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Gimmicky, circus-like ships too much? |
Nearly a dozen new and large cruise ships will be adding 20,000 new berths a
week or more than a million a year, which is too many, writes travel pioneer and
author Arthur Frommer in King Features.
"And they will be less like ships than like frantic amusement parks with bells
clanging, lights flashing and crowds rushing from one spectacle to another," he
added.
The Queen Victoria, for example, is a huge new cruise ship that will have a
veritable circus aboard, he said.
New ships will have "circus-training programs," "bungee jumping" and "clown
acts."
"These will be added, presumably, to the rock-climbing walls, boxing rings,
bowling alleys and vertiginous Jacuzzis jutting out from the top deck and
hanging perilously over the sea (the latter have become standard on some ships,"
he wrote.
Another new ship from Costa Cruises will have extra-charge, spa cabins so close
to fitness rooms that those staying in them can walk to the showers in their
bathrobes.
On some of the new ships, the democratic, one-class policies of cruising will be
totally jettisoned. There will be a "ship within the ship" - an area enjoyed
solely by passengers paying higher fares, a number of restaurants to which they
alone will be admitted, lounges set aside for the elite.
"I find these developments deeply disturbing and reflecting a lower level of
culture, education and maturity in our nation," he wrote.
A cruise should be sufficient in itself, he adds.
"It is an opportunity to venture out onto a new and unfamiliar area of the world
- the vast oceans. It is sufficiently different and sufficiently provocative of
eternal questions, that it need not be aided by bungee jumping, amateur boxing,
glass-blowing exhibitions, rock-climbing and wave-surfing," Mr Frommer said.
A cruise should be an occasion for conversation and reading, he added.
"In place of this, the cruise ships are becoming amusement parks geared to a
child's mentality, raucous and hyperactive, the equivalent at sea of what gyms
at home and on land normally provide. Why go to sea to become part of a crowd,
to engage in bungee-jumping, rock-climbing, wave-surfing and glass-blowing? Or
to listen to lectures on better makeup and gardening?" asked Mr Frommer. |
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