Advice

Cruise advice, honestly written

No preferred supplier, so nothing here is written to flatter one line over another. Practical answers to the questions people actually ask before they book.

First cruise mistakes: what nobody tells you before you book

Most of these aren't about picking the wrong holiday. They're about not knowing there was a choice to make in the first place. Here are the ones that actually catch first-time cruisers out.

What a zipline in Alaska taught me about who really owns these ports

I first noticed Icy Strait Point because of an oddly enormous zipline and cable car strung above an Alaskan village. Chasing down why led somewhere I wasn't expecting, and the next stop on the same trip turned out to be a completely different story.

Does your cruise line price-match? What 12 lines actually promise

"Will they match it if the price drops" sounds like a yes-or-no question. Checked against 12 lines' own current terms, the honest answer is: almost all of them will do something, but what, and by when, varies more than most guests assume.

Antarctica and the Arctic: why ship size decides what you can actually do

"Small ships get you closer" is repeated everywhere in expedition cruising. Two real, numbered rules, one decades old in Antarctica and one that only took effect this year in the Arctic, are the reason it's true rather than a sales line.

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