The Joy of Cruising Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. I am delighted to welcome back this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, Nikki and Tommie Jones. Nikki and Tommie are the owners of Jones Getaways by Dream Vacations . Travel agency. They are instrumental in my travel life in a couple ways. They introduced me to Dream Vacations and as many of you know we are the somewhat new owners of our...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome Alan Shapiro to The Joy of Cruising Podcast , to talk about what it was like 20+ Years Working and Living on Over 15 Cruise Ships. Alan shared with me:   “I worked on 7 different cruise lines and probably at least 15 ships. Some of my more exciting cruises included goi...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome Damion & Quanda EXP , Travel with Us to The Joy of Cruising Podcast . They shared with me:   We’re Damion and Quanda, a couple whose love story started fast and hasn’t slowed down since. Damion moved from Jamaica in 2012, met Quanda, and just three months later, we...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast I am delighted to welcome back my cohost Cheryl. For the first time since we moved into our new house, we are doing a podcast together. Some of you know the past several weeks have been quite hectic for us. We have been slowly moving from North Carolina to Virginia during that time. Weekly we wou...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome back Gail and Mike , from UK and creators of the Sail With Gail and Mike YouTube channel, Instagram platform, and Facebook group. Check out their previous episode at where they were present at Cunard’s Queen Anne’s official naming ceremony at the Liverpool waterfront....

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! I am delighted to welcome Wayne Schell as my guest on The Joy of Cruising Podcast . Wayne is the 89-year-old owner of Laguna Del Sol near Sacramento, CA, one of the largest, most well-known clothing optional resorts in the us. He also owns Mira Vista , another clothing optional resort in Tucson, AR. I first met Wayne on my other podcast, Lucid Driver Po...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome passionate cruisers. Our brief thoughts about our dream cruise to the Panama Canal on Holland America Line Rotterdam. Do you have a dream car? Support the show Support thejoyofcruisingpodcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/2113608/supporters/new Support Me https://www.buymeacoffee.com/drpaulth Contact Me https://www.thejoyofcruising.net/contact-me.html Book Cruises http://www....

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome Kenneth Jarvis. Ken is a confirmed Global Traveler (he’s visited 6 continents); Frequent Flyer (1.5 Million Miles on American Airlines and it’s One world Partners); Frequent Floater (118 cruises all in suites, Pinnacle with Royal Caribbean / Zenith with Celebrity); and...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast i am delighted to welcome back a special guest, my cohost Cheryl. As you know we are largely in the bucket list checking stage of our lives, and just got the opportunity to check one off. We recently traveled to Las Vegas. That’s not the bucket list check I am referring to—we have been to Vegas a...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. I am delighted to welcome back this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, Roland and Emma , certainly worthy to join the handful of guests who have been on the podcast for three times. I first met Roland and Emma a couple of years ago on the 119,000 member Melanin At Sea, created by friends of the show and global cruise personalities A Rich...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am honored to welcome a special guest, Richard Fain , Chairman and former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group (RCG). Mr. Fain’s new book, Delivering the WOW: Culture as Catalyst for Lasting Success (October 21, 2025; Fast Company Press), reveals actionable lessons from Royal Caribbean’s rapid growth...

Send us Fan Mail This week I am delighted to welcome back to The Joy of Cruising Podcast Iris MacBeath creator of the blog Life of Iris . I wrote the story of Life of Iris in my latest book The Joy of Cruising Again amzn.to/3lAfyON in a section called “Ship life,” which followed the career of four past and present crew, staff, and officers from three different cruise lines.   At the time, I wrote...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome back Gary Bembridge, the embodiment of the successful Tips For Travellers blog, podcast, and most notably, YouTube channel. I have to be careful introducing Gary, lest you think of me as being sensationalistic. I’ll just give you one opinion, and one fact about Gary. I...

Send us Fan Mail Hello passionate cruisers. This week I am delighted to welcome Matt Hochberg, creator of the Royal Caribbean Blog , indisputably the leading unofficial source for all things Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. To say he dominates his space is an understatement. The Royal Caribbean Blog YouTube channel is the second most popular cruise channel in the world, with 378,000 subscribers, its b...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome Chris Gray Faust, Executive Editor of Cruise Critic,  the world’s largest online cruise resource. Former travel editor of USA Today, and the winner of a Lowell Thomas travel writing award, Chris has visited more than 100 countries. She speaks frequently on the topic of...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. I am delighted to welcome back to The Joy of Cruising Podcast Ilana of Life Well Cruised. Ilana is one of my best friends in the cruising blogosphere, having been featured in my second cruise book, Cruising Interrupted http://amzn.to/3seFU8y , and on the podcast twice before. Life Well Cruised was the second episode ever of The Joy of Crui...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome James and Tracey , making memories one trip at a time, and creators of The Traveling Type  YouTube channel, and Instagram. As frequent listeners know, I watch cruise YouTube videos incessantly as I work on the podcast seemingly every waking hour—often with the sound do...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome to The Joy of Cruising Podcast , Jessica Jane Peterson , embodiment of Jessica Jane Magic, a dazzling magician, daredevil, and an experienced sleight-of-hand artist with more than 10,000 shows under her belt—many while performing on the ocean. Jessica has performed on cru...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome back RacQuelle and Ron , creators of the fast-growing MH Family Adventures, YouTube channel, Instagram platform, and Facebook Group. How fast is MH Family Adventures growing? We then were on the podcast well over a year-and-a-half ago YouTube channel had 15k subscriber...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. I am delighted to welcome back to The Joy of Cruising Podcast , Ben & David creators of Cruise with Ben & David, one of the top cruise brands in the world, certainly when it comes to content creators and cruise influencers. They have a massively successful YouTube channel with over 320k subscribers—in the top five of all cruise cha...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome Anwar and Lametrius Arif , creators of the Mete and I YouTube channel, Instagram, and Facebook page. As frequent listeners know, I watch cruise YouTube videos incessantly as I work on the podcast seemingly every waking hour—often with the sound down. When a Mete and I...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am proud to host Hugo Ortega a multi-talented seafarer who can bring a multitude of perspectives to the listeners of the show.   Hugo Ortega is a Superyacht Captain 500T, educator, and founder of Superyacht Sunday School , a global platform helping aspiring crew enter the luxury yachting indu...

Send us Fan Mail In the last couple of years, we have started checking off some bucket list cruises. Given that they are bucket list destinations, vessels, or both it is of little surprise that several of those bucket list check offs made it on to this list. And as we have a number of bucket list cruises in front of us, i suspect this list will evolve over time. Like later this year, our next crui...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am proud to welcome Alissa Musto , Recording Artist, Singer, Pianist, Actor, Miss America Finalist. And Alissa performs as a guest entertainer onboard cruise ships. I am as passionate about music and comedy as I am about cruising so when I get a chance to have a conversation with an entertainer...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome freelance travel writer Ashley Kosciolek. Ashley is a former editor at Cruise Critic for 12 years, but I really got to know her work during her time writing mainly about cruises but also some general travel articles wrote about cruises for The Points Guy . Ashley can addr...