago. I did not care for their product and would not sail with them again. Poor housekeeping (bulbs burned out over bar, public waste cans not emptied, our room not cleaned), and at the end a blatant request for large tips. The food was boring and very limited. The upper deck was littered with unused furniture.

 

The itinerary was great and covered areas little seen.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with the housekeeping- I haven't noticed that on the 3 I've taken but haven't been to Hawaii with them yet.

From what I've read of the mega-ships (I've never taken one), anyone expecting a comparable variety of food will surely be disappointed- there might be 3 different entrees at dinner (always a good vegetarian item) and one dessert choice (ice cream always an alternative). I never saw the same salad dressing twice. The Alaskan cruise included crab legs one night and Alaskan oysters out on the deck one afternoon (the Captain was grilling them but I ate mine raw). The Central America cruise featured Ropas Viejas for dinner one night; I can't tell you if it was authentic because I'd never had it before but it was delicious. Desserts I remember from previous cruises included lavender scones and chocolate-ginger cookies (I got the recipe!). Food was not the reason for the cruise but it was plentiful and good. As someone who tries to maintain a low-end-of-normal BMI, I appreciated that.

I didn't find the tip process any worse than the mega-ship "default option" of adding a tip to your bill which you can remove only if you claim you had poor service. My tips were decent but not over-the-top and I never had the staff member doing the paperwork make a comment on it.

Since this is a lesser-known line and there's not as much info available, I wanted to add my thoughts based on my own experience with UnCruise.

It's a bit random. I was there last week and took a cruise out of Reykjavik for about $100. All we saw were a few pods of porpoises. There were other boats in the area with similar results, so it wasn't that we had an inept captain. Sometimes you see 'em, sometimes you don't. DH and I were there 2 years ago and saw quite a few, but no dramatic breaches like they show in their brochures. More expensive trips take you out in high-speed boats that are totally open; they issue rain gear. I chose one with an indoor section.

Whether or not you'll see them from your cruise ship depends on whether or not it passes through areas where whales are sighted frequently, It's also a little bit of luck!

I'm late to respond but I LOVE UnCruise. Just booked my 4th trip. Took them twice in Alaska, and Panama/CR in April. I would not go on any other line.

First, the minuses if you love all the amenities of big ships: staterooms nothing special, no Internet, one dining room with a few selections at each meal (happy to accommodate requests if nothing appeals to you). No stops to buy Tanzanite. Crew mostly American and paid according to US laws so more expensive and they are not expected to fawn over you. Answer a question about bird species, give you a chart of the constellations, tell you which tectonic plate subducted under which other plate to make the formation you see? Yeah, they can do that.

Pluses; very focused on nature. All-inclusive except for tips which are NOT automatically added to your bill. Fellow passengers smart, curious, unpretentious. Everyone leaves their bling and their egos at home. No locks on stateroom doors! Food locally-sourced where possible, well-prepared, very little out of cans. Alcohol, snorkeling, kayaking, hiking, paddle boarding included (small charge for ultra- thick wet suits in Alaska). I had dessert for lunch and dinner every day (never eat like that at home) and didn't gain weight thanks to all the activity.

In answer to previous question- plenty of boots.

OK, I'll stop now. Can't wait for Baja and the Sea of Cortes!

I've booked UnCruise in mid-April, starting in Panama City, transiting through the Canal and going on to ports in Costa Rica. Their ships are typically under 100 passengers, focused on nature and don't have the multiple dining rooms and forms of entertainment that the big ships have, but DH and I LOVED their Alaska cruises and I'm excited about this one!

However, in my opinion, a cruise of the canal will be easier, and possible after "the little ones" arrive, whereas, a trip to the Mediterranean with kids would be much more difficult :);)

That was my thinking, too. I just booked a cruise from Panama City to San Jose, CR and both are about 4 hours from Atlanta and, since I'm in the Central Time Zone (except for the connection in ATL) there's no jet lag. I even sprang for Business Class on the flight because it's so reasonable compared to Business Class to Europe (or, heaven forbid, Australia).

With Europe, on the other hand, you cross enough time zones that you really need some time to acclimate and it makes sense to do a longer cruise once you get there. Much harder after the kids come, whether you have them with you or you leave them with someone at home.

 

My current fridge is stainless steel and NOT magnetic, so all the ones from prior cruises are stuck in a plastic bag in my junk drawer.

Yeah, that happened to us, too. Bummer.

I have a charm bracelet that's getting a bit overloaded, but I get a gold charm from places we've been. Small, portable, not as dicey as buying diamonds or large, "important" pieces of jewelry in an unfamiliar place. (BIL told me once he and my sister came home with $14K worth of tanzanite from the Caribbean. Sheesh.)

Edibles are good, too, as long as they comply with regulations about what you can bring into the US.

The Jones act (for cargo) and the PVSA were enacted to "protect" American flagged shipping. There isn't any

The Pride of America was reflagged as an American ship so it could cruise the Hawaiian Islands without going to Kiribati (foreign port). This forced the cruise line to hire a mostly American crew and pay then at least minimum wage. Read the member reviews to see how this affected service.

Uncruise.com has US-flagged ships, American crew and itineraries totally within Alaska. We've taken them twice and service is superb.

DH and I have taken only 2 cruises and they weren't traditional at all. They were within Alaska on UnCruise. Up close and personal with nature, only about 75 passengers, good, locally- sourced food but not a 24/7 bacchanalia. Crew typically has degrees in areas such as Marine Biology and gets passionate about plankton and leopard-spotted banana slugs. Excursions are hikes, kayaking and snorkeling dressed like Jacques Cousteau. They do Mexico and Hawaii, too.

Don't be so quick to write off local transportation as waste of time. Some of our best experiences have been on the transport local people take to get around.

 

<snip>I agree with Cruise Mom. When you go around on your own, you're much more likely to encounter unexpected things that give you insight into the place and its people. Something you rarely get on an organized tour with people who are just like you. It's not mostly about the money for me.

DH and I have had similar experiences using public transportation as well as shopping in local grocery stores (although I should mention that 2 of the 3 times DH has been pickpocketed have been on subways, in Rome and Barcelona). One of the best was a trip to Pushkin out of St. Petersburg with a private guide, who quoted a much higher price if we went in his car. So, we got a taste of the St. Petersburg subway system, impressive in itself, as well as an unofficial cab system run by Georgians driving vans. You get in, pass your rubles to the front via the other passengers, and your change is returned the same way. No way we would have ventured in without a guide! The guide came highly recommended on another site and was well worth it; DH and I are Russian history buffs so we really wanted someone who knew his stuff.

It all boils down to research and priorities. There are times when we say "this is a tourist trap ripoff" and we'll skip it or go on our own. And sometimes we know it's a tourist trap ripoff but it's the best way to experience the place. I'd find it very constraining to go on a trip and be focused on spending a minimal amount of extra money beyond what was prepaid, but if that's the only way some people can work travel into their budgets, I can understand that.

Any problems in getting it back through customs?

The OP asked this question with regard to vanilla, but what struck me as I read this thread (other than hunger pangs!) was the thought that there are laws about what agricultural products you can bring into the US. Candy and vacuum-sealed foods are typically OK (not sure about meat even if vacuum-sealed), but I'm not sure about coffee beans, vanilla beans, nutmeg, etc. Those are the types of plants and plant products that could harbor pests we're trying to keep away from US farms.

If you're planning to spend large amounts of money on food products and would be heartbroken if it got confiscated, you should research this topic first and make sure you can bring it back home. Those cute little doggies in the Customs area are trained to sniff out food.

Southwest-a total loser in my book for a whole lot a reasons. Generally HIGHER prices than you could have booked on a legacy airline MONTHS before Southwest opened their scheduled. AND with a CONFIRMED SEAT. Generally better prices BEFORE Southwest opens their schedule. That is their business model-be the CHEAPEST on the DAY THEY OPEN THEIR SCHEDULE. But legacy airlines have been selling CHEAPER seats (including luggage fees) 3 months BEFORE Southwest opens their schedule.

I used to fly a lot (business and personal) and now fly infrequently since I'm retired and DH and I would rather drive than endure all the BS associated with flying. I flew enough that a couple of times I had lower-tier Elite status on 2 airlines at the same time.

I'd rather fly Southwest than any of the US legacy airlines. They're more reliable (not perfect, but more reliable), they seem genuinely happy that you're on board instead of ignoring you and hoping you'll behave like self-loading cargo, and they don't hit you with junk fees. And, to get back to the OT, they addressed the COS issue when the other airlines stuck their heads in the sand and came up with a very reasonable policy.

We took UnCruise (formerly Innersea Discoveries) and our bill for charges on the trip, excluding tips, was $135 for 2 people for 7 nights. That included $35 for my snorkeling expedition. Everything else was in the sticker price. There were no casinos, photo sales, premium dining rooms, or spas. We mostly had the same experience for the same price. We liked it so much that this year's cruise was our second time!

We took a cruise from Ketchikan to Juneau and service was pretty spotty. (Our ship was a small one with no fancy telecomm systems that passengers could use, so we could use the phone only when we were in an area served by Verizon.)

Worked fine in Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka, as well as Klawock (pop. 854). Good thing since I had to call a clinic in Klawock to get an appointment so DH could be treated for an attack of gout. The rest of the time when we weren't near any populated area there was no service. No extra charges, but our cruise was totally in the US.

People are getting personal to win the point.:)

Well, we could attack your data or your research, but you haven't supplied any other than your own, where the sample size equals 1. ;-)

DH is 76 with some chronic health issues and has come down with a respiratory infection that morphed into pneumonia or bronchitis on 4 out of our last 5 trips. (We do major trips annually, so it's not like it's happening every few months.) Two of the 5 involved a small-boat cruise (73 passengers in Alaska) but one of those two cruises he returned with no problems at all.

As others have said, there's so much going on besides the cruise. Planes are germ factories and while we're pretty sure we're going to go to Scotland next year (no cruise), DH is going to start using hand sanitizers religiously. Same for airports. We're almost certain one cold came from a sales clerk at Duty-Free in Madrid. The guy was congested and coughing, but if you wanted to buy liquor you had to go to him. (We tried paying at another stand and they sent us back.) We washed our hands immediately afterwards in the restrooms, but DH got sick anyway. I'm also wondering about having his doctors prescribe preventative antibiotics even though in general I'm opposed to overusing them. It just takes him weeks to recover.

As for norovirus: my nephew, an Olympic gold medal swimmer, was in his last year of NCAA eligibility and when they flew to the finals, quite a few athletes who had been on some of the same planes and in the same airports came down with norovirus- so many, in fact, that they postponed the match by a day. (Nephew and a few of his teammates caught it but managed to recover enough to win- Woo-hoo!) No cruise ships involved. They were in a landlocked state in the Midwest.

DH, bless him, is still up for travel despite the fact that he tends to get sick afterwards because we have so many great experiences. I'm glad he feels that way. We're both retired, which helps- no concern about taking too many sick days off from work.

It appears that you have already started your first cruise with a negative attitude. To go into this EXPECTING to be "ripped off" certainly won't make your cruise better. I remember my first cruise. All I could think of was how excited I was to finally get to experience what a cruise was like. I certainly didn't go into it expecting to be taken advantage of. Why set yourself up like that?

 

<snip>

I certainly don't take a cruise with the attitude that I am going to be ripped off and taken advantage of, and that I need to be on guard every minute. If that is how I felt, I'd just stay home hiding under the bed all the time where no one could ever "rip me off".

I think the OP asked a perfectly good question and got some good information about why it might be good to have a lot of pictures taken, saving money by booking your own excursions (yes, I'm aware of the risks and they've been thoroughly discussed elsewhere), and the cost of things in the gift shop that the OP might want to bring from home.

Unless you've got an infinite budget, it's good to decide ahead of time that you'll bring your own sunscreen, Dramamine, etc. instead of paying triple in the gift shop, so you can chose to enjoy a spa treatment or a meal in a premium restaurant.

Your rip-off is my indulgence, and vice versa.

I can almost guarantee that if you bring it in your carry-on, some TSA person, somewhere, is going to get very excited about it and not let you take it on board.

OTOH, if you put it in your checked bag, I'd suspect it would be a great target for thieves.

Two more reasons to leave it at home.

And when you don't have internet when you're on the ship, that helps how?

I LOVE Tripit. The itinerary is available on your smartphone app even if you're off-line.

My final check is to print out the Tripit itinerary and review it. Since it downloads automatically from e-mailed confirmations from airlines and chain hotels, there's less chance of my entering wrong information. It includes confirmation numbers, addresses, phone numbers, etc. You can manually enter cruise ports, excursions, bed and breakfasts, etc. This is now my "go-to" document when we travel. I messed up on the Alaska cruise only because I used the info from the cruise line's site for Juneau to Ketchikan (the route I thought we were taking) instead of looking at the actual document they sent us (which correctly showed Ketchikan to Juneau).

Sometimes you can't protect people from themselves. :rolleyes:

We always book our own flights. And, we find it less expensive, too.

I'm a bigger control freak than DH, and enjoy booking travel arrangements, so I research and book it all. It works for us 99% of the time. And then...

We'd booked UnCruise on what I thought was the Juneau-Ketchikan itinerary, since we'd taken Ketchikan-Juneau 2 years before. I booked flights from home to Seattle with overnights in both directions, on UA. Then I booked our Alaska Air flights- SEA to Sitka and Ketchikan to SEA. I also booked and paid for a ferry from Sitka to Juneau ($79 for the 2 of us).

When the cruise line asked about our flight arrangements and I told them when we'd be arriving in Juneau and leaving Ketchikan, they asked if I realized we were sailing from Ketchikan to Juneau. Oops. :eek: (Yes, I DID have a detailed itinerary months beforehand. I just hadn't read it.) That was about 2 weeks before the cruise. DH, who handled it very calmly, asked if we could just cancel the cruise and book another one. Not two weeks out unless we wanted to lose a lot of $$!

AA (which I'd used to book the Alaska flights) screwed us badly on reticketing; it cost $650 to change our flights to Seattle to Ketchikan, and Juneau to Seattle. No good ferry options from Sitka to Ketchikan on the day we needed it, so I also booked a flight from Sitka to Ketchikan ($350 for the 2 of us). Fortunately the hotel reservation in Juneau was cancellable with no penalty and I was able to get the one we'd used before in Ketchikan.

My biggest fear was that flights might be unavailable, but I'm still steamed at AA (and at myself for making a $1,000 mistake).

I've had a few close calls, where I've printed out the itinerary and realized I had a hotel for the wrong night or some other detail that was fixed easily and for free, but this was my worst.

That must really cut back on your ability to see the world... To me, while flying isn't always fun, I'll take 20 hours of mediocrity on a plane to spend a week or two in an amazing new place.

Your post wasn't an answer to mine, but I'll reply anyway since I expressed a similar sentiment. First of all, it's not mediocrity. It's misery- long lines, late arrivals, consequences of missed connections, not knowing till you get to the airport whether the TSA line will put you at risk of missing your flight, getting there insanely early and then finding yourself airside with beeping carts, uncomfortable seats and overpriced food and drink... OK, I'll stop now.

DH and I have gotten to the point that we fly to Europe only in Business Class. He's almost 76, he's got back problems and some other chronic health issues and he's over 6 feet tall. The airlines have made Coach so miserable that it's out of the question for us on transatlantics. So, we go to Europe a lot less than we used to even though we'd love to go more often.

We rarely fly anymore. Flying has become a form of torture with security and crowding. And FF programs are not as good as they were.

Totally agreed. I prefer Southwest and avoid any of the really low-cost carriers because of reliability issues, but now that I'm retired DH and I drive wherever we can. For the exceptions (Europe and our trip to Alaska), I end up booking insanely long layovers in connection airports and overnights in some connection cities to be safe. It makes for a really long trip. This past trip we made the mistake of flying on miles on United rather than taking Southwest's nonstop to Seattle and after a schedule change our 3-hour layover in Denver was changed to 7 hours. :confused: On the way home, we flew from Juneau to Seattle on Day 1 and our flight out of Seattle, originally scheduled for 7:30 AM, was moved to 6:20 AM. There was a 2-hour layover in Houston, of course, which was actually out of the way for us. We were pretty much in transit for 2 days.

Our next 3 trips are all car trips. I am SO happy.

But, to get back to the OP's question, I do a lot of research beforehand and would bypass the low-cost carriers regardless of the money I'd save.

DH and I haven't bought travel insurance in the 16 years we've been together, but we're getting older (he's 75 and I'm 61) and I may get it next time. DH says his Medicare supplement will cover outside of the US, but I'd want to look into that, and I know that traditional medical coverages won't pay anything for evacuation, having to stay later at your destination till you're healthy enough to travel, maybe having to fly home in Business Class, etc. I'm just as vulnerable as DH because I do silly things like go out jogging in local parks or go snorkeling in 42-degree water.

We had a bit of a scare on our last cruise; DH had an attack of gout more severe that I've ever seen and we were on a small ship in Alaska's Inside Passage. Fortunately, it was the night before our ONE stop in a populated port (most of the time we anchored in the middle of nowhere). The Captain got the name of a medical clinic near the dock in Klawock (pop. 854!) and we got an appointment that AM. They took good care of him and we took a taxi to the next town to get his prescription and were back on the boat in plenty of time. Phew. And of course Medicare applied since we were in the US. It was, however, a scary reminder that things could have been much worse.

I made him promise that on our 25th anniversary I could decide what we were going to do to celebrate. 25 yrs. later I decided on a cruise. I had always wanted to go on one and this was going to be it.

LOL- you are one patient lady, waiting 25 years to get your choice! I'm glad your DH is now on the same page with you.

DH and I chose cruises for exploring Alaska because there was so much that was best seen from the water. We weren't interested in mega-ships with casinos and fancy-dress dining and rock-climbing walls, so we chose a small ship with a laid-back atmosphere, focused on nature. We went in 2012 and loved it so much we went again a couple of weeks ago. I'm a detail freak and a worrier when it comes to travel and it's SO nice to board a ship and know the captain and crew are taking care of everything and I don't have to worry about how long the TSA line will be or if we'll miss our connection or if the hotel has lost our reservation.

Having said that- I'm not sure if we'll cruise again. We loved Alaska and may do a land trip (combined with the ferry system) in the future. The HS class one year ahead of mine is talking about having a reunion on a cruise ship in the Caribbean next year. It's likely the type of ship DH and I have always shunned, but if it's not too expensive I may go on my own just to see what it's like.