[00:00:00] Speaker A: We were expecting good things and we were very excited but we had so much interest at the start. So many people adding their cruises. Thousands and thousands and Thousands. We have 70,000 plus users now. So at the beginning, I mean it's what we wanted is what we asked for, but it was a lot.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Welcome back everybody to a special bonus episode of the DCL Duo podcast brought to you by My Path Unwinding Travel. And Sam, we got a returning guest from.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: I'm so excited. It's long time, it's been, it's been way too long since we've had Emma from Emma Cruises on our show and she's bringing with us friend Matt to the show. Welcome Emma and welcome Matt.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Hi. Thanks for having me back after a couple of years. I think it's been.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, Emma, if. Let's just put this out there. If you live under a rock, you may not have heard about Emma and her YouTube channel and Emma Cruises, she was on our show ages ago now I think when the. Your channel was still called Cruisings. Just for old people.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: No, Cruising's not for.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Cruising's not just for old people. Sorry, sorry. Cruising's not just for old people. But now it's Emma Cruises. Much cleaner, simpler to remember. What are you up to now on YouTube, Emma? Like you must like how many followers do you have or subscribers?
[00:01:29] Speaker A: I think on YouTube I'm just over 400,000 subscribers I think. So it's got really busy since the pandemic, obviously. I started my website before that. Everything shut down for a long time but thankfully everyone is back cruising and more interested in cruising than ever, I would say. So I've been very, very busy. Co founded a new company with Matt who's here, which is great. And yeah, I've been traveling all over the world.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, you have. I mean you have a ton of cruising experience obviously because you full time run this YouTube channel. You're constantly sailing all over the world, different ships obviously a lot in Europe because Emma and Matt are both over in the uk if that isn't obvious from their accents to our American, mostly American audience.
But you cruise a lot in Europe but you come over and cruise a ton in the Caribbean as well, you know, because obviously some of the bigger lines are doing a ton of sailings and a lot of the newer ships are coming over, you know, to sailing out of Florida primarily and going to the Caribbean. So you have a ton of experience on a lot of lines, even once on Disney Cruise Line. But Matt, we gotta, we gotta ask your Cruising creds.
How many, how many sailings have you. I mean, I don't expect you to have the sailing credentials that Emma has, but are you an avid cruiser yourself?
[00:02:50] Speaker D: You set me up for being underwhelming there, I feel. But it's, it's. After Emma, it's not so impressive. But no, I recently. Late to the, Late to the picture. I've only been on three cruises so far, but with the fourth one booked with Emma. In fact, we're going down to the Canaries on Morella in January.
But, but, yeah, no, it's, I've been on, I've been. And I've also been really unadventurous. I've been on the same cruise line three times, Cunard.
So Mirella was very much like, I need to branch out here, I need to go on other lines. So, yeah, I'm on, I'm right at the start of my journey.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Pack your tuxedo for Morella.
[00:03:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna say you started like at the top of the luxury end of cruising, so now you've gotta like delve into more sort of midline budget cruising. All of the things, you know, the family cruising, obviously, there's so much out there.
[00:03:44] Speaker D: If you knew me, you'd realize I live in shorts and Crocs. So, you know, I'm the last guy who should be on a Cunard cruise. Really?
[00:03:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, Cunard is, is one of the few that has like a pretty strict, I think, dress code, whereas a lot of the other ones now they, you know, they might have sort of, they might still have some dress code for like the main dining, but there's so many other eating options on all of the ships that you don't have to. You can wear your shorts and crocs on, let's say, you know, Royal Caribbean on formal night and just eat at the buffet. You just, you know, just don't eat in the main dining room.
[00:04:16] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm looking forward to all of that to come. I think the, the starting point for Cunard, for me was just because my, my. And this was the initial fascination, why we set up a business in cruising was my parents used to work on Cunard in the 1980s.
So my dad was an engineer and was a nurse. And so this was like the first time taking my mum back on board since she left in the late 80s. So it was quite cool to kind of go back and see it.
[00:04:41] Speaker C: That is really cool. We were lucky enough to see the Queen Elizabeth in port when we were in Alaska.
I'M trying to remember which port we were in. Brian, do you remember? Was it when we were in Juneau?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: I think it was when we were in.
[00:04:53] Speaker C: Or was it in Ketchikan? It was in Juneau or Ketchikan. It wasn't in Skagway, but yeah, I mean, she's beautiful. And it's funny when we saw, we've never sailed on Cunard, but when we saw the Queen Elizabeth, it's like very obvious where Disney took its inspiration because.
Yeah, because the Disney ships very much have that old ocean liner look to them and that's what Cunard still has. I mean, not just the original Queen Elizabeth, which is docked in Los Angeles, but the current Queen Elizabeth and Of course the QE2.
They are clearly still of that classic.
[00:05:29] Speaker D: Look and interesting not to get too geeky about it, but in the early 90s when they were setting up or thinking about Disney for the first time as a cruise line, a lot of the team from Cunard, which was going through some quite financial difficulties at that time, actually headed across to Disney and were poached by them. So I don't know whether there was like any, any kind of acquisition of ideas there coming across, but maybe don't.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Apologize for getting too geeky, Matt, you're, you're among friends.
So we want to talk with both of you.
We're going to divide the show up into two segments for our listeners. So Emma and Matt have co founded a, a company called the Cruise Globe. And if you have not seen this website, I'm going to highly recommend it head over to thecruiseglobe.com spelled exactly like you would imagine those words to be sp spelled. And you can, you can track all the cruises you've taken back to a certain point. There is a kind of a cutoff date. But I've entered all of our cruises in there, which is how I can now tell you that we have sailed on. I have sailed on 41 cruises, 13 ships, 232 days, 49, 251 nautical miles sailed because they're all tracked and you can see the cruise.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Does that include the one you did with your folks like way back on some really swanky line that you weren't sure which one it was?
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yes, I got all the cruises in there except those cruises are older so you can't see the actual. The other thing you can do on the, the Cruise Globe is you can click a cruise and you can actually see your, your route and the stops you took. And so those I can't but anything after, was it 2020?
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Well, we have changed this this week.
[00:07:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Up until last week, we had all the data for cruises since 2015. The data before 2015 doesn't exist. It's not as if we've gone out and just found it somewhere. But because we have how many cruises now, Matt? 380,000 cruises added on the cruise globe. We have a pretty good idea. If someone tells us that they went from Southampton to Bruges, we pretty much 99.9% sure know where that cruise went. So we're doing a very, very. I wouldn't. I'd say a guesstimate. It's very, very good. Pre2015. And I think we go back 100 years now. Is that right? I think 100 years. So.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: Holy cow. So you got the Titanic on there, is what you're saying?
[00:07:43] Speaker D: No, not 12, is it?
[00:07:47] Speaker C: Oh, okay. So that's just a little too far back.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:07:51] Speaker D: But we get that question a lot.
It takes all of the routes between each individual set of ports. So it's like a massive data job, this to basically take. We know every time a ship has gone from say, New York to Bermuda, right. And we will have maybe 80,000 times a ship has gone between those two ports. And so we know what is the most likely route to happen there. So even if that happened in the 70s, we can take a really good idea of like where went between those two ports. If it's 2015 onwards, it's actually every two, three minutes, takes a waypoint and shows you the exact route. But before that, just the satellite didn't exist, as Evan said. So.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:36] Speaker C: Okay. Well, you have to put the Titanic in there manually. I feel like.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: I think anything ship related should not have that.
Yeah.
[00:08:46] Speaker D: It's just Lint's opinion, like you wouldn't believe.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Well, because it obviously didn't re dock at the end. Right.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: So like, maybe a little depressing to watch actually. Yeah.
So where did the inspiration for this come from? You know, I don't know which one of you wants to tackle that, but where were you inspired or why were you inspired to sort of bring this to life?
[00:09:04] Speaker D: Well, like, I can kick it off. I mean, we. We initially set the business up as. We set another business up as thecruisemaps.com, which was US creating print products of these exact routes. Right. So we sell those all over the world and that's great. And these people seem to really like these.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: If you watch the video version of this episode, when it's released, Emma's displaying some maps showing up.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: And there's one behind Matt.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: There's two behind Matt.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's like two behind Matt.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:33] Speaker D: That actually segues perfectly for me because I think we realized that it's wonderful, but people do run out of wall space like myself and.
And, you know, having having that data in a digital platform just makes so much sense, right? The ability to then really dig in on stats, the ability to have it in your pocket in an app form is just really engaging. And then I guess we realized that there was a bigger.
A bigger opportunity than just doing printmaps. We still do those, and they're great and people love them. But bigger opportunity is to. Is to build this platform into something that, yes, first and foremost, tracks your historical roots and tracks your live routes as you're. As you're on the cruise, and then even gives you a predicted route of the ones that you have coming up. Right. And in the fullness of time, we think that actually, like that, that can then be a social platform. You can see where your friends are. You know, you can start to track where. Where obviously with all their permissions and whatnot, that, you know, you can start to see where your friends are, you can start to see their stats. You can maybe even start to find the next cruise you want to go on. And I think that's the. That's where it gets really exciting.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I think it could also be a really powerful tool because, like, you know, on the Disney Cruise Line side, right, like, folks join these Facebook communities all the time to, like, you know, try to get tips around what to do and all that sort of stuff. You could imagine, like, sort of almost automatically people building communities around. I did this sailing. If you have questions, like, you can sort of start to, you know, crowdsource some answers. It's like, let me ask this, Emma, what attracted your interest in this? I mean, I. We're all geeks on this call, so I can only imagine the statistics of it all are fascinating. And at some point, I am going to ask you what your cruise mapper says for your stats. But.
But what piqued your interest about this effort?
[00:11:12] Speaker A: I mean, I joined the company when it was already a physical print company. I saw the product. I thought, that is so cool because I can see when there's been a medical emergency. I can see the detour. I can see where we've gone in the other direction because we had a sea day and we didn't really need a sea day or I can see where we've gone out into international waters so they can open the shops and then they've gone back in. I find that stuff really, really interesting. And I'm someone who has always had just a Google Doc list of my cruises, the nights and where it went. And I think a lot of people in cruising do that, right. So when I had that and I thought, this exists, the data exists. I didn't know that it existed. We decided to put all of that together. So that for me, you know, when I'm coming back from a cruise and I sit down with my friends in a pub and they say, where did you go? I can literally replay. I can press play and. And you can watch the ship go into the fjords and see where we docked. It's very handy for me as a cruise blogger, too. Of course, I can zoom in and I can see where the ships dock in 3D. You know how quite often they dock very far from the place where it is. But I get to talk people through that and say, this is where the ship's right now. If you look right now at Ketchikan, that's where the ships are. That's not where you think they would be, but that's where they are. So it's kind of, for me, about taking.
Everyone loves going on the cruise, but it sort of expands it either side so that you can keep talking about your cruises and you can look forward to cruises when you're not actually on a cruise, which just suits me down to the ground. That's what I like to do.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Can you even, like, get down to the nitty gritty of, like, which port the ship, like, parked in? Because I know some of the. Some of the ports have. Some of the cities that, you know, ships go to have more than one port. Right.
Nassau and Juno. Right. Like, there's a bunch of them, I'm sure, obviously, in Europe as well. But, like. Yeah. Can you sort of get down to that nitty gritty of detail of this ship goes into this port? Not. I don't care that much about which birth number it goes into, but does it go into the port that's close to the city or the port that's outside of the city? Right.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Yeah, you can literally see that. You can see, you know, if there's two that are parked, one's in front of the other. You can see where they are. You can see which way they're facing.
Like, you can see absolutely everything.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It is impressive, Sam. You got to go on, like, No, I know.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: I'm clearly going to. I love, I actually love the physical map idea. I'm not much of a tracker as far as data for my own. Brian does that like that's totally. So we, this is our different like nerd sides to us. But I love the idea of like a physical map of the route that you went and sort of as a way of remembering I'm. I'm curious to do you get down to those little like figure eights and zigzags that the ships make as well not just the route between point A and point B.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Like they're my favorites. Like one that goes where it's supposed to go is the least interesting to me. I will say though, even if you take a cruise and it goes completely to plan, it's not going to be anything like the one on the cruise lines website. That is just an artistic. That's nothing to do with where it actually goes. And quite often cruise lines will add in, you know, a sea day, they don't need it. They'll go off in the other direction, do a loop and come back. And I just love that. It's so fun. But yeah, every time I've had you know, a medical emergency and we've got out to sea and we've had to turn back, drop someone off or if you're tendering, you can literally see where you've like been bobbing around.
I just love that.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I love that too. Like, especially I think about we go between like Nassau and Castaway Key in the Bahamas.
They, you could take like a little, you know, a little propeller boat like between those two ports. They're so close but we, you know, they, you go to them a day apart in on Disney Cruise Line sometimes you might even like have a sea day in between if you're on like a four night cruise. So it's just funny like because you're literally just going out and doing like I want I'm going to say figure eights but it's not really figure eights. You're doing all kinds of weird zigzags and it's just hilarious.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, you would think that, you know, but you don't know. When you're on a cruise ship and you just see the sea in every direction. You don't know until I get home or should I say it, see it live going in the wrong direction. You genuinely don't know. And I'm paying, I'm paying my.
[00:15:29] Speaker D: Yeah, it's those unusual bits that actually they're the Conversation starters. They're the bits that when, if it's digital or it's on your wall, either way it's going to be. That's the thing that want you, you want to talk about with your friends and your family when you come back and oh, we did this or this happened here, we had this medical emergency meant we have to turn back or anything out of the ordinary or even just out of the norm that you would expect that happens is all part of the story.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Right. What's been the hardest challenge for this?
As you've built this out, what was the hardest challenge to overcome?
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Maybe me and Matt have different challenges.
I'll say mine and then you can go Matt, if that's all right. Yeah, I think for me, obviously we, we were expecting good things and we were very excited, but we had so much interest at the start. So many people adding their cruises. Thousands and thousands and Thousands. We have 70,000 plus users now. So at the beginning, I mean it's what we wanted, it's what we asked for, but it was a lot.
[00:16:30] Speaker D: Yeah, no, and the reason for that is that I think some, the reason no one's built this before because you've got flight tracker and flight radar and these type of things for, for flights. Right. But no one's built this same product for ships yet or at least for cruise ships because historical AIs data, the satellite data we use is not perfect. Right. And, and it, it's the, the, the longer you go back, if it's a 2016 cruise, you know, there's occasionally a two hour gap here and there and if that's near a port, it's like that requires some manual intervention to say did it go into the port or did it not? And some are perfect, like most are perfect in fact. But what that means is that there's a big manual element to it. We have a team of 17 people who work full time on checking routes and I, I very much. There have been points, like Emma said, where we've got, we've just launched, or we've just launched a new feature where things tick up really quickly and it's all hands on deck for that, literally. So, um, so yeah, there've been some tough points in the moment, but as, as Emma said, that's exactly what we want really because the, we are keeping it free to use. But the only way to do that is scale, really. Right. You can only, you know, you can only do that if you've got hundreds of thousands of people, eventually, hopefully millions of people on the platform so, yeah, all good problems to have.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Yeah. Now, did you start with any particular cruise lines or did you start just with a particular time frame? Because obviously, as you said, I mean, as you have people adding information on and it grows and grows and grows. But like, did you sort of limit what could be put in at the beginning and obviously now expand. You obviously have a ton of different cruise lines on there now. I don't know if there are. Are there any that you don't have on there or that are more difficult to get?
[00:18:20] Speaker D: I mean, no, they, they are all on there. And you know, it's.
I suppose you could.
At what point does a cruise ship start and that sort of leisure boats? And you know, there's, there's a little bit for really, really small cruise ships. You could make the argument that there are ones that we don't have, but actually, I think most have been added by now. In actual fact, opening up this, these predicted routes for pre2015 was a massive job because you've essentially got to say right now we've got to add every ship that existed before 2015 too, including all the ones that have been decommissioned. Find pictures of them, Find that. All the information on them. So. So yeah, a lot has gone into making sure that it's comprehensive because I think part of the fun is seeing your whole picture, right. And all of your cruising, rather than just a snapshot of it.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: I'd love to ask about the cruise card that you guys have created. I hope I'm using the right name.
I know Emma's. I see Emma is about to. Pulling out her.
Yeah, so. So explain what, what you're showing em. Explain what this. These cruise cards are.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Okay, so this was an interesting one because this was me and Matt trying to convince other people that, yes, people collected cruise cards, which if you're not someone from the cruise industry is kind of hard to believe because this is your, your room key, basically, isn't it, on a cruise, this one? And what we have done is we have created our own version, same size, same sort of material that has the route on it, it has the stats on it, it has where you got on, it's where you got off. And this. If you can sit down with someone and talk about your cruises from this rather than this, it is so much easier because I'm looking through my collection of my cruise cards, have my Disney one right here, but it has my name and literally nothing else on it. I don't know where I got on. I don't know where I got Off. It certainly doesn't have a nice map like that. So that's what we thought. We thought people can either collect just these if they want to, they can put them side by side like I do, because I have my full collection. But often I speak to people who have missed some in their collection, which is very annoying to them, and now they're filling the gaps with these, which I think is so much better.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: That is so cool. Yeah. Because, like, so the Disney card has, as you mentioned, your name, the ship name, and it has the dates, and that's actually more than some of the other cruise lines have, because a lot of the other cruise lines don't even have the dates they do.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: I think you still have a lot more on it because, remember, the cruise card before the app, it would have, like, your dining rotations on it and like Emma's actually.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: I think Emma's actually still has the dining rotation on it, whereas the newer ones don't have the. Yeah, don't have the tiny rotation because that is just. Now it's exclusively in the app. So it's got boring, like.
Yeah, so. And they have, you know, some of them might have some nice artwork, but most of them don't have nice artwork to be. I. I think Disney said Disney has the nicest artwork on theirs. But even that, like you said, it doesn't have the. Yeah, it has. Has Mickey on it and. But it doesn't have the route and it doesn't have any more information. Yeah.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Do you want to see my route from my Disney cruise?
[00:21:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
Look at that. Oh, my God. It's a zigzag, like crazy.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: It was one of the cruises to nowhere. Out of. Yeah, Cruise to nowhere.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: So that is not what was on the website when I booked that cruise to nowhere, but that's where we really went. So now we know.
[00:21:43] Speaker C: Yeah, that was during the restart. They did the cruises to nowhere, out of. It wasn't out of Southampton, it was out of Dover, if I'm remembering.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: I did London. Tilbury.
[00:21:53] Speaker C: Oh, Tilbury. That's right. They had a few different ports. That's right. That's right.
[00:21:57] Speaker D: We found that even.
Even. Even though they're not that visually engaging, those cards, that of the ones you get on board, 86% of people have a collection of them, which is quite, quite crazy. But I think a lot of those collections, at least my one, admittedly small though it was.
It's just stuck in a sock drawer somewhere, you know, not seeing the light of day. So I think it's cool to now actually have them on display and, you know, in a proper album and be able to share them with people.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: I don't know if you're like me, but you want to talk about your cruises, but you don't always want to. You know, when someone comes around, bring it up yourself. So you just leave this out.
Then someone opens it and it's not your fault, and you get to.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: I feel like it's the old joke about marathon runners. Like, have your friends been on a cruise? Don't worry, they'll tell you. Uh, well, I. I'm.
I'm curious, Matt. You alluded to, you know, kind of the.
Kind of the future of the. The. The platform. Actually, maybe before I go there, I had one other question, which is do you have any, like, the unique data in there? Like, you know, people right now on the Disney side are chomping at the bit to understand, like, where's the adventure? Where's the destiny? Like, do. Do you have any plans to surface some of these, like, you know, pre. Actual passengers boarding the ship, being able to, like, add.
[00:23:09] Speaker D: There's a live cruises section now in the app, so you can see. You can see the position of every ship in the world.
Every cruise ship that is. And what's really cool, you can flip that into 3D as well. So if it's in a cool part of the world, you can see the terrain and see the port and whatnot as well, which doesn't exist elsewhere. Oh, very cool.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: There's the adventure doing loops.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that was destiny yesterday.
[00:23:31] Speaker D: Yeah. The nice thing with that feature as well, and we're trying to build out is like, the. The thing that I think most people, at least, again, the people we spoke to about this seem to. Seem to do is like, in the couple of days before you go on a ship, you kind of want to see where the ship is in advance of getting to you. Right. And so this is like taking you from that experience of booking your cruise and then you just put it in the cruise globe and then you kind of track it from it being a countdown through to being a live cruise through to kind of being your historical log of cruises. Right. And it's just like this really nice, easy tracking experience across the board. But we're still working on that future cruise bit in terms of, you know, putting your upcoming bookings in. But that'll be done in a few weeks.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: I can't wait because I will add all of our future cruises immediately.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: As you can imagine, we have a few booked, so.
[00:24:24] Speaker D: Exactly.
Yeah.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: What else is on the horizon, then like, what else? Are you excited that's like, you know, coming soon? If you can share. Wow.
[00:24:32] Speaker D: There's, there's a lot. There's a lot. I think that if I, if I take it out a little further because we've got a lot of plans coming up very soon. But the, the end goal with this is for it to be an app that is your kind of one stop shop for cruising. Right. We feel like, we feel like it should be somewhere where you go to share your experiences about cruising. You track all your cruises, your upcoming ones, etc. But also find new cruisers. I think the one thing that really bugs a lot of people about the industry right now is how tricky it can be to find where you want to go next. And one thing that is really compelling for us is that we obviously, when people have logged all their cruises, they can see on, on a map everywhere they've been. Right. And so contextually that's really interesting because we now have the technology to be able to overlay on that map all the upcoming routes that you could go on. Right. And so that's a very different way of thinking about finding your next cruise. Right. We always kind of search through dates or through, you know, price and those things are important, of course, but it's also really interesting to know, like, how can I get to this spot at this time, you know, and think in more of a map framework of like what's next?
[00:25:50] Speaker C: So that's so cool. So you can think like, okay, so I've been to these, like I've been in the Caribbean and I've been to these five islands, but I haven't been to these three. Let me find a cruise that maybe hits those three or hits two of those three or whatnot.
[00:26:05] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: That.
[00:26:06] Speaker D: Yeah, like if you were. And, and even like if you, if you're on a site like Zillow or like a property site, real estate site, right. You can draw a search area. Have you, if you have done that before, same thing could be true here, right? You could, you could say, well, I've been to the eastern Mediterranean so many times or the eastern Caribbean so many times. What's in the western Caribbean? And you know, I really don't want to go to this port because I've been there five times before, so cancel ones out that don't have that. I've got this two week window to go in and I really want to go these three lines only. You know, that's, that's the kind of search that's a bit hard at the moment. And you know, actually this kind of data, this kind of map interface is. Makes it so much simpler.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: Yeah, it's impossible, as you said, because.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: I recently took a cruise to Svalbard, which is a place, it's very north above Norway. Very interesting. But as soon as I come back, people ask me how do I find a cruise that goes to Svalbard? And I genuinely have no answer other than go on every single cruise line's website, put in northern Europe and then look through the list. Occasionally you can filter by country, but there's no, you can't go on a map and try and find that. And even if we do, we look at a lot of cruise line itinerary maps. Of course, the maps don't even match the itinerary half the time.
Like, it's, it's a terrible experience at the moment. So, yeah, as we have all these days and we have a very good predicted route of where cruises are going to go to be able to see that. I can't wait. I'm so excited.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: Yeah. Because you can at least narrow down, I mean, that would help you narrow down at least to which lines even, like, have gone there. Right. Because, like, I mean, there are certain ports that not a lot of cruise lines maybe go to. And, you know, your point. I've got to go on P and O and Royal and Celebrity and Princess and Holland. And I have to go on every website to search with, like, with specific search requirements and each one's different and try and figure it out. That's daunting.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not good. I mean, some, some travel agents, you can maybe filter by country, but you're not going to be able to exclude a certain thing that you've done so many times or it's, it's just not great. I've never found anything that's great. So we're making something that's great.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Can I add a plug a wish list item? River cruises. I would love to be able to track the river cruises that we've been on in Europe as part of our cruising.
[00:28:22] Speaker D: This is, you're, you're in a, in a, in a. A healthy, healthy number of people asking for that. It's, it's definitely.
Yeah, no, we, we, we're conscious that that should be on there soon. The challenge with river cruises is that unless the data is perfect, you can imagine it cuts through land so easily. Right. So you have to, you have to figure out a way essentially to, I mean, you fundamentally know it's Going to follow the river. Right.
But if there's a 10 minute gap between waypoints in the middle of the ocean, it doesn't matter too much. But if there's a 10 minute gap between two waypoints on a river cruise, that matters quite a lot in terms of the rates. Again, I know I don't have to apologize for getting geeky with it, but that's the, that's the reason it's not there yet. But we will figure it out.
[00:29:11] Speaker C: I can imagine that might also be hard for cruises that get affected by river levels. Right. Like there are some times where you have a cruise that is, you know, it can't go to a particular port or they actually, like, I've heard of river cruises where they land, transfer you from one riverboat to a different riverboat because they can't traverse whatever's in between that they were planning on. And so like that would be much harder to sort of account for.
[00:29:36] Speaker D: Yeah, a whole different thing. Yeah, exactly. It's sort of one cruise that's on two different boats. It's like that's, yeah, that's a tough one. So as ever, it will all be there and like our, our ambition with this is huge in the sense that we want it to be, as I said, want to be the main place people come to when they think about cruising.
And yeah, they might go elsewhere eventually, but we, it's sort of a starting point for when you, when you think about cruising. And obviously we need, we need river cruises. We need everything in there.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: I'm going to tell folks, if you're listening to the show and you're in a place not driving and you can pull out your phone, just, you know, open the browser on your phone, head to thecruiseglobe.com I pinned it as a website on my home screen, on my iPhone and I go to it occasionally and just reminisce.
It is fabulous. And you can do all, you can order the cards, you can order the physical maps, like all that stuff right through the app and sounds like a lot of exciting features to come, but yeah, definitely check it out. I was blown away by it. I've tried other kind of cruise tracking methods, websites, spreadsheets, like all kinds of stuff. And this is like, this is better.
[00:30:39] Speaker C: Than Excel spreadsheet for sure.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Simplest experience I've ever had. And in the beginning there were a few cruises that I couldn't find and then sure enough, a couple weeks later it would be like your cruise has been updated and there it would be. So it's really impressive stuff. So I really encourage everyone out there, go check, go check that out.
[00:30:59] Speaker C: Do you love planning vacations but get tired of being the one that has to figure out all the details like Brian does? Whether you're planning a family vacation, a romantic getaway, or group travel, taking care of everything can sometimes be a hassle. That's where my Path Unwinding Travel comes in. When you work with them, you can be as involved as you like, but have a trusted advisor sharing accurate information and giving you new travel ideas to ensure that your vacation is fun and seamless. And for group travel, they can help field all the questions and make sure everything is coordinated like they did for us with the inaugural DCL Duo Podcast cruise. They might even be able to get you special pricing or exclusive group perks. So whether you've got something booked or you're thinking about booking, reach out for a complimentary
[email protected] DCLDUO or email DCLDUOYpathunwinding.com to let them know who sent you. Thanks to my Path Unwind winding for sponsoring today's show. Now back to the episode.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: I want to shift gears for one second, maybe spend a few minutes here while we have Emma. You sail so prolifically, Emma, and you've been on so many cruise lines, so many itineraries. Like, I'd love to get your thoughts on like the direction of the industry here and like where it's headed. I mean, Disney on our side is building out.
I mean they're probably, they're doubling their fleet over doubling their fleet size in the next, you know, by 2032, I think it is, we'll have all the ships out.
Although then we're speculating the 2031. Yeah, the wonder and the Magic are getting long in the tooth and they'll probably have to retire at that point, but we fully expect Disney may announce let's build two more. You know. So I don't know what trends you're seeing in the industry. We're seeing some pricing trends on the Disney side, some sales for the first time, which we've never experienced as Disney cruisers. But yeah, like, like what, what kinds of things are you seeing in the industry that either really stand out for you, things you're like, I'm glad they're heading this direction or things where you're like, I really hope they rethink that in the near term.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Overall things are going very well. Want to just get that out there first? Everyone's very interested in cruising the numbers are Growing year on year for 30 years or something, if you ignore the pandemic. So it's going very well. People are cruising, they love it. There's a lot more, I think, into multi generational cruises. There's a lot more solo cruising that's going on. The thing that, that I think is kind of annoying is it's getting a lot more confusing to book a cruise. And I like a cruise line where I just pay a price and that's it. And that's becoming harder to do. Even the cruise lines, like we spoke a bit about Virgin Voyages, one of them. I booked a Virgin Voyages cruise this week. But one of the main conversations I had with my friend before booking that was, oh, you'll love Virgin. You know, this is included. It's very simple. People who haven't cruised a lot like that.
And I just worry that by putting in all these different tiers, it just puts people off because they just, you just get to that page and think, oh, I don't understand, I'll just not bother.
So I'm a big fan of, you know, cruise lines like Marella, the British one that we have that includes drinks, gratuities, flights and transfers. One price, that's it. I wish every cruise line was like that.
So that's the thing, I guess I probably spend a lot more time on it than most people because I'm in this industry.
But I do just see people getting.
It's just disheartening when they're so close, but they just get frustrated and leave. So I'm not sure why they do it. I can't, I can't think of. It's to make more money.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: Let's be honest, I wish they would all just include the tips. Like, I know you commented when you sell Disney, the oddity of the tip envelopes, which over time, like in the beginning, I was like, oh, I get it, it's a nice little gym. But now I'm like, I don't ever give out the envelopes anymore. I just, you know, I do the chip tip adjustments, give everyone what they need, go to dinner, and I'm done. But for Disney especially, we've heard from crew like, you know, oh, well, you know, going over Australia, New Zealand is tough for us. Going into the Asian market's tough for us. You know, Europe is even tough because they rely on the tips. And not every place has a tipping culture.
American tipping culture has gotten way out of hand. But I wish the cruise lines are just like, just give me a price and let me Know that the crew is taken care of and if I feel like I want to leave something extra, I can. But I don't have to because I know they're well taken care of in comparison to. I see the tips on our sheet today and I'm like $17 for a seven night sailing for a. That hardly seems accurate. Like it seems like it should be at least this. So like I wish they would sort of give you that option.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just, I don't know if it's to do with being, you know, from the uk. We don't tip in the same way. And I just want to know. I always just prepay the gratuities if I can, but it's just, I just want to know the price.
I don't want. I know you guys often have a lot more things split out than us. Sometimes you see things like port fees. That's so bizarre to me because I can't. The ship is not going to not go to the port. Like I can't take it off.
So just.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: Well, they do take it off. So if they don't stop it. So this is the weird thing, Emma, this is the weird thing they do. If you don't stop in the port for some weird reason, they do refund you those port fees and then you get like. It's so weird though because you'll get like this random like $12 back on your credit card and you're like, what was this for? Oh, it's a, it was a port for fee or something like that. It's very strange. But I agree with you. Like we don't necessarily need it broken out in that fashion. Like give us the, what the full price is and that tell us that that includes fees, taxes, gratuities, whatnot and it's easier. But now with all of these, like I want to talk about Virgin because you just, you know, you mentioned we, we had talked about it before that we started recording the show. Now Virgin's got this pay to play and it's not just Rockstar and Mega Rockstar, but it's pay to play as far as being able to do early booking of things. And I'm wondering what you think about that sort of trend in the industry. There's always been that with like concierge type level, you know, suite, class, whatever you want to call it, depending on what cruise line. But I wonder what you think about that sort of a pay to play scheme.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: I'm always the person who books the cheapest. Whatever it is. If that's an MSC cruise. I'm booking the Bella category, if that's my princess. I'm doing whatever the cheapest one is, which is fine. But I think on some cruise lines like Virgin, what they've done is they have taken what Virgin has always been and added on a cheaper one. So if I now go and book the cheaper one, I'm not going to be able to book dining until I think 15 days or something before, whereas before it's always been 60 days. And I think people have always had problems with getting reservations, haven't they? So it kind of feels like you're not going to get your reservations because you've booked this cheap one and it makes you sort of feel like second class on the cruise, which is just really, really bizarre. I'm all for, you know, if people want to add on a package that includes Wi fi and drinks and stuff, that's, that's fine, that's an add on, but it doesn't affect the basic cruise. And I just don't understand. The Virgin thing, I think is really confusing because to me that's kind of the main thing that sets them apart from the other cruise lines. So why are you trying? You spent so many years lugging off the other cruise lines and saying, you know, and then you just do the same thing. I don't really understand it, but I am cruising with Virgin, but I got the old system because I booked before this changed. So only time will tell. They're saying at the moment that the middle package will be the same price as what it currently is.
It's going to be the cheap one.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: And you're going to have to start paying more for the things that you get now. That's the only way I can see it going.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: I've been noticing or I anecdotally feel like there's three things happening in the cruise industry that I'd love to hear if either validate that I'm right or validate that I'm wrong and give us your thoughts. But like one is I feel like there's a lot of younger people now it seems. I was going to say job well done, Emma. You convince people cruising is, isn't just for old people.
There seems to be a lot of interest in cruising as a vacation amongst like, you know, younger folks and young families, which, you know, before I don't think that that was necessarily true. It seems like there's been a little bit of a stutter in the industry around. Let's just keep building bigger. Like it feels like we might have hit like a, you know, these ships have gotten really big and now we can't get into some of the ports we want. And so we need to like maybe start building a little smaller again.
And then the third thing is I'll say pricing, I think for some of these lines is starting to get a little out of control. Disney is our example. But like Royal Caribbean's newest ships, like the price to get on one of those ships is mind boggling to me. Much less if you're trying to do it in like a, you know, a kind of a ship within a ship luxury concept with them. Right. And there seems to be like even a big spread now between these cruise lines with a lot kind of on the top end and a lot kind of falling toward the, you know, the more budget end. I'm curious, am I right that I'm seeing these three trends and what do you, what do you think about them?
[00:39:29] Speaker A: I think you're right. I think for the average person who's taking a cruise though, they don't need to do the biggest, the newest Royal Caribbean ship for example, because they're not going to know the difference. It's going to be 2 meters wider or something than one that's the second biggest or the third biggest, which can be half the price.
So hopefully most people are not noticing these really high prices for the brand new cruise ships. But I think that just shows how much people value.
Like there's people who are really, really into cruise ships, I mean, obviously us, but they wouldn't be able to charge that price if they weren't full.
So I think in some ways it's kind of nice.
I'm not someone who, I don't normally go on the biggest, the newest, the most exciting, I'll have a great time on the second newest, that's fine. But they're charging that because they can. But it does get really ridiculous when you see basically the same cruise on the newest ship and another one and it's double the price.
I agree with the other points as well about family cruising. I think we've always had quite a family cruise market in the uk. If I meet someone who says, oh, I've been on one cruise, it's a P and O cruise, I can almost guarantee it. They took it, you know, as a family.
But even within P and O, they have two ships that they've launched pretty much since the pandemic and they're completely designed for families. So even the cruise lines that used to be quite traditional P and O used to be kind of like Cunard, Like a little Cunard. They've, they've changed completely. Like they have two sides of their company now, one that's family based and one that's the more traditional side. So it doesn't surprise me at all. You know, if you look at the price of, especially in the school holidays, taking two kids, two adults away for a week, it's cheaper to go on a cruise than it is to stay on land here anyway. So it makes perfect sense to me. And as someone who cruised when I was 11 for the first time, I'm obviously pro starting kids cruising.
[00:41:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
I wonder what you think of. I think there's another trend which is to put all kinds of crazy stuff on the top of these new ships, like roller coasters and zip lines and go kart, you know, courses and all. Just all this kind of stuff. Instead of just a pool, right, like it used just to be, like you had a pool and some pool, some sun chairs, you might have some of these little cabana looking things. But yeah, I'm curious what you think of that trend. I feel like they're just trying to put everything onto a ship nowadays.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: I feel like it's just a different world now though, isn't it? You know, when I did the recent press launch of Norwegian Aqua, there were people on there who create, you know, TikTok videos about roller coasters. All of a sudden they're on the cruise ship and they're getting millions of views and it's just a different game.
People aren't as impressed by, you know, a mini golf course and a rock climbing wall in the same way as they might have been in 1995.
So I think a little bit, in a little bit of a way, it is a gimmick. But also I've done all of these things and I think that they're good fun. So, you know, I've done the go karts. I did walk to the plank on my last cruise, the little ropes course over the edge. I've done all these things, but also I've done them once and I don't necessarily feel the need to go on the go karts again.
[00:42:40] Speaker D: I thought you'd be less positive about it, Emma, after your. Your little issue getting stuck in the water slide.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: But I got, I got stuck in the water slide twice.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Right, I saw that. I saw that.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: Yeah, twice. Once was fine, but they reassured me, oh, now you're all wet, you won't get stuck. Stuck the second time. Yes, I did.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: Hopefully they kept. Hopefully they kept the wrench handy to get that section out for you.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: Yeah, just waiting there. So it was still good fun. I still would recommend it. But the guy even pointed out to me before I got on the slide, that's probably where you're gonna have to get out when you get stuck. So I was like, good to know.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: I feel like this, the putting all this stuff on top of the ships is like, I think the bigger ships, because they struggle to have unique. Like before, you'd have these smaller ships that could go lots of places. And so the itinerary, like the ship was, you know, the floating hotel, a nice resort, make sure you're well taken care of, you know, all that sort of stuff. And had some activities to do when you were transiting between ports. You know, something keep you interested. But now it's like, well, there's only so many ports we can go to, so you got to stay on the ship and so you got to put.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: A lot of stuff, have fun.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: It's so true. It's just a different way to cruise. You know, if I'm taking a cruise that's quite port intensive, I probably would pick a ship that has 2,3000 guests on it, maximum. Probably. I've done cruises. I took a cruise on Symphony of the Seas, big Royal Caribbean ship. I got off that ship one day out of seven and I still didn't do everything because my job is to try and see all the entertainment and try and do everything. I didn't manage it in six full days.
So it's just a different way to cruise. If that cruise went nowhere, I mean, I still would have gone. I still would. Had a great time. It'd just be different. So, yeah, I mean, I like.
[00:44:26] Speaker C: I think you're right though. It's. It's choosing whether is the ship the destination, like with Symphony, or if you're going to be on an Icon class newer ship. Right. Or if you're going to be on the Disney Destiny or the Disney Adventure. Is the ship the destination or the ports the destination? Like you're cruising in Alaska or you're cruising to Norway where the ship accepts experiences. It's not unimportant. It's just not quite as important as the ports are. And so it's choosing. Or the Canary Islands is a great example that Matt's going right on. Like you're. If you're going to a specific place or you really want to explore that place, then you don't need maybe 12 water slides and go karts and wave flow riders. Or whatever, you know, on top of the ship.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: The ship me and Matt are going on. So Mirella, just buy their ships. They do have a few new ones that are coming in the future, but at the moment, their fleet is all old Royal Caribbean and old celebrity from, like, the 1990s. And that's kind of my favorite size of ship, to be honest. I think that's really, really fun. It's big enough that, you know, they have a proper theater and they have, you know, at least one big pool. Two pools. But it's not. There's no go karts on there. There's nothing like that. So, Matt, if you're looking forward to the water slide. There's no water slides, I'm afraid.
[00:45:42] Speaker D: Well, you know, you know very well my favorite was a transatlantic on QM2, on Queen Mary 2, which was seven sea days.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: And Emma's hopefully displaying the visual of that route right now. There you go.
[00:45:54] Speaker D: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: This was mine.
Yeah. It might be slightly different because this was my. My January one that I did on Queen Mary 2, but, yeah, that's not my ideal cruise. I get seasick.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: All right, I want to shift one last segment that I want to do that I didn't prepare you for. I want to ask you each some favorites and some things maybe you're looking forward to here. Before I do that, though, I did promise I was going to ask Emma about her cruise globe stats. And so I don't know if you have them handy, but I'd love to hear the high line, the top line ships, you know, sailings.
[00:46:27] Speaker C: Yeah, no more sailings. Number of ships. Yeah.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: So it's no surprise. My top cruise line coming in at 18 Cruises is Norwegian Cruise Line. No surprise, followed by MSC, interestingly, and Morella.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Don't know if that's surprising.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: I'm surprised this P and O isn't up there. Wow. Okay.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: I think I've done five, so it's nearly, nearly there. Just not top three. But I have done 80 cruises in total. I've done 485 days at sea and 96 days. Thousand nautical miles. So I'm not over a hundred thousand. I did. We saw Gary from Tips for Travelers recently, and he has, I think, the highest number I've ever seen of nautical miles. Very impressive. But I have done.
[00:47:09] Speaker D: We do get a lot of crew members on who, who, who, who end.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: Up with some crazy stats that doesn't count.
[00:47:15] Speaker C: They don't get to count.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's impressive. I've got 152 ports, 39 countries and 55 cruise ships.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[00:47:27] Speaker C: That's a lot of different ships, Emma.
[00:47:29] Speaker A: I mean, that's the other day, and they were like, saying that it was wrong because I had done more cruises than ships, and I had to explain that I'd been on the ship two or three times.
[00:47:38] Speaker C: Right, right, of course. But that's a lot of variety of ships. I mean, I think 55 for 80 some cruises. Like, that's quite. That's quite a bit of variety. Because if you looked at our stats, because, you know, we've both done 30.
Well, 30 and 31. Or 31 and 32. I can't remember cruises on just Disney Cruise Line. And remember, Disney Cruise Line only has six ships, so each one of them we've been on multiple times. And so our number of cruise ships is way smaller than somebody might think. Right. Like, based on the number of cruises, like we. Brian said he's been on 41 total cruises.
But if you look at the number of ships, it's a much lower number. Right, Brian? It's probably, what, like 10, 11, something like that.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I'd have to look 13. We've been on 13 ships across five cruise lines.
[00:48:30] Speaker A: Yeah, you should know those inside out.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: I'm looking at my cruiseglobe passport right now.
[00:48:37] Speaker C: I mean, even on Virgin, we've been on the same ship twice. Right. So, like, we've only been on it anyway. Yeah, that's true. Fair. They are. They are all exactly identical.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: All right, Sam, I'm going to shift us into a Brian version of Rapid Fire, which carries no arbitrary questions, no arbitrary rules, and no judgment, unlike Sam's version. But let me start with asking each of you what has been your favorite itinerary that you've sailed? Matt? It sounds like maybe the transatlantic, but. Yeah. What's your favorite itinerary, Matt?
[00:49:08] Speaker D: Yeah, transatlantic for me, but, like, just the historical heritage value of that and just, you know, those.
Something I always wanted to do.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: Emma, what about you?
[00:49:17] Speaker A: Mine would be Singapore to Tokyo or any sort of cruise in that region. Any cruise that goes to Japan. Fabulous.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Well, you know, Tokyo's getting their own ship from Disney soon, Emma.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: There you go. What has been your favorite ship that you've sailed on?
[00:49:36] Speaker A: It's my first cruise ship, but I went on it last year, so 20 years later, and it's almost like a completely different cruise ship. But I like it now for what it is now, and I liked it in 2005 for what it was in 2005. So it's Norwegian Spirit, Norwegian ship, not built for Norwegian. Very grand big glass elevators, massive atrium, nice promenade deck.
I think it's special to me because it was my first cruise, but I just love it.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: Matt, what about you?
[00:50:08] Speaker D: I would have to say Queen Mary 2. Been on twice now of the, of the three, both on Queen Mary 2. I love the ocean liner history there and my parents worked on the QE2 so it was like the precursor to QM2. And, and so yeah, I just love all the, the history of the, all the ocean liner travel there.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: All right, Emily, come back to you. What's the, what's the ship or the itinerary that just, just keeps escaping? You want to do it but you just haven't been able to do it yet.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: It's got to be Holland America because that is the only big cruise line I have not cruised with. And it's not as if I'm, I'm not ignoring them for any reason. They're just not where I am at a time when I'm ready to go somewhere. They don't come to Europe a lot and when they do come to Europe they do cruises that are 21 nights long and it's just not worked out. But I feel like I'm missing quite a big cruise line so it's on my to do list. I'm just waiting for the right, the right itinerary.
[00:51:05] Speaker B: Matt, what's, what's. Maybe I'll rephrase it for you. Like what's the. You've got this, you know, cruise cup coming on Mariella, but.
Or Morella I should say. What, what's the, what's the line or the itinerary or the ship that you really want to get on after that?
[00:51:19] Speaker D: Well, actually I would love to, love to do one of the big new Royal Caribbean ships just because I think it would be so different to what I've done so far. Just like the other end of the spectrum. Just see just the complete other side.
[00:51:34] Speaker C: Complete opposite. Yeah, yeah. Like fancy, like Queen Mary, like people dressing in tuxes and then like the craziness of what happens like the belly flop competition on the top deck of the icon of the scene.
[00:51:49] Speaker D: I totally laugh for it. I would love to see it. So yeah, probably a huge ship going out of the Caribbean. Yeah.
[00:51:55] Speaker B: I'm going to ask one last question here because I find this to be a dividing line between even the most die hard cruisers. So we covered the Royal Caribbean. No, was it, it was around the world cruise that was Princess that they were On.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: Yeah, Princess.
[00:52:08] Speaker C: No, no, it was that. It was Royal Caribbean.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: Was it Royal Caribbean?
[00:52:12] Speaker C: Yes, it was the serenade of the sea.
[00:52:14] Speaker B: That's right. The serenade of the seas. You're right, yeah. So we covered the around the world cruise. I want to know, Emma, would you do an around the world cruise or is that just like way too much time on one ship?
[00:52:24] Speaker A: Not right now, never say never.
But if I was given the amount of money that it costs to do a world cruise and six months of my life, I would create my own round the World cruise on 20 different cruise lines, all these different ships. I would occasionally stay on land. You know, I think it would be nice after you've done a two week cruise to stay on land for a week and then maybe fly. I'm not a big fan of the sea days. So maybe flying across the Atlantic and then maybe flying across the Pacific and then doing the rest of it by ship. I think that would be fun because to me embarkation day is the most exciting thing of all. And if I could do many, many embarkation days, maybe start more formal and get more and more casual as it goes on as I've worn all my clothes, but I think I would do that. So I'm not going to go out and book a world cruise.
I mean if someone gave me one I'd go, sounds great.
I would prefer to create my own one rather than, I can't imagine being with the same other guests for six months either. Like imagine if. I'm sure most people are nice but you only need one person who's not another nine months with them. Right.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: I was impressed when we had Leslie and Jenny. Yeah, Leslie and Jenny on and they were talking, we asked them, it was like just like you're seeing the same people over. It was actually like a small group of world cruisers. And then like, you know, they had.
[00:53:44] Speaker C: People, other people sort of rotating in and out.
[00:53:47] Speaker B: He said, yeah, you know, every night at like 5:30 we know we're going to be at this bar for a happy hour and there's, you know, there's a guy on board who's like a, a dentist. And so he, you know, he, he offered to like, you know, check people's teeth out if anything happened. And there's a group of parents who are like trading their kids back and forth for school and you know, all this sort of, I was like, it's like there's this own little like community.
[00:54:06] Speaker C: Basically they created their own little town within. Yeah, within the ship. But yeah, I hear you though. And I think the DIY version would be a little bit. It would be different, especially if you're gonna avoid those longer jaunts of across the Atlantic or across the Pacific or something like that. Yeah. If you are not a sea day person, then you probably want to avoid that.
[00:54:29] Speaker A: There was just places.
Imagine you've booked a world cruise and you've got one day in Sydney and you get to Sydney and you have a terrible cold and then you're coming back. I would want to stay in certain places once I'd made that journey.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: So it sounds like maybe you and Matt just need to swap. You know, like you get off in the uk, he'll hop on for the transatlantic while you fly over and then you can. Yeah, there you go. What about you?
Would you do a world.
[00:54:54] Speaker D: I would absolutely. I would absolutely love to. I'm not saying someone who's never spent more than eight days in a row on a cruise ship, but.
But I have done quite a lot of overland travel and like for long distances and I love that like, like you said, Tom, the sense of like building a community with the people around you for months on end, it's. It's a real thing. And, and I think unlike Emma, I love cd, so I would be absolutely fine with that.
And yeah, I think it's also like the ultimate sense of you've made it to some extent that you have the money and time to be able to do that. Right. It's kind of, it feels, it feels like a certain juncture in your life that you're able to do it. So that's pretty cool.
[00:55:36] Speaker C: Yeah, that's an accomplishment. I'm with you, Matt, though. I would jump on that idea. I mean, if that opportunity came up for us. Obviously we have an 11 year old, soon to be 12 year old, so that's not really possible because school, they require them to be there and I'm not going to do homeschooling. Plus we can't afford to do that and not work, so that's just not going to happen. But I think it would be such an amazing experience and I love the idea of building that community and I love a sea day. I will say it seems like they didn't have that many sea days. When we talked to our friends Jenny and Leslie, who both were on the world cruise, it seems like, I mean, there were obviously times where they had sea days, but it seemed like a lot of the time it was port after port after port after port without any breaks. And that would be also kind of exhausting and so I just, the geek.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: In me was like, the logistics around this thing and like the, when they all got off and they had like to pack all their stuff that they can, like how they were, I was like, the logistics of this just blew my mind. But all right with that.
Let me ask Matt, do you want to let folks know? I mean, I've said the website a few times, but if you, if you want to like let folks know where they can find the cruise globe, you know, go ahead, give it the, give it the plug that it's due and I'll be with you in a second, Emma, so folks can find you as well. So.
[00:56:55] Speaker D: Yeah, I appreciate that. No, it's. The Cruise globe is the main product for us. It's. That's the free, free platform to view all your cruises. And you can find
[email protected] or it's in both app stores. So the iOS App Store for Apple and the Google Play store for Android, just search the cruise globe and you'll find it in there.
[00:57:15] Speaker B: I tell you what, you know, another feature you need to implement is a little tip jar because that it's free blows my mind these days because it's, it's so great and so.
[00:57:22] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, increasingly blowing my mind. Brian as well. But.
[00:57:29] Speaker B: And Emma, you have so much great content out there for anyone who's considering something other than a Disney cruise. I know we are tourists in that space. We occasionally sail on other lines or have people sailed on other lines, mostly to compare the lines back to Disney because we're big believers and letting folks know there are other ways you can spend your money than going on a Disney cruise and still have a fabulous time. But Emma, where can folks find and connect with you because you have so much great stuff out there?
[00:57:54] Speaker A: So I keep things very simple. Now. My handle for everything is just Emma Cruises. So if you search Emma Cruises anywhere, you'll find me. I think I'm on every social media account now. My website's emmacruises.com I'm Emma Cruises on YouTube. Easy peasy.
[00:58:09] Speaker B: Amazing. Well, be sure to check out Emma. Follow her. If you don't already so much great stuff out there, head over to thecruiseglobe.com put your cruises in. It's really fascinating.
And with that, Matt, Emma, thank you for coming to us late in your day from all the way across the pond to spend some time with our audience. We super appreciate it.
[00:58:29] Speaker A: All right, thanks for having us.
[00:58:30] Speaker D: Awesome. Thanks for having us. Cheers.
[00:58:37] Speaker E: Well, thanks everyone. Out there for listening this week. We really, really appreciate it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. You can keep getting great content from us every week. In fact, twice a week we publish shows so be sure to hit the subscribe button to get all of those great episodes. And if you want to watch us live, we have a live show now every week Monday nights, 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm Eastern over on YouTube.com DCLDUO so be sure to head over and check that out. If you want help support the show, be sure to hit those five stars on Apple Podcasts. And if you leave us a written review, a five star written review, we will read it at the top of one of our main episodes. So please head over there and hit those five stars. Of course you can. You can also help support the show by supporting our fabulous show sponsor My Path Unwinding Travel. You want to book your next Disney vacation? Head over to mypathunwinding.com DCLDUO or email them at DCLDUOYpathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. If you've got questions or you'd like to connect with us, the best way to do that is to head over to DCLDuo.com it's got links to all of our things. Full catalog of the podcast episodes including a search for catalog for the podcast links off to our vlog, a link to our Etsy store where we sell some fun fan inspired magnets. Link to our Patreon. If you'd like to help directly support the show each and every month, just head over to the website or patreon.com DCLDUO also has a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter that we're hoping to start really pumping out monthly here, at least on a few blog articles that we've written. So DCLDUO.com is the best way to connect with us. You can also of course email us@info dclduo.com or reach out to us on our voicemail line at 402-413-5590. That's 402-413-5590. The DCL Dual Podcast is not affiliated with Disney Cruise Line, the Disney Company or the Disney Family of theme parks. The views expressed on the show are solely those of the individuals on the podcast and in no way reflective. Use the Disney Company or Disney Cruise Line. If you have questions about a Disney Cruise or Disney Vacation, please contact a great friend folks over at My Path Unwinding Travel or Disney directly or your own travel agent. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL duo.
[01:00:38] Speaker B: Good night.
