Technical Forum

Anyone have an idea where to post my experiences on a South Pacific cruise? Are cruises listed as special destinations which I could add to my travel pages?

I cannot find any destination or key word that would make sense. There is no "South Pacific", no general "Polynesia", no "Cruise" or "Cruising"?

I will also make pages about the destinations I have travelled to, this is no problem.

But where would someone search for info about cruises?

I am sure nobody would search for a South Pacific Cruise in Brisbane, Sydney or Auckland where the cruises start. And French Polynesia which would be listed as a destination is only a small part of the cruise.

I want to list tips about choice of cruise company, cabin choice, cabin neighbours, noise, shows, food, shore tours - just everything you should think about before booking a cruise.

Anybody has an idea and can help?

Thanks in advance.

"Australia and Oceania" covers that part of the world.
Cruises are hard to place. It's been discussed a lot. Not sure if it will be catered for or not in the future.

Thanks, Pam. This is a good idea. I will post the cruise there. Did not think of Oceania LOL

hahah but South Pacific is far more recognized blobally than "Oceania". oh well ...

But after clicking on "Australia and Oceania" in the travel forum about one million times I could have thought of it... ;-)))

Haha you must be "ship lagged" hahahaa.

Too much French speaking and Polynesia on my mind ;-)))

Ohhh talk about make me envious!! :-))
Oui , maybe your mind is still on holiday!

Look at grandmaR pages. She is our cruise expert.

PJ

Without knowing anything technical about building a website such as this, I would suggest possibly adding a 'CRUISE' designation, with different world areas within that category??

Especially as it seems tht with an aging population, more of us may do more cruises than the adventurous overland travel we used to do.

This would be a great addition to the VT database. It is nearly impossible to find information about cruises if you have to go through all the pages of those destinations. So mostly you would only stumble over such pages but not find them if you search them.

I was also surprised how little useful information for cruise passengers you find in printed travel guides. In most maps they do not even show the passenger ships' docks, and how you get there, how far it is from the city centre, etc. The cruise companies' information often is not helpful either because they want to sell their shore tours. It has taken me a lot of research and email exchanges before the cruise to find out about such technical information and organise my own shore tours.

TO get specific information about cruises, you really need to go to the cruise specific boards or newsgroups. Cruisers are a specialized audience and aren't really the prime target audience for VT.

Something like Cruise Critics has places to review a ship and items such as you have mentioned. For the food, since I take pictures of all the food, I post the food pictures on Cruise Mates - then I can link to it later in other places. And also there is the newsgroup rec.travel.cruises

As for what I do - I do a daily diary which I send by email to my children and other interested parties. Grom this I make VT travelogues in which I link the various locations together. Then I take the information out of the travelogue and make tips from it. I started doing this when we started traveling on our own boat for my mother so she would know what we were doing and where we were, and I continued even after she died for cruise ships or a road trip.

I have links to the various trips on my home page.