Just Cruising Segment Begins

Patrick Wiscombe 0:51

All aboard for the infamous just cruising segment on the Inside Travel Talk podcast and radio show. My name is Patrick Wiscombe in Studio with Mark Faldmo. Coming up in this final segment of the show, we're going to be talking about Royal Caribbean and their brand new ship that's going to home port in San Diego. That's good news. Cruising in the Mediterranean, that will be the cruise deal of the week, and how to find the most popular cruise line in your state. That's coming up in this segment, and it's only about cruise news. So let's uh go ahead and start right

Royal Caribbean Shifts To San Diego

Patrick Wiscombe 1:30

there. Mark uh Royal Caribbean is just announced that they're going to home port one of their ships in San Diego. What details do we have on that, though?

Mark Faldmo 1:39

This will be the third ship on the west coast for Royal Caribbean. 2026 and 2027 winter season, they will move the serenade of the seas to San Diego. It will run three, four, and seven night destinations and include a new port for Royal Caribbean, which will be La Paz, Mexico. So this won't be the typical Mexican Riviera cruise. It'll have that additional unique port of La Paz, Mexico. This year, Royal Caribbean added the navigator of the seas and ovation of the seas. So this will be the addition of a third ship on the west coast for Royal Caribbean.

Legend Of The Seas Itineraries

Patrick Wiscombe 2:14

A uh new Royal Caribbean ship, Legend of the Seas, is now for sale to the public. Uh, do we know the itineraries?

Mark Faldmo 2:21

Just a few days ago, they put their brand new ship, the Legend of the Seas itineraries up for sale, and it will spend the summer of 2026 sailing the Mediterranean from Barcelona, and then it will move to Fort Lauderdale for the winter season of 2026, where it will do Caribbean cruises. So if you're interested in sailing on the newest, biggest and best that Real Caribbean has, this is a ship for you.

Patrick Wiscombe 2:46

That is one of the things that you and I love to do. Just uh jump on new cruise ships. Got that new cruise ship smell.

Map Your Sailings With CruiseGlobe

Mark Faldmo 2:52

Yes.

Patrick Wiscombe 2:53

I thought this was kind of cool, Mark, that you can track all of your cruises in one place with the cruise globe.

Mark Faldmo 3:00

This is a unique app that someone's come up with called the cruise globe.com. And you can go in and put all of your past cruises back to 2015 in, and it will show you a map on the world of every cruise cruise port and itinerary that you have. All of these ships have satellite data, so it actually tracks the exact path that your cruise ship went. Did it really?

Patrick Wiscombe 3:26

Oh, see, okay. I'm gonna have to do that then because that sounds like a lot of fun just to see the lines of where we went.

Mark Faldmo 3:32

Sometimes you know, Google has a thing everywhere you went this year, and so Delta also has a thing. So I like to see that where I've been, but it doesn't track any of the cruises really. So this is an interesting app to do that. There are a lot of people that actually do go out and purchase professionally done framed photos of their cruise itinerary. Okay, and so this is kind of an alternate to doing that. I am going to do this and see what my map shows up. Again, they have all data going back 10 years to 2015, so it will only have a small portion of my cruises, but it'll be interesting to see that.

Most Popular Cruise Line By State

Patrick Wiscombe 4:09

This was kind of interesting that you can actually find out what the most popular cruise line in your state is. Because we're broadcasting from Salt Lake City. Let's start with Utah. What is Utah's most popular cruise line?

Mark Faldmo 4:24

As with most of the country, Utah's most popular cruise line is Disney cruise line.

Patrick Wiscombe 4:29

Okay, that makes sense.

Mark Faldmo 4:30

This was actually a survey study done by USA Today. West Coast US is Princess Cruises, and then you kind of have the middle and northern part of the US, which is Disney Cruise Line, and then Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, the Carolinas is Carnival Cruise Line. In Florida, it's Celebrity Cruise Line. Whoa, celebrity. Yep. In New York, it's MSC cruise line. And then in in Georgia, New Jersey, and Delaware, it's Virgin Voyages. I know I left a few couple states out of that, but those cruise lines cover the survey. I find it interesting. Royal Caribbean did not show up as a favorite in the state, as an all-out favorite.

Patrick Wiscombe 5:16

Well, especially in Florida with Icon of the Seas, man, there's a lot of Royal Caribbean ships down there.

Mark Faldmo 5:22

Norwegian didn't show up on this. Disney has the bulk of the country, and then Carnival and Princess are next, and a couple states that have Virgin, Celebrity, and MSc.

Patrick Wiscombe 5:33

Oh, interesting. That is not anything that I thought you were going to say. I guess you could say celebrity is owned by Royal Caribbean.

Mark Faldmo 5:41

Correct. Yeah, but they are their own distinct brand.

Patrick Wiscombe 5:43

So

Mediterranean Deal Of The Week

Patrick Wiscombe 5:43

they are. Always in this segment of the show, at the bottom of the hour, we always have the cruise deal of the week. And this week we're going to the Mediterranean. And what offer do we have for listeners this week?

Mark Faldmo 5:57

So this is on Princess Cruise Lines. They have their standard 40% off cruise fare, free cabin upgrades, and third and fourth guest free in the same cabin. But on top of that, for Mediterranean cruises book by February 28th, they're giving up to an additional $800 instant saving discount and deposits of $99. Select voyages.

Patrick Wiscombe 6:22

So you're saying that you're going to be very busy this week. Listeners have to take advantage of these offers between now and like the 25th through the 28th.

Mark Faldmo 6:32

Correct. Yeah. So it's close in. We have from today, Saturday, February 22nd. We do have a week left to book those. So these are on Princess's newest ships, which are sailing over in the med right now. You're not only getting pretty much brand new ships, but you're getting very interesting itineraries.

Patrick Wiscombe 6:52

You, me, and our wives, we like cruising on the newest cruise ships. I was looking at uh Sun Princess. That's a nice ship. That's a way nice ship.

Mark Faldmo 7:00

It is. And in the med, it has some very good pricing. So on the Sun Princess, they have a seven-day Western Mediterranean cruise that sails between Barcelona and Rome. It visits Gibraltar. So that's a stop I've not been to. But then it goes to Marseille, Genoa, Italy, port that'd be closest to Florence and Pisa, and then ends in Rome. And then August 9th, so this is in the summertime. And I'm just going to give the balcony cabin on this starts at $1609 per person for that seven-day cruise. Wow. The reason that the inside cabin is only like $200 a person less. And so for that price difference, you might as well go in a balcony.

Patrick Wiscombe 7:46

But it is available, just in case.

Mark Faldmo 7:48

It is available if you want that lower inside price. There's also an ocean view price in between that.

Patrick Wiscombe 7:54

Now, when you talk about ocean view, I won't say it's called a porthole, but basically that's what you're talking about. Some kind of a porthole or pitcher window.

Mark Faldmo 8:01

Or pitcher window. Yeah. Okay. And that's an ocean view. And then the cruise that I think I find most interesting is on the majestic princess. This is a 10-day Greece and Turkey cruise. So it sails between Athens and Rome. This one's a little bit closer in. It's on June 20th, but it sails from Athens, goes to Mykonos in Greece, goes to Kusadassi in Turkey. So you from there you can go to Ephesus, which I think is one of the most fascinating archaeological sites you can visit in that whole region. Then it goes to Rhodes in Greece, goes to Crete in Greece, goes to Cataclone, which is near Olympia. So that would be the port where you can go see where the first Olympics were held. Goes to Valletta in Malta, which we've talked about before. That I think is one of the most fascinating ports. Sailing into Valletta, Malta is amazing. That's probably one of the top five cruise experiences that you can have, I think, just because of the scenery and how Valletta is laid out. Then it goes to Naples, go to Capri, go to Pompeii, can go eat at the restaurant where the very first pizza was made. In Naples, Italy, and then ends in Rome. So it's a 10-day cruise. Balcony cabins start at $17.99 per person.

Patrick Wiscombe 9:41

This sounds like uh very, very port intensive.

Mark Faldmo 9:44

It is. Yeah. So it only has two C days in 10 at your import every other day.

Patrick Wiscombe 9:51

How much was that again? Did you say $17.99?

Mark Faldmo 9:54

$17.99 for a balcony cabin. Wow. Again, there are insides available. They're about $200 a person less than that. But for this sailing into Malta, I think the balcony cabin is worth it just for that experience.

Patrick Wiscombe 10:09

This might seem like a strange question, but what side of the ship for this cruise would you be on? The port side, the left side, or starboard side, the right side?

Mark Faldmo 10:18

You would want to be on the starboard side for the sail into Valletta, Malta. Okay. Uh that's where all the scenery is. When they sail out, uh it'll be on the other side of the ship. Um, but you know, I I think the sail in is the time when it's I guess you'd say it's most magical when you're sailing in.

Patrick Wiscombe 10:36

You have raved about Malta for as long as we've been doing the show, over a year and a half now.

Mark Faldmo 10:41

Yeah, I think of all the cruise ports I've been to, that is definitely in the top five of my favorite cruise ports.

Patrick Wiscombe 10:48

Well, and I mentioned that you've done 150 cruises before. And so if it gets your attention, 150 plus cruises is a lot for anybody. But what I'm saying is if it got your attention, just do it the way Mark did it. Because if he was moved, just do it.

Mark Faldmo 11:04

Yeah, and you know, and this itinerary again, Kusadassi is also one of my favorites going to Ephesus. I loved right there by the port in Kusadassi. They had a bazaar. You know, those Turkish bazaars are pretty interesting. I got a couple boxes of Turkish Delight. That was my souvenir from there. But so this itinerary has one port in my top five and one port probably in my top 15 that I've been to. So it's a very good itinerary. And also starting in Athens, go in a few days before and see Athens. My favorite experience there is just going to a street cafe and getting a Euro. Nothing like a good Greek, authentic Euro.

Patrick Wiscombe 11:42

Well, I know what we're going to do, Nikki and I. Man, we are loading up on the cruises. Have you noticed that? Yeah, this week has lots of cruises. There's even a little bit more to come in the next segment. All right, more cruises coming up in the next segment. We've also got Mark's travel tips, and we're going to talk about NCL accepting PayPal for cruise payments. That's kind of cool. And we'll talk about the uh the top five cruise deals, good Mexican, Riviera, and Alaska cruises. The goodness just continues in the next segment. Thank you so much for allowing us to be part of your weekend. You're listening to the Inside Travel Talk podcast or radio show. Call Market's office if you want to book any of these vacations. 888-718-7717. 888-718-7717. We will be right back.

Todd Carlson 12:37

Explore your world. You're listening to the Inside Travel Talk Podcast and Radio Show. Presented by Blue PlanetVacations.com. America's best travel advisors. Call or text the show now. 801-649-3700. 801-649-3700. We'll be right back.com, America's best travel advisors. Call or text the show now. 801-649-3700. 801-649-3700. And now, here's Patrick Wiscombe and Mark Faldmo.

Patrick Wiscombe 13:43

Welcome back inside of the Inside Travel Talk Podcast and Radio Show. My name is Patrick Wiscombe alongside Mark Faldmo.

Norwegian Adds PayPal Payments

Patrick Wiscombe 13:52

Coming up in this final segment of the show, we have got the top five cruise deals that we're just going to mention. We're extending the uh the cruise deal of the week or the infamous just cruising segment into this section of the show. And we're also going to be talking about NCL, Norwegian cruise lines holding, is now going to accept PayPal for cruise payments. So that is not something that we have seen quite yet. In fact, Mark, let's just go ahead and start there as we come back from break. NCL has announced that they are going to take PayPal for cruise payments.

Mark Faldmo 14:29

When did that start? That just barely started. Um, and so that's for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings brands, which is Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceana Cruises, and Regent Seven C's. They did some testing on this and found that customers using PayPal get a 43% faster checkout than those using some of the traditional methods of checkout.

Patrick Wiscombe 14:50

So friction creates delay.

Mark Faldmo 14:52

Yeah. And you know, I think last week or maybe the week before we talked about, I think it was JetBlue, they're starting to take Venmo. A lot of travel companies don't take these kind of alternate payment methods. So I think this is a good thing for travel brands to start taking PayPal, Venmo, Google Pay, Apple Pay, things like that. Just making it easier is a good thing.

Patrick Wiscombe 15:13

Apple Pay, I'm a huge fan of. There is just something magical about sending money through air. It's just amazing.

Mark Faldmo 15:20

In the past, and I guess this segment we talk about travel tips. I always would have Google Pay or Apple Pay added to your phone when you're traveling. Make sure your phone is secure. So you know it's behind a password or some type of biometric ID. I lost my wallet on an airplane.

Patrick Wiscombe 15:40

Really?

Mark Faldmo 15:41

And I landed in New York. I don't know what happened. I walked off the plane. I did the airplane dance, which I call it, which is check for my keys, wallet, and you know, all of the important things. And I was walking off, I didn't see it. I went back to my seat, no wallet. Really? So I had no money, no credit cards. I did have my phone. Luckily, I knew my credit card number. And so I set up a Google Pay account with that. I got that all taken care of. I had the Uber app on my phone so I could get to where I needed to get, but Google Pay saved me. I do like these alternative payments. Without that, I wouldn't have been able to check into my hotel. Yeah, you would have been hosed. I would have, yeah, it would have not been fun.

Patrick Wiscombe 16:26

I saw a survey that Gen Z does not trust AI for booking travel. Gen Z is so tech savvy, but I

When AI Makes Trips Worse

Patrick Wiscombe 16:35

can see that AI could go horribly wrong.

Mark Faldmo 16:38

And I've got some stories about this. AI is a great tool, especially for travel advisors. I use it every day. I've had some interesting stories. In fact, just two weeks ago, we had a person come into the office and they said, We found this perfect trip, and here's what we want to do. And I looked at it and I was like, How did you come up with this? It's like, oh, I just said I want to do a trip to England and Scotland in AI, and I had it plan me out. I suppose I could put that together, but it would have been miserable vacation with the amount of travel AI had them doing. One of the things they told AA is they wanted to see lots of castles at like six different castles a day, and it was the craziest itinerary I've ever seen. It probably made logistics sense. It didn't. And so there was another study done. I think we talked about this last year, where someone said, I want to take a family vacation to Mexico, plan it out. Yeah, I remember. And it gave, it was like to Mexico, Cancun area, and it had them stained in four different places, and two of them were adult-only hotels that AI recommended. So there is a place for AI and travel. It can give you some good ideas, but I would not rely on it. That's another reason why to use a professional travel advisor. Some of these AI tools are great, but they don't know. I mean, AI has all of this information and it just kind of spits it out and hopes it's good. Um, going back to that main story, the Gen Zs, which are I think 18 to 35 year olds right now, just don't trust AI for much right now.

Patrick Wiscombe 18:20

So call Mark.

Mark Faldmo 18:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Call Mark call Mark, no matter what generation you're a part of, and we can help.

Patrick Wiscombe 18:26

Let AI plan something for you, but let Mark check your work. If you've been listening to this show for any amount of time, you know that Mark and I love traveling on trains, and we have the biggest train

Train Travel Trends For 2025

Patrick Wiscombe 18:40

travel trends. Wow, say that ten times for 2025. What are the train travel trends?

Mark Faldmo 18:48

The trend is there's more and more of these train companies operating all around the world. There's a new train in UK, uh, the Belmont Express, which operates two to three night train tours with sleeper cars. It's a luxury train that goes around the UK. There's some new additions to the Orient Express, which we've talked about. Now, both of these first two options are in the luxury category. So they're very, very luxurious. In fact, off-air we were talking about this new car that uh Orient Express has added, which is where a person buys the whole car. And it has a bedroom, a big bathroom, a sitting room with a fireplace. It's probably pretty pricey, but if you can afford it, it's probably amazing. That'd be awesome. Also launching in 2025 that we've talked about, the Dosce Vita Orient Express, which is an Italian train tour. I think last week we talked about the night train. There's actually several of these night trains starting around Europe. There's one starting in Italy called the Espresso Train, which is a night train to get people uh from Rome to the Italian Alps. And then further away outside of Europe, most of what we've talked about is in Europe. We've talked a lot about the Rocky Mountaineer, yeah, which has Canadian travel as well as southern Utah train travel.

Patrick Wiscombe 20:11

And you were on it in August of last year, 24.

Mark Faldmo 20:14

24, yeah. And you loved it. It was two days. Yeah, I went from Denver to Moab. I would do it again in a heartbeat. And then there's uh two brand new trains out there. There's a train starting in Saudi Arabia, so it will be the first rail service. It's called Dream of the Desert. And I don't have a lot of details on this, but I think that would be interesting to do. And then there's a train called the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which is an 11-day train from China to Mongolia. So that starts in Beijing on a bullet train to Inner Mongolia, and then you explore all of Mongolia, including the Gobi Desert, some other interesting sites there in Mongolia. That's kind of our train report for this, but lots of new and exciting things when it comes to train travel. I like train travel because it's kind of a laid-back way to travel. Yeah.

Patrick Wiscombe 21:08

And you don't have to watch the road.

Mark Faldmo 21:10

You don't have to watch the road. Or the tracks. Yeah, you get scenery. I kind of like that slower pace of rail travel.

Patrick Wiscombe 21:18

Okay, before we close up shop for the week, let's mention the top five cruise deals for this week. This will just be an extension of the infamous Just Cruising

Top Cruise Deals Mexico Alaska

Patrick Wiscombe 21:27

segment from last segment. What are the top five cruise deals?

Mark Faldmo 21:31

So I just wanted to point out on the blueplanetvacations.com under cruise deals, there is a link to the top five cruise deals of the week. As I was preparing for the show, I decided to add in these last two cruise deals and I put them at the top of the top five cruise deals just because the prices are so good. One is a seven-day Mexican Riviera cruise. This goes November 8th. An inside cabin starts at $6.99 per person, and a balcony cabin starts at $8.29 a person. Wow. What ship is that on? Do you remember? Uh that is on the Royal Princess, which is one of Princess Cruise's newer ships. And then the next cruise deal I wanted to point out, and this one is a little bit close in, but again, the price point on this is amazing. It's a seven day Alaska cruise. It's a northbound cruise, Norwegian cruise line on the Norwegian. Jade, which is one of Norwegian's older ships, but it's also one that I really like. I like the layout of it. I think the ship interior flows really well. This is a cruise that goes from Vancouver to Whittier, stops at Ketchikan, Juno, Skagway, Hubbard Glacier, which is one of my favorite glaciers. Departure date is May 12th, so close in.

Patrick Wiscombe 22:51

Yeah, it is.

Mark Faldmo 22:52

But an inside cabin starts at $4.99 per person. Balcony cabin starts at $7.99 per person.

Patrick Wiscombe 22:59

For Alaska? How many are the Alaska cruise?

Mark Faldmo 23:03

That's the seven-day northbound cruise. Oh, May 12th. Wow. So again, both of those, along with about eight other cruise deals, are on that top five cruise deals on the blue planetvacations.com website. So just in the upper navigation area, click on cruise deals, top five, and then click on the top five cruise deals, and that will come up.

Patrick Wiscombe 23:27

I'm gonna give an unsolicited plug. You have no idea I'm gonna do this, but I have spent a quite a bit of time on blueplanetvacations.com.

Booking Cruises On BluePlanetVacations.com

Patrick Wiscombe 23:36

This is gonna sound like a promo piece. It's not. Mark doesn't even know I'm gonna say this. I don't know if you've noticed that Patrick has spent a ton of time looking at cruises this week on the site. You probably have noticed a lot of time on the site from you know, I haven't, but uh, you know, some IP address. It's me. Yeah. And I will just simply say that if you know what you're looking for, go to Blue Planet Vacations.com and then in the uh right side, just do a cruise search and you can book it online. And it does a phenomenal job explaining the deck plans, what your cruise is, what your room is. And I don't know if you've noticed, but I did book some cruises. Did you get emails that I actually booked? I did.

Mark Faldmo 24:20

Oh yeah, I do go I saw a reservation come through for you. So okay. Only one. No, you've been busy. You've actually booked a few. I was I saw only one yesterday, but before that, there were two others.

Patrick Wiscombe 24:32

Okay, so that's my point is I was a little bit of self-service there just because I knew that you are in the middle of wave seven season and I could just do it myself. You and I have not discussed this, but your website in terms of booking cruises is phenomenal. Blue PlanetVacations.com.

Mark Faldmo 24:52

Yeah, and you know, you said if you know what you're looking for, go there. But even if you're if you don't know what you're looking for, you can go to some of the resources like the top five cruise deals or just search. You you can put in you want to look for a med cruise, it'll tell you every ship and every cruise line on all of their prices for whatever time period you put in.

Patrick Wiscombe 25:10

So it was phenomenal. And I'm not trying to talk about the website, all I'm saying is that I know how busy you were this week. I'm glad that you got everything, then. Yeah. All right, we'll wrap it up there. In case I didn't make it clear, go to Blue Planet Vacations.com for the deals that we have already discussed. But if you have additional

Final Tips And How To Book

Patrick Wiscombe 25:34

questions, and inevitably you will, because even I have had questions. I just happen to have Mark's cell phone, and so he was able to respond even though he was incredibly busy. Call him in his office, get the conversation started. There's no obligation. Call him 888-718-7717-888-718-7717. And thank you so much for listening. You can listen to this show again tomorrow morning, Sunday at 11 a.m., right here on this radio station and around the country. And you can stream, download, and subscribe to the podcast at inside travel talk.com. Mark and I are on all of the major podcast platforms. We've done our job. Now it is your turn to get out and explore the world while you can, because you never know what curveballs life is going to throw at you. As we like to say here, live your life deliberately, live your life intentionally. And again, thank you so much for listening. Have a great week.

Todd Carlson 26:43

That's it. That's the end of the show. You've been listening to the Inside Travel Talk Podcast and Radio Show with Patrick Wiscombe and Mark Faldmo. Presented by BluePlanetVacations.com. Book your adventure right now. Call 888 718 7717. That's 888 718 7717. Thanks for listening. Have a great week.