preslove
Lifer
- Sep 10, 2003
- 16,754
- 64
- 91
Arik5405
Platinum Member
- May 9, 2005
- 2,044
- 1
- 81
Those bad reviews for the OP's place are just the cruiselines getting back at him for posting bad reviews about their ships all over the internet.
About what you'd expect from a guy who describes himself as a "Multi-talented entrepeneur".
preslove
Lifer
- Sep 10, 2003
- 16,754
- 64
- 91
Aharami
Lifer
- Aug 31, 2001
- 21,205
- 165
- 106
since Ive never cruised either, educate me. how does a cruise allow a traveler to experience culture?
Arik5405
Platinum Member
- May 9, 2005
- 2,044
- 1
- 81
There's plenty of people from many different cultures that you can mingle and talk with, as long as they aren't busy changing sheets, cooking dinner, or making towel animals.
OutHouse
Lifer
- Jun 5, 2000
- 36,410
- 616
- 126
I have seen first hand as both a passenger and as a island resident the lack of care put forth by the cruise line industry. They plan routes that chris-cross their own paths wasting thousands of gallons of diesel fuel simply because they have an agreement with OPEC?? They make fast stops at ports that have businesses that give percentages back to the cruise lines. This many times means many boats in one port of call at one time flooding the small towns and bays with thousands of people at one time. This serves NO-ONE but the cruise line. It creates a scene reminiscent of Miami. Packed crowded beaches, increased opportunity for crime, and a huge environmental impact on those beaches and islands. Cruises are full of hidden costs especially for the off boat excursions. By the second or third stop passengers are feeling squeezed by all the added costs from the over-priced drinks to the mandatory gratuities. Very few actually contribute significantly to the economies of the people in those port of calls. The countries make their money on the taxes charged to the cruise lines but how much of that actually makes it to natives is questionable. Most of the reefs around these high traffic ports have suffered dramatically. Cruise lines fail in the opportunity to educate their passengers. They don't teach or even tell people about the places they will be visiting. Never even giving them a heads up about the hazards that may exist. They purchase the absolute lowest grade foods available from bulk suppliers to cut their costs and just last week alone three different boats returned to Florida with cases of Norovirus. The cruise lines are actually very hard to even reach or contact directly. I ask why do these ships not work together to plan their routes so that the ports of call are more evenly distributed? Some see no boats for a week and then 5 in one day. Why don't they stay at these port of calls for multiple days actually giving their customers a chance to see and experience these places and stop the burning of literally thousands of gallons of fuel a day? Why do they not offer some basic safety classes in relation to the destination? Why do they continue to destroy the very oceans and reefs that they rely on for their own industry? You cannot even purchase reef safe sunscreen on board these boats. What will it take for the industry to take on some responsibility and start serving their customers and associates rather than just itself? The industry has now made a habit of hiring third world help simply because they will work for cheap and are easily repressed. Many never even being allowed out of the bowels of the boat. Is this industry of lies something we as a race should support?
quoted so you cant change it.
polarmystery
Diamond Member
- Aug 21, 2005
- 3,888
- 8
- 81
dr150
Diamond Member
- Sep 18, 2003
- 6,570
- 24
- 81
I have seen first hand as both a passenger and as a island resident the lack of care put forth by the cruise line industry. They plan routes that chris-cross their own paths wasting thousands of gallons of diesel fuel simply because they have an agreement with OPEC?? They make fast stops at ports that have businesses that give percentages back to the cruise lines. This many times means many boats in one port of call at one time flooding the small towns and bays with thousands of people at one time. This serves NO-ONE but the cruise line. It creates a scene reminiscent of Miami. Packed crowded beaches, increased opportunity for crime, and a huge environmental impact on those beaches and islands. Cruises are full of hidden costs especially for the off boat excursions. By the second or third stop passengers are feeling squeezed by all the added costs from the over-priced drinks to the mandatory gratuities. Very few actually contribute significantly to the economies of the people in those port of calls. The countries make their money on the taxes charged to the cruise lines but how much of that actually makes it to natives is questionable. Most of the reefs around these high traffic ports have suffered dramatically. Cruise lines fail in the opportunity to educate their passengers. They don't teach or even tell people about the places they will be visiting. Never even giving them a heads up about the hazards that may exist. They purchase the absolute lowest grade foods available from bulk suppliers to cut their costs and just last week alone three different boats returned to Florida with cases of Norovirus. The cruise lines are actually very hard to even reach or contact directly. I ask why do these ships not work together to plan their routes so that the ports of call are more evenly distributed? Some see no boats for a week and then 5 in one day. Why don't they stay at these port of calls for multiple days actually giving their customers a chance to see and experience these places and stop the burning of literally thousands of gallons of fuel a day? Why do they not offer some basic safety classes in relation to the destination? Why do they continue to destroy the very oceans and reefs that they rely on for their own industry? You cannot even purchase reef safe sunscreen on board these boats. What will it take for the industry to take on some responsibility and start serving their customers and associates rather than just itself? The industry has now made a habit of hiring third world help simply because they will work for cheap and are easily repressed. Many never even being allowed out of the bowels of the boat. Is this industry of lies something we as a race should support?
Aggghhhhhh! MY EYES! D:
What did you say? Do you have cliff notes?....No seriously!
That's what you do when you do a long rant on ATOT.
Red Squirrel
No Lifer
Evadman
Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
- Feb 18, 2001
- 30,990
- 5
- 81
This letter is not meant to be witty or insulting and I am afraid I won't even be able to make it eloquent. But I will do the best I can to comment on Mr. AJ Rothberg's magic-bullet explanations. As this letter will make clear, AJ is like a giant octopus sprawling its slimy length over city, state, and nation. Like the octopus of real life, he operates under cover of self-created screen. AJ seizes in his long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection. He has repeatedly indicated a desire to brandish the word "consubstantiationist" (as it is commonly spelled) to hoodwink people into believing that it is cantankerous to question his ploys. Is that the sound of rarefied respectability that AJ's vassals so frequently attribute to AJ? The balmy blathering of a huffy troublemaker is more like it. In fact, AJ takes things out of context, twists them around, and then neglects to provide decent referencing so the reader can check up on him. He also ignores all of the evidence that doesn't support (or in many cases directly contradicts) his position.
AJ's favorite activities include cheating, lying, and tricking people into believing that he can change his short-sighted ways, don't you think? AJ cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures. He sees such gestures as a sign of weakness on our part and is thereby encouraged to continue making us less united, less moral, less sensitive, less engaged, and more perversely refractory. To oppose Leninism, we must oppose Mohockism. To oppose pessimism, we must oppose sciolism. And to oppose AJ, we must oppose neo-complacent, obscene wastrels.
AJ talks a lot about solipsism and how wonderful it is. However, he's never actually defined what it means. How can he argue for something he's never defined? To help answer that question I will offer a single anecdote. A few weeks ago, I overheard some oligophrenic dummkopf tell everyone who passed by that at birth every living being is assigned a celestial serial number or frequency power spectrum. Astounded, I asked this person if he realized that AJ's central role in the promotion of insincere, blowsy miserabilism dates back a number of years. Not only was his answer "no", but it was also news to him that I want my life to count. I want to be part of something significant and lasting. I want to provide people the wherewithal to lead AJ to resipiscence.
It amazes me how successful AJ has been at intensifying or perpetuating nepotism. History will look back on that unfortunate success with profound regret and wonder why the people of our time didn't do more to offer true constructive criticism—listening to the whole issue, recognizing the problems, recognizing what is being done right, and getting involved to help remedy the problem. Perhaps our answer should be that yawping, temperamental apostates serve as the priests in AJ's cult of socially inept, blasphemous presenteeism. These "priests" spend their days basking in AJ's reflected glory, pausing only when AJ instructs them to suborn the most shameless four-flushers I've ever seen to blackmail politicians into forcing women to live by restrictive standards not applicable to men. What could be more callow? The answer is rather depressing, but I'll tell you anyway. The answer begins with the observation that rather than attempting to work out his disagreements with others, AJ commonly turns to his friends tapinosis and meiosis, calling his opponents "pharisaical cads", "sadistic cretins", or even "base-minded renegades". I find that rather sad, primarily because if AJ doesn't like it here, then perhaps he should go elsewhere.
I am certain that if I asked the next person I meet if he would want AJ to control Web content that he deems politically or morally objectionable, he would say no. Yet we all stand idly by while AJ claims that the ancient Egyptians used psychic powers to build the pyramids. If you ask him if it's true that it is a grave injustice for him to demand special treatment that, in many cases, borders on the ridiculous, you'll just get a lot of foot-shuffling and downcast eyes in response. He uses the word "chromatographic" without ever having taken the time to look it up in the dictionary. People who are too lazy to get their basic terms right should be ignored, not debated. AJ always sounds like he's reading a prepared speech. But let's not lose perspective. AJ has somehow made up his mind that he is always being misrepresented and/or persecuted. It seems to me that what he is doing is jumping to a hasty conclusion in the absence of adequate data. A more reasoned analysis would reveal that AJ's publicity stunts are a sociopolitical tragicomedy. On the one hand, they spawn a society in which those with the most deviant lifestyle, capricious behavior, or personal failures are given the most by the government, but on the other hand, they promote the lie of mammonism. The most entertaining part, though, is that some people don't seem to mind that AJ likes to destroy all tradition, all morality, and the entire democratic system. What a lethargic world we live in!
The law of parsimony suggests that one need not look any further than AJ's truculent canards to see that the Mad Hatter and the March Hare from "Alice in Wonderland" behave more rationally than AJ and his puerile proxies. In view of that, it is not surprising that I'm at loggerheads with AJ on at least one important issue. Namely, he argues that he is the most recent incarnation of the Buddha. I take the opposite position, that AJ claims that the world's salvation comes from whims, irrationality, and delusions. Predictably, he cites no hard data for that claim. This is because no such data exist.
There is no such thing as evil in the abstract. It exists only in the evil deeds of evil people like AJ. This is just simple math. That is, if A is more slovenly than B, and B is more slovenly than C, then A is more slovenly than C, right? In case you don't have the secret decoder ring, A is an out-of-touch used-car salesman; B is an unregenerate antagonist; and C is AJ Rothberg. If it weren't for his double standards AJ would have no standards at all. Hence, it's entirely a waste of time even to address his hypocrisy. That's why I'll state merely that if the only way to combat the pompous ideology of dogmatism that has infected the minds of so many incontinent interdenominationalism enthusiasts is for me to become clinically depressed, then so be it. It would truly be worth it because there are those who are informed and educated about the evils of credentialism, and there are those who are not. AJ is one of the uninformed, naturally, and that's why he indisputably believes that he is clean and bright and pure inside. Unfortunately for him, that's all in his imagination. AJ needs to get out of that fictional world and get back to reality, where people can see that it's possible that under different circumstances, his compatriots in exclusionism might have ended up as featherbrained, sneaky insolent-types drifting the streets—inconsiderate windbags pressing tracts crammed with conspiracies into the palms of startled passersby. However, I cannot speculate about that possibility here because I need to devote more space to a description of how I shall not argue that AJ's newsgroup postings are an authentic map of his plan to make widespread accusations and insinuations without having the facts to back them up. Read them and see for yourself.
If AJ believes that his ruderies are all sweetness and light, then it's obvious why he thinks that emotionalism is a viable and vital objective for our nation's educational institutions. You may not believe me when I say that the only way for him to redeem himself is to stop being so brassbound, but the facts are plain and abundant for anyone with the eyes to see and the intelligence to discern fact from fancy. Stripping from the term "electrophysiologically" the negative connotations it evokes, I will try to stop the Huns at the gate.
How many of AJ's satellites are content to sit around doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the world around them? I'd hazard to guess that the number is pretty high. AJ appears committed to the proposition that his views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while other people's positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological, and unworthy of serious consideration. If you were to get a second opinion from someone who's not a member of AJ's gestapo, however, he'd of course tell you that you might say, "AJ is a scavenger of human misery." Fine, I agree. But every so often, AJ tries priming the pump of stoicism. Whenever he gets caught doing so he raises a terrific hullabaloo calculated to prevent us from getting in touch with our feelings.
If AJ doesn't realize that it's generally considered bad style to shackle us with the chains of lexiphanicism, then he should read one of the many self-help books on the subject. I recommend he buy one with big print and lots of pictures. Maybe then AJ will grasp the concept that he is squarely in favor of solecism and its propensity to create an untrue and injurious impression of an entire people. This is so typical of AJ: he condemns bigotry and injustice except when it benefits him personally. Finally, whatever your thoughts or feelings about Mr. AJ Rothberg are, I urge you to help me challenge his pea-brained assumptions about merit.
</ me being bored because I think AJ Rothberg is a bot. >
AJ's favorite activities include cheating, lying, and tricking people into believing that he can change his short-sighted ways, don't you think? AJ cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures. He sees such gestures as a sign of weakness on our part and is thereby encouraged to continue making us less united, less moral, less sensitive, less engaged, and more perversely refractory. To oppose Leninism, we must oppose Mohockism. To oppose pessimism, we must oppose sciolism. And to oppose AJ, we must oppose neo-complacent, obscene wastrels.
AJ talks a lot about solipsism and how wonderful it is. However, he's never actually defined what it means. How can he argue for something he's never defined? To help answer that question I will offer a single anecdote. A few weeks ago, I overheard some oligophrenic dummkopf tell everyone who passed by that at birth every living being is assigned a celestial serial number or frequency power spectrum. Astounded, I asked this person if he realized that AJ's central role in the promotion of insincere, blowsy miserabilism dates back a number of years. Not only was his answer "no", but it was also news to him that I want my life to count. I want to be part of something significant and lasting. I want to provide people the wherewithal to lead AJ to resipiscence.
It amazes me how successful AJ has been at intensifying or perpetuating nepotism. History will look back on that unfortunate success with profound regret and wonder why the people of our time didn't do more to offer true constructive criticism—listening to the whole issue, recognizing the problems, recognizing what is being done right, and getting involved to help remedy the problem. Perhaps our answer should be that yawping, temperamental apostates serve as the priests in AJ's cult of socially inept, blasphemous presenteeism. These "priests" spend their days basking in AJ's reflected glory, pausing only when AJ instructs them to suborn the most shameless four-flushers I've ever seen to blackmail politicians into forcing women to live by restrictive standards not applicable to men. What could be more callow? The answer is rather depressing, but I'll tell you anyway. The answer begins with the observation that rather than attempting to work out his disagreements with others, AJ commonly turns to his friends tapinosis and meiosis, calling his opponents "pharisaical cads", "sadistic cretins", or even "base-minded renegades". I find that rather sad, primarily because if AJ doesn't like it here, then perhaps he should go elsewhere.
I am certain that if I asked the next person I meet if he would want AJ to control Web content that he deems politically or morally objectionable, he would say no. Yet we all stand idly by while AJ claims that the ancient Egyptians used psychic powers to build the pyramids. If you ask him if it's true that it is a grave injustice for him to demand special treatment that, in many cases, borders on the ridiculous, you'll just get a lot of foot-shuffling and downcast eyes in response. He uses the word "chromatographic" without ever having taken the time to look it up in the dictionary. People who are too lazy to get their basic terms right should be ignored, not debated. AJ always sounds like he's reading a prepared speech. But let's not lose perspective. AJ has somehow made up his mind that he is always being misrepresented and/or persecuted. It seems to me that what he is doing is jumping to a hasty conclusion in the absence of adequate data. A more reasoned analysis would reveal that AJ's publicity stunts are a sociopolitical tragicomedy. On the one hand, they spawn a society in which those with the most deviant lifestyle, capricious behavior, or personal failures are given the most by the government, but on the other hand, they promote the lie of mammonism. The most entertaining part, though, is that some people don't seem to mind that AJ likes to destroy all tradition, all morality, and the entire democratic system. What a lethargic world we live in!
The law of parsimony suggests that one need not look any further than AJ's truculent canards to see that the Mad Hatter and the March Hare from "Alice in Wonderland" behave more rationally than AJ and his puerile proxies. In view of that, it is not surprising that I'm at loggerheads with AJ on at least one important issue. Namely, he argues that he is the most recent incarnation of the Buddha. I take the opposite position, that AJ claims that the world's salvation comes from whims, irrationality, and delusions. Predictably, he cites no hard data for that claim. This is because no such data exist.
There is no such thing as evil in the abstract. It exists only in the evil deeds of evil people like AJ. This is just simple math. That is, if A is more slovenly than B, and B is more slovenly than C, then A is more slovenly than C, right? In case you don't have the secret decoder ring, A is an out-of-touch used-car salesman; B is an unregenerate antagonist; and C is AJ Rothberg. If it weren't for his double standards AJ would have no standards at all. Hence, it's entirely a waste of time even to address his hypocrisy. That's why I'll state merely that if the only way to combat the pompous ideology of dogmatism that has infected the minds of so many incontinent interdenominationalism enthusiasts is for me to become clinically depressed, then so be it. It would truly be worth it because there are those who are informed and educated about the evils of credentialism, and there are those who are not. AJ is one of the uninformed, naturally, and that's why he indisputably believes that he is clean and bright and pure inside. Unfortunately for him, that's all in his imagination. AJ needs to get out of that fictional world and get back to reality, where people can see that it's possible that under different circumstances, his compatriots in exclusionism might have ended up as featherbrained, sneaky insolent-types drifting the streets—inconsiderate windbags pressing tracts crammed with conspiracies into the palms of startled passersby. However, I cannot speculate about that possibility here because I need to devote more space to a description of how I shall not argue that AJ's newsgroup postings are an authentic map of his plan to make widespread accusations and insinuations without having the facts to back them up. Read them and see for yourself.
If AJ believes that his ruderies are all sweetness and light, then it's obvious why he thinks that emotionalism is a viable and vital objective for our nation's educational institutions. You may not believe me when I say that the only way for him to redeem himself is to stop being so brassbound, but the facts are plain and abundant for anyone with the eyes to see and the intelligence to discern fact from fancy. Stripping from the term "electrophysiologically" the negative connotations it evokes, I will try to stop the Huns at the gate.
How many of AJ's satellites are content to sit around doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the world around them? I'd hazard to guess that the number is pretty high. AJ appears committed to the proposition that his views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while other people's positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological, and unworthy of serious consideration. If you were to get a second opinion from someone who's not a member of AJ's gestapo, however, he'd of course tell you that you might say, "AJ is a scavenger of human misery." Fine, I agree. But every so often, AJ tries priming the pump of stoicism. Whenever he gets caught doing so he raises a terrific hullabaloo calculated to prevent us from getting in touch with our feelings.
If AJ doesn't realize that it's generally considered bad style to shackle us with the chains of lexiphanicism, then he should read one of the many self-help books on the subject. I recommend he buy one with big print and lots of pictures. Maybe then AJ will grasp the concept that he is squarely in favor of solecism and its propensity to create an untrue and injurious impression of an entire people. This is so typical of AJ: he condemns bigotry and injustice except when it benefits him personally. Finally, whatever your thoughts or feelings about Mr. AJ Rothberg are, I urge you to help me challenge his pea-brained assumptions about merit.
</ me being bored because I think AJ Rothberg is a bot. >
- Nov 30, 2005
- 50,231
- 118
- 116
MikeyIs4Dcats
Lifer
- Nov 5, 2001
- 18,366
- 3
- 0
- Nov 30, 2005
- 50,231
- 118
- 116
Nope, and never will. Of the myriad friends and family who have been on them, only those in the +50 crowd are the ones who have gone back and done it again and nothing they describe sounds even remotely fun and/or interesting for people under 60.
KT
Evadman
Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
- Feb 18, 2001
- 30,990
- 5
- 81
They are fun. I wouldn't want to go too frequently, but the few times I've gone I've had tons of fun.
preslove
Lifer
- Sep 10, 2003
- 16,754
- 64
- 91
I don't understand the point of a cruise. Why not take the money you spend on airfare to the port and the cruise money to go to a decent resort in Cancun or the Caribbean?
Edit: Though, comedy or music cruises do sound cool. The Weezer cruise sounded cool, and some stand up comedy cruises sound interesting.
Edit: Though, comedy or music cruises do sound cool. The Weezer cruise sounded cool, and some stand up comedy cruises sound interesting.
Miramonti
Lifer
- Aug 26, 2000
- 28,653
- 100
- 106
I don't car about the OP's intent, but the post is correct.
There's a sh!tload of scam in cruiselines and they often don't do sh!t for local culture, even going as far as trying to create their own replica of it in order to get the largest piece of the financial pie possible. However that hasn't stopped me from cruises, but knowing this made me a better traveler on them
There's a sh!tload of scam in cruiselines and they often don't do sh!t for local culture, even going as far as trying to create their own replica of it in order to get the largest piece of the financial pie possible. However that hasn't stopped me from cruises, but knowing this made me a better traveler on them
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