The Flagg Agency

My daughter stands by the rock wall

As a cruise consultant who helps families choose the cruise of their dreams, I have had some questions of late about cruise ship safety. Current and prospective clients have been asking me “Are cruise ships safe for children?” With the image of Costa Concordia still fresh in their minds, I fully understand their concern.

2012 Cruise Holidays President's Cruise Itinerary

Are you interested in learning more about European River Cruising and Cruise Holidays’ 2012 President’s Cruise aboard the beautiful new ms AmaCerto?  Cruise Holidays recently conducted a virtual presentation about river cruising and Cruise Holidays’ exciting and exclusive escorted river cruise. You can watch and listen to the webinar by clicking this link.

The link takes you to a WEBEX presentation. If you do not have WEBEX, you will be asked to download a small program to get it to play. I promise that this will not infect your computer with a virus or install malware.

Disney Cruise Line cruise documents

One of my favorite duties as a travel agent is hand delivering cruise documents whenever possible. The excitement a client exhibits when they are actually holding the documents is amazing. Even if it is just luggage tags because a cruise line has gone to e-documents, there is something about this tactile experience that makes the vacation seem real.

Even though we are still a month away from our Disney Dream cruise, we were thrilled to get our documents from Disney Cruise Line in the mail today. For the record, getting cruise docs excites travel agents too.

I have some thoughts to share about the news media and the cruise industry. Before I begin, I want to stress that my thoughts go out to the families of those who are missing and who lost their lives as a result of the tragic accident of Costa Concordia on Friday January 13, 2012. I am reserving judgment and speculation on what actually happened and the aftermath until all the FACTS are released. With that said, I think what has been written and broadcast about the cruise industry in the weeks since the accident shows a lack of integrity by many of those in the media

Chuck and our daughter at Hubbard Glacier

This morning I was looking back at pictures from our first cruise. We went to Alaska in 2004. My daughter was just 15 months old. Now she is eight and quite the cruise veteran. I still have the pictures from the cruise. So many of them look like others I have seen on the internet. There are the same shots of Hubbard Glacier.