The OTGG Journal
Honest writing about cruise travel — what works, what doesn't, and how to make the most of every voyage. No sponsored content. Nobody pays for a recommendation. Just the work.
Booking Guides One is a handshake, one is a contract, one is national law — and the difference decides whether the port on your ticket is a plan or a promise. Plus the four Adriatic sailings already redrawn.
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Insider Tips Three of the four things worth setting up before you sail are free, and the fourth is the one people assume they already have. Medicare covers you at sea only within six hours of a US port — and only if the ship's doctor qualifies.
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Insider Tips The power strip is the most confiscated item at cruise security, and it is on almost every packing list written before 2024. What each line actually permits, the Virgin allowances verified at source, and what belongs in your carry-on.
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Booking Guides NCL now charges $5 for the second main course and $10 for a no-show. Carnival retired VIFP on 1 September and replaced it with two currencies that are not the same thing — and only one of them moves your tier.
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Booking Guides Booking early buys choice; sailing off-peak buys price. They are different decisions. The booking windows, what Wave Season is actually good for, the honest last-minute trade, and shoulder seasons region by region.
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Insider Tips Visa-free stays halved on 15 September. The bigger story, largely unreported: the eligible list was cut from 93 countries to 60, so roughly 33 nationalities lost visa-free entry altogether.
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Booking Guides Three yachts, all-suite, every suite with a terrace — and a published inclusions list that runs to eight items. Shore excursions are not one of them, which is the most expensive assumption available on this product.
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Booking Guides Three ultra-luxury lines drawing the line between included and extra in three different places. The fare models compared — plus Silversea's published 25% single supplement, not the 10% the comparison sites repeat.
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Booking Guides US DOT sets the thresholds: three hours domestic, six international, any airport or connection change. What clicking accept costs you, the baggage rule most guides get wrong, and the one case where flying anyway still owes you a refund.
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Insider Tips One in ten travel professionals rate their tools as very effective when a trip goes wrong. The order to rebook in, why the name on your card statement decides who can help, and the seven questions to ask before you pay.
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Insider Tips Five carriers, five very different states of completion. What is genuinely installed as of September 2026, which two attach a loyalty condition to "free", and why an airline-level completion date tells you almost nothing about your flight.
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Booking Guides Two of these buy the whole ship; one books a group onto a normal Royal Caribbean sailing. The 2027 dates, what each fare covers, and why the hosted group — not either charter — publishes the only real solo relief.
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Booking Guides Starlink is infrastructure, not a promise. What it genuinely improves at sea, the two layers it cannot touch, and how six lines actually write their rules.
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Travel Guides Ships berth one at a time, the Beach Club is genuinely included, and Alice Town is further than it looks. What a Bimini call actually costs, from live Virgin fare data.
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Booking Guides Four ships, four disruptions, four very different settlements — from a full refund plus 25% credit down to fifty dollars a head you can only spend on board.
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Booking Guides Free cancellation is not missed-ship protection. Project Expedition, GetYourGuide and Viator handle cruise-port changes differently — and only one platform's Back to Ship Guarantee means what it says.
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Travel Guides Soufrière is 24 miles from the pier and 90 minutes of switchbacks away. Pigeon Island does not open until 9:30am. And a large share of the Pitons catamarans advertised online are eight-hour trips that cannot fit an eight-hour call.
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Travel Guides George Town has no cruise pier and Caymanians voted 68.9% against building one. Route 1 costs $2.50 to the beach, taxis are regulated per car rather than per person, and the Sandbar you can stand up in is not the same site as Stingray City.
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Travel Guides Two terminals, two completely different days — and your cruise line picks, not you. Damajagua takes cash only at the gate, and the Teleférico may still be closed after a system replacement whose window has quietly elapsed.
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Travel Guides Kurrawa runs weekdays 10–3, Burleigh is Saturdays only from September, and the tram now reaches Burleigh Heads. The Oceanway has five named gaps rather than one path — and the hours are the plan.
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Travel Guides Three berths, three owners, three rule sets — and the One Ship Policy doesn’t cover the one your ship probably uses. Hemingway is $19, the fort is $2.50 on foot (not $6), and it shuts at 5pm.
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Travel Guides A $7 all-day water taxi, a 20-minute walk to Front Street, and one beach — not two. Plus the taxi tariff structure that makes “per person or per vehicle?” a real question, and the Maho jet-blast hazard that has actually killed someone.
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Booking Guides The saving can be real — and so is the 80-day eligibility cliff, the guarantee-cabin exclusion, and the day-early rule that quietly catches repriced bookings. Plus the correction that saves money: air deviations now cost $0, not the $75–$150 still being quoted.
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Travel Guides Walk it. Nidaros is 15 minutes from the berth at NOK 140, the tower is 172 steps with a minimum age of 8, and Bakklandet costs nothing — which is why a ship excursion here mostly sells you transport you don’t need.
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Travel Guides Three options and eight hours. The gondola is NOK 625 and the best value in the fjords (guides still quoting 460 are stale), Trollstigen is a transport gamble rather than a road one, and the Rauma Railway is the seated alternative. Pick one.
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Booking Guides Where the ship actually stays past midnight — Ibiza, Mykonos, Istanbul, Bermuda, and new for 2028, Lisbon and Stockholm. Plus the four things that get called an overnight and aren’t, and why the Cairo overnight isn’t in Cairo.
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Booking Guides Royal Caribbean’s Haiti pause now runs through June 2027 — 62 calls in H1 2027 alone. The replacement ports, what actually gets refunded (excursions yes, fare no), and the repricing behaviour that added $1,000 to a booking nobody asked to change.
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Booking Guides The cap now counts every ship at 100% of capacity, not 80% — scheduled 2026 arrivals are down 18.27%. The full levy table (most coverage gives you two of six numbers), and why a collapsed staircase in July changed where you come ashore.
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Travel Guides A 12-minute walk to the postcard, a free swinging bridge, and the lowest safety rating in the whole port series. Walk the city first — then add one paid experience, timed right, because Shete Boka stops admitting at 3pm.
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Travel Guides It docks — no tender — but the terminal is 3 miles from downtown. A ~$16 taxi (no meters), a walkable marina, an estuary that’s closed Sun & Mon, and why one zone beats five.
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Travel Guides Sinaloa is a Level 4 state with a Mazatlán carve-out. Where that corridor actually runs, what the 1.2 km Blue Line is, and what Código Azul deploys on a cruise day — read in both directions.
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Travel Guides The Arch by shared water taxi is about $20, not the $50 you’ll be quoted. Medano is a ten-minute walk or a $5 boat. And at an anchorage port, the return buffer isn’t a precaution — it’s the plan.
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Travel Guides Chankanaab is $31 and closed on Sundays, taxis are $8 per cab rather than per person, and the federal reef fee lands on the boat trip — not the beach. Three piers, one workable plan.
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Travel Guides Skyride $29.95, Magens Bay $7 (free with a disabled placard), taxis priced per person rather than per cab — and the landmark most guides still tell you to prioritise, which is behind a restoration fence.
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Travel Guides Two 16th-century forts on one $10 ticket valid 24 hours, a flat $10 taxi (per cab, not per person) if you draw the far pier — and the late-afternoon closing time that quietly breaks most eight-hour plans.
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Travel Guides No tender, a free beach and pool at the end of the pier, and a $4 taxi to the better beach — plus the Gibbs Cay stingray rule that carries fines and jail time, and which one cruise line’s own excursion page contradicts.
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Solo Strategy Virgin’s headline says 70% off. For one traveller that is a 30% single supplement — less than half as good as it sounds. The arithmetic on Scarlet Lady’s Barcelona crossing, plus where NCL’s ten Studio Lounge ships and Cunard’s QM2 beat it.
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Booking Guides All seven Disney Wish sailings from New York in autumn 2027 — five to Bermuda, two of them with doubled port days, plus Boston, Halifax and a seven-night Canada week. Castaway Club booking opens 31 August.
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Travel Guides Five day trips checked at source — the Stonehenge shuttle takes one wheelchair per journey, the Bishop’s Palace has three parking spaces you must book 48 hours ahead, and only two of the five have a real Changing Places.
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Travel Guides Free entry to both at 33% certified disability — and one line on your paperwork decides whether your companion gets in with you. Plus the escorted palace route you have to book, and the 30% of Metro stations still not step-free.
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Travel Guides Which beach lends a wheelchair and which one takes a booking, the Getty’s $25 parking, Griffith’s five-business-day ASL notice — and why Universal’s IBCCES card is probably optional for you. Verified against the operators’ own guides.
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Travel Guides Assisted-bathing dates, the €2.70 castle lift, and the 5 km step-free lighthouse route — with the one Costa Blanca town whose accessible beaches stay open all year while Alicante’s run for ten weeks. Verified with the councils.
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Travel Guides Four beaches, the largest freshwater pool in the Caribbean and five genuinely free places to eat — you can fill the whole day without paying for anything. Which of the three upgrades earns its price, and the tram story most guides still get wrong.
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Insider Tips Buy a My Next Virgin Voyage from 6 August 2026 and it is yours alone. What the no-transfer rule actually blocks, the conversion window Virgin has announced but not switched on, and the $250 you lose by buying after you disembark instead of before.
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Travel Guides Juneau now caps arrivals at 16,000 a day, so the volume went to Ketchikan — which is running 58 ships against last year’s 48. Meanwhile Skagway’s biggest dock still cannot be walked off, four seasons on. What each port actually demands of your shore day.
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Booking Guides VoyageFair split the fare into three tiers, put gratuities on their own line and tied your dinner reservations to what you paid. What actually changed, what Virgin says did not, and the two claims about this that are simply wrong on the record.
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Booking Guides Accessibility form deadlines run from 30 to 90 days out depending on the line, and a phone call confirming nothing is the most common failure. The wording that turns a request into a record — plus the federal escalation route staff are required to tell you about, and almost never do.
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Booking Guides Princess opens its largest-ever Europe season and 185 Alaska departures for 2028 — and moves final payment to 120 days on every voyage length, with 100% cancellation now biting at 60 days instead of 30. What changed, what it costs, and who is exempt.
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Booking Guides The Coast Guard closed every commercial port in Hawaii during Lala, and a closed port is not a delayed one — no ship docks without the Captain of the Port. The closure ladder, what it did to two NCL sailings, and how much buffer to leave after a Hawaii voyage.
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Booking Guides Holland America and Princess no longer refund port taxes on a skipped call; Carnival, MSC and Norwegian do. What the Lala reroutes actually paid, why insurance is usually the bigger number, and the timing rule that decides every hurricane-season claim.
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Booking Guides Asia-Pacific capacity, Icon taking Galveston in 2027, Naples calls diverting to Marseille, typhoon credits that are not cash — and the dining package calculation most people get backwards.
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Travel Guides Santorini's 8,000-passenger cap now counts ships at full capacity, only ~30% may come ashore at Athinios, and Princess has already swapped a Corfu call for Taranto. What the new limits mean for your day ashore.
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Travel Guides Sober and mindful cruising, honestly assessed — what zero-proof actually guarantees, why only one of the three usual 'adults-only' recommendations is adults-only, and where the drinks budget does more good.
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Field Journal The trade press asked how cruise advisors are really using AI. My answer, in short: for the busywork, never for the judgement call — plus the line they pulled into the callout.
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Travel Guides Seven ports, two very different kinds of failure. Ship counts, tender math, day-pass pricing and the timing that turns a six-ship port day into a good one.
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Insider Tips A dollar fifty a day, announced the morning it took effect. What every cabin tier now pays, how to lock the old rate, and what Celebrity is building while everyone argues about tips.
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Solo Strategy Norwegian is base-loading fares, which quietly changes when you should buy. How to compare Studio against Solo cabins honestly, and what Great Tides Waterpark actually costs.
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Travel Guides Verified cabin dimensions, the 30- and 60-day deadlines that actually bind, the door-width trap that strands scooters, and an honest read on which ports you may not get off the ship at.
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Booking Guides Project Ruby rewrote the pricing rules. The booking window that still works, the 45-day repricing clause almost nobody uses, and how to time flights to Miami, Barcelona, Athens and LA.
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Insider Tips Where your dollar stretches furthest in 2026, the destinations quietly surging — plus the full briefing on why cruise fares are climbing and last-minute deals have vanished.
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Travel Guides Explore rainforests, volcanoes, and incredible wildlife. Taste local flavors.
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Travel Guides Five European islands matched to how you actually travel — plus three off-book positions. A strategist's allocation guide to the highest-yield summer escapes, and the addresses worth the capital.
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Personal Essay Why I stopped booking vacations and started designing freedom. A veteran, a hurricane, and the cruise that changed everything.
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Field Journal A field journal from Fort Lauderdale — the classroom sessions, the ship inspections, and the work behind every recommendation.
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Travel Guides I've vetted every one of these so you don't discover — three drinks in — that the bar you Googled is now family-friendly on weekends. The Human Shield works on land too.
Read MoreNo entries in this category yet — Paolo is working on it.
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