Theme Cruises Have you ever wanted to just … oh, I don’t know, sing along with Three Dog Night on the open sea? Do morning water exercises under the Caribbean sun? Maybe your idea of nirvana is to release your inner NASCAR racer for a full seven nights. Or perhaps you dream of spending 16 days on an Atlantic crossing, just playing bridge. You’re not alone. As cruises become ever more mainstream vacation options — and with passenger counts topping out at 4,000 or so — voyages with themes, ranging from hobbies to lifestyles, are a way to personalize the experience. Theme Cruise: In its purest form, a theme cruise is something that the cruise line creates onboard one of its ships — and all passengers are entitled to participate. This used to be fairly common when shipboard transportation meant long stretches at sea for ocean crossings. Now, though, with 2,000-plus passengers on most ships, and pleasure cruises with several port stops, it isn’t always practical to turn an entire ship into a themed cruise. However, annual festivities such as Carnival’s NASCAR voyage, Regent Seven Seas’ annual Chocolate Cruise and Holland America’s jazz festival do appeal to a broad enough audience to warrant cruise line involvement. Special Interest Cruise: The most common of the so-called “theme cruises,” these are trips in which a special interest group arranges to purchase a number of staterooms in different categories, sets up an itinerary, arranges for special guests or notables, and markets the cruise to people who would be interested in that activity. This could range from scrapbooking to baseball. These groups usually have little impact on the other vacationers onboard although some of the public spaces may be taken over by the group. Full Ship Charter: On this type of cruise, the entire ship is organized around the interest-du-jour — and so everyone participates, to some extent. Among those organizations that are known for full ship charter cruises are Atlantis Events, which organizes gay and lesbian cruises, and PartyPoker.com’s yearly gaming tourney (2007 dates not yet announced). A few hints: One thing we discovered is that a lot of the theme cruises take place in December and January (typically during weeks of traditionally low demand: pre- and post-holiday). Carnival’s annual NASCAR cruise with Rusty Wallace, the Grand Ol’ Opry cruise, Regent Seven Seas’ annual Chocolate Cruise, the Rock the Boat rock ‘n roll cruise and Carnival’s country music fest with Tim McGraw are all gone for this year. While dates have not yet been set, all are held annually so keep an eye out for next year! Also, the same goes if you spy a cruise that catches your interest — and the dates don’t work. Few have announced next year’s dates — but they will…. cruisecritic.com

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