Red Carpet Cruises update

1)    Panama Canal, here we come!
2)    Twitter CruiseKing or CruiseChik
3)    Colorado Cruise Club
4)    Go ahead and dream, its good for the soul

Well we’re ready to go cruising again.  Isn’t it nice to know that we don’t just sell cruises; we’re on ships two to three times a year ourselves?  This time it’s our longest cruise to date, a 15-night journey through the Panama Canal with stops in Jamaica, Columbia, Costa Rico and Mexico along the way.  I’m in Florida writing this and we’ll be boarding tomorrow around 1 PM.

We’re going out on Celebrity again, this time on one of their Millennium class (mid-sized) ships, the Infinity.  After having been absolutely spoiled on our recent Caribbean cruise on Celebrity’s new flagship, the Solstice, we decided to cruise this premium cruise line again.

It’s kind of funny why we’re even on this cruise, as it wasn’t in our game plan for this year.  But we were booking this cruise for another couple and just couldn’t believe the pricing for a 15-night cruise, in a balcony stateroom, to a ‘bucket list’ destination, on a premium cruise line.  This cruise was just over $1,800 per person (for a two week premium experience), including the optional cruise/medical insurance plan!  Crystal and I just couldn’t pass it up.

Here’s something to think about that just amazes me.  We go through the Panana Canal locks on day six of our cruise.  At 90,000 gross tons, the Infinity will squeeze through the locks with just 12 inches to spare on each side of the ship!  Talk about threading the needle!

I’ll be blogging and posting pics again along the way back to our website (http://www.redcarpetcruises.com) so check us out over the next two weeks to see what’s going on.

2) Crystal and I have opened up Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) accounts for brief, instant cruise updates and info.  You can catch my twits, tweets, or whatever the heck you call them, by subscribing to CruiseKing.  Or if you want a more female perspective, you can subscribe to Crystal’s account at CruiseChik.  Twitter is an interesting and exploding new social medium in that all posts are limited to a maximum of 140 characters, just three or four lines of text in most cases.  The idea is to say what you have to say quickly and move on.  So these posts can literally be read and digested in about 10 seconds.

I’ll start to use twitter more now when we see flash sales (one day sales events) on upcoming cruises offering exceptional deals, like this cruise we’re on.  I’ll also be tweeting (will someone tell me what the correct vernacular is?) is during this cruise when I have something brief to note.

3) What do you think about starting a Colorado Cruise Club?  Now that we’ve finished out that back area in the salon, we have a perfect room to hold meetings in.  I’d like to get some feedback from you all on this.  The meeting would be for everyone from experienced cruise to first timers just looking to learn a little more and talk to others about their experiences.

The goal would be to look at certain popular cruise destinations (Caribbean, Alaska, Europe) and see if we can put together a group sailing.  Once we get a minimum of eight staterooms booked, the cruise line considers that a Group booking and a lot of good things start to happen. 

There are amenities known as GAP (Group Amenity Points) that each member of the group gets to enjoy at no extra cost.  Complimentary cabin upgrades and preferential stateroom pricing is also available to us for certain sailings. So there’s a big difference if eight couples sail on the same cruise as individuals, as opposed to a single group.

If there’s enough interest I’ll go ahead and put together an initial meeting in the next month or so.

4) Crystal and I went to the recent Elton John concert at the World Arena.  Who would have thought Elton John would have come to a small venue city like Colorado Springs to perform?  I was curious to see if after having played the biggest venues in the world for over thirty years, Elton would just show up, punch the clock for a few songs and make a quick exit in little Colorado Springs.

Absolutely not!  I was so impressed with the heart and soul that guy put into a solo 2 ½ hour performance.  He gave it everything he had.  He can’t hit the highest notes like he did in his prime, and he had to clip some lines that he could hold for longer back in the day.  But his voice was still strong and what he may have lost in his vocal range, he more then made up for with the quality of his piano playing.

There was a special moment however that prompted me to write about this, in the context of a cruise email, if you’ll bear with me for a bit longer. Elton preformed some new arrangements of some of favorite hits, and on one of them, Rocket Man, he absolutely brought the house down. 

It was a fantastic rendition and I’m telling you, you could FEEL the emotion running through the audience, every single one of the 20,000 or so people giving him a standing ovation at the end of the song.

There was a guy next to us who had this uber powerful pair of binoculars that he had brought with him and he was nice enough to pass them to Crystal and I a couple of times to use.  We had pretty good seats, about 300 feet from the stage.  So we had a pretty good look at Elton performing.  But when you used those binoculars I swear you could see the wrinkles in his face.  I mean they were that powerful.

And what was so unexpected and that touched me so much that night was that I just happened to have the binoculars passed to me after Elton finished Rocket Man and the crowd was just screaming their approval in a near deafening roar.  Elton was clearly excited, he got up and walked around the stage for a bit pumping his fists in the air,

Then he stopped, raised both hands, spread them and stared out into the audience.  And it was that exact moment that I had the binoculars passed to me and I trained them on his face as he was looking into the crowd. 

I could see the emotion on his face so clearly it was amazing. And the overwhelming sensation I felt watching him, looking out at us, was that of a man who clearly understood that the road ahead was now much shorter then road behind him and he wanted to soak up every second of this special moment.  It’s hard to explain but if you could have seen his expression I think you’d understand.

This is a man who has been everywhere, done everything.  He’s lived a life the rest of can hardly even dream about.  But he’s done it.

So what’s the point of it all?  Just to tell you to go ahead and dream, its good for the soul.  Dream about doing something, going somewhere, having a most excellent adventure, leaving something of yourself behind when your time is done that others might remember you by.

The world is a book and those that do not travel, read only a page
     
              -Saint Augustine

Thanks for listening.  Check out the Red Carpet website web log over the next two weeks, as I’ll be doing my best to live by my own advice.

Ric

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