My Upcoming Cruises
Here are the details on all of the cruises I currently have booked
and speculation on what others might get added to the list
My Upcoming Cruises
Here are the details on all of the cruises I currently have booked
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This Spring, I'll be cruising on the first ship in a brand-new class of ships from American Cruise Lines. The ship will be called American Encore. It's currently under construction, so I don't have a picture of it, but here's an artist's rendering of what it should end up looking like...
I've cruised with American Cruise Lines 10 times previously, plus once on their sister line, Pearl Seas Cruises. ACL is currently experiencing a huge surge of popularity, as word has gotten out about how well suited they are to seniors who are looking to cruise the rivers, lakes, and coasts of the United States. They're literally building new ships as fast as they can (they own their own shipyard!) and they've been been bringing a new ship in to service every four months to meet the demand. Because they fully control the design and build process, they can easily make design changes and improvements to each new ship based on the feedback they get from their crew members and passengers. With each new ACL ship I've been on lately, I've seen some interesting improvements... and from what I've seen about this upcoming new class of ships, they've incorporated all the best ideas from their last few ships in to this one.
Here's a document with deck plans and some basic information about this upcoming new ship:
If you would like to take an
even closer look at that document,
so that you can zoom in on some of the things in the deck plans,
just click on it... and a much larger version will open up in a new
browser tab.
This will allow you to zoom in on small details.
Kellyn and I had such a great cruise on Sun Princess last February that we've booked a cruise on her brand new sister ship, Star Princess, for the Fall of 2026.
Our favorite thing about our time on Sun Princess was spending many warm days relaxing at The Sanctuary Club, an un-crowded area that most passengers don't have access to... and this time we figured out how to do it much less expensively than we did it the last time.
Incredibly, we'll be saving over two thousand dollars by staying in a Sanctuary mini-suite next time, rather than staying in a Sanctuary Suite like we did last year. The two cabins are the exact same size and share most of the same features and perks, with a few notable exceptions:
We won't have access to the
Signature Lounge.
We won't be able to use the services of the "suite experience manager".
There won't be a Lavazza coffee machine in our mini-suite. (We couldn't care less!)
To save a couple of thousand dollars, we can definitely live without those things on our 2026 Star Princess cruise!
Spending a week in The Sanctuary on Star Princess will be wonderful. Our time last year in the Sanctuary on Sun Princess was kind of like a second honeymoon. We really felt pampered, and it was one of the best cruises we've ever had... which is saying a lot since I've been on 72 cruises!
Cruises I'd Like To Take
A few cruises I would love to do:
A cruise on Royal Caribbean's
"Ovation Of The Seas". This is a Quantum-class ship, which is my favorite
class of Royal Caribbean ships. I sailed on her sister ship, Quantum Of
The Seas, in December of 2025 and I totally loved the smart design choices that
Royal Caribbean made when they designed this ship. Ovation Of The Seas
will be undergoing refurbishment in the Spring of 2026, and getting some
interesting new upgrades. I think it would make for a great YouTube video
to get onboard and show the new improvements. This wouldn't be difficult
to do, because Ovation Of The Seas is going to be based here on the west coast
of the USA for the next couple of years. Summers in Alaska, and the rest
of the year cruising out of Los Angeles on the Mexican Riviera. Either of
those options would be easy for me to get to from my home in Washington state.
A cruise with Holland America.
That's probably the biggest cruise line that I've never sailed with. I
think I should try it sometime. The reason I've never sailed with Holland
America before is that I view it as a cruise line for old people. Well,
now that I am one, I guess I should give HAL a try.
Any cruise that could get me to
the Caribbean island of Jost Van Dyke. As far as I know, cruise ships
don't stop there... but they do stop at the neighboring island of Tortola,
and from there you can do an excursion over to White Bay on Jost Van Dyke.
The beach at White Bay is one of the best I've ever been to, and we love having
lunch at the Soggy Dollar Bar there at the beach on White Bay. I'll be
keeping my eye out for the right opportunity to get back there sometime!
A cruise in the South Pacific, visiting places like Tahiti and Bora Bora... but not with the Paul Gauguin cruise line. I've looked in to that cruise line, and I just don't think it's for me. To get to Tahiti on a more mainstream cruise line (like Princess, for example) I'd have to do a 30-day roundtrip cruise out of Los Angeles that goes all the way down to Tahiti. Kellyn would never agree to be away from our dog for that long... so, for now, a Tahiti cruise is probably not going to happen. But maybe someday after the dog is no longer with us?
Need A Travel Agent?
Booking a cruise can be confusing, especially if you haven't been on many cruises before. There are lots of first-time cruiser mistakes that a travel agent can keep you from making. Also, the call centers of some of the big cruise lines are severely understaffed these days... creating extremely long wait times to talk to a customer service representative. When you book a cruise through a travel agent, you'll never have to get stuck on hold with the cruise line... your travel agent does all that kind of stuff for you.
If you're interested in booking a cruise with any cruise line... please feel free to use the services of my travel agent, Caitlin Gallagher. She's extremely pleasant to deal with, easy to talk to since she lives in the United States and speaks without any kind of an accent, and quite experienced and knowledgeable about different types of cruising. Caitlin is the owner of Ambren Travel. Visit her web site, check out the Ambren Travel Facebook page, or contact her using the information below.
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