For those who dislike Cruise Critic, you could always try: Cruise Talk

Yeah, especially if you love popup ads.

One could always invest in a pop-up blocker...

One does, but that's beside the point. As you know.

As much as I do love Crystal Cruises I did have a creepy thing happen on board my first cruise with the company. A woman who was cleaning our room umm... used my hair flat iron. Not pleasant thought. Her pawing through my stuff. I had my flat iron tucked away in my bag and came back to find her cleaning and the flat iron out on the table and hot. I asked her and she panicked. Accused me of lying all sorts of un-Crystal like stuff. It was an odd first experience and not indicative of the norm. Still I posted this experience on Cruise Critic and you would have think I killed Santa Claus. People claiming I was lying all sorts of crazy defensive weird stuff.

I think this was a one time weird thing. The woman was reprimanded and we got a different housekeeper for the trip. Still I am careful to lock up my personal items in any hotel or cruise ship from that experience. The point is instead of just letting me post a scary event people jumped on me like a traitor to humanity.

......

The title is, of course, just my opinion based upon 45+ cruises. The general exchange of info is good, like Flyertalk, but the best feature is the roll call for specific cruises. Among other things, members on a given cruise can exchange info and plan independent shore excursions. There are also alerts to price reductions.

True. The roll call is a nice feature of Cruise Critic and one of the best uses of a forum anywhere. Still, CC caters to cruise lines and cruise selling agencies, not to cruise line passengers. That's fine. What's not fine is CC pretending to be a forum when it's actually a vendor marketplace.

I don't understand this comment. In my 170 posts, I have never been edited or in any manner censored. To my knowledge, I have never received an email from a vendor as a result of my posting on cc.

In contract, in only 97 posts, I have gotten a curt private email from a flyertalk moderator. Apparently this was because I had the audasity to defend "bidding for travel" and Sheryl. Will I get another for this comment??

That's very clear from your response. Instead of trying to understand me, do this instead. Go to CruiseCritic and post the name of your favorite travel agent, his/her company name and the price you just got for a cruise from that agent. For example, "Hey, everyone, my agent, Jane Doe, at XYZ Cruise Outlet, got me a Cat BB on Royal Princess for $1200 a.i." Then see how many minutes your account remains open. Report back to us.

Cruise critic doesn't allow its members to give prices or name agencies. FlyerTalk does. Case closed.

I agree with CC non advertising policy quoted below:

Cruise Critic has strict guidelines prohibiting blatant advertising, commercial sales and solicitation posts on all of our message boards.

Our Cruise Boards are meant to be a cruiser's exchange of advice and tips where cruisers can talk about their travels -- not a marketplace for advertising and selling services. There are thousands of cruise professionals online and if we didn't insist on a non-solicitation policy the cruise boards would be very quickly overrun with nothing but ads.

Cruise Critic defines advertising as an individual or company's attempt to generate business or other commercial enterprise, either directly or indirectly, by using our Cruise Board. Solicitation includes, but is not limited to, requests to be E-mailed, the posting of phone numbers for your business, constantly mentioning that you are in the travel business, and the referring to or posting of one's own Web site address.

There shall be no third-party recommendation of travel agencies on any forums within Cruise Critic. General discussions regarding the TYPE of AGENCY to be used to purchase a cruise will be allowed, as long as no recommendations for any source of purchase are posted.

Touting of your personal cruise agent or cruise line "personal cruise consultant" (or any other venue by which you purchase a cruise) is not allowed on our message boards. Postings that contain "tell them John sent you" will be removed without notice.

This means you should not ask about someone's travel agent, nor should you respond in kind. Offering to email someone your travel agent's name or info is also not allowed, nor is asking members to email you for the information.

It also means you cannot post links to travel agencies, no matter what the specific reason.

Cruise Critic will remove violations of the "third-party recommendation" guideline without warning. Additional posts will result in permanent suspension of your posting privileges.

You're welcome to agree or disagree with their policy, but I'm not going to let you miss-characterize it. It's not a non-advertising policy. There are ads all over CC. That policy is to let advertisers be the only commercial voice in the forum. People cannot help other people find good deals and competent agents, because CC won't let them. It might upset the advertisers who are not recommended.

That alone, my dear friend, is why FT is better than CC.

You actually defended Sheryl?

It's easy enough to use CC and FT differently. I go to CC to get information about certain cruise lines, interact with fellow passengers, hear both positive and negative opinions etc. I am well aware that the boards there are highly partisan and I know what to ignore and what to listen to. I come to FT if I want specific recommendations for certain things as well as more sophisticated opinions on cruise lines and hotels. And of course, air lines.

The way I see it, everyone just needs to clearly understand CC (unlike FT) is an advertising/marketing vehicle for its owners products. So the information on CC (unlike FT) is not necessarily objective. Some of it is biased, slanted & skewed in favour of putting its owners product in a better light than its competitors.

Nothing wrong with this. That's how advertising/marketing works. The only issue here is many people are not aware of this particular fact about CC. So some might argue this is a somewhat deceptive marketing practice.

It's not the only online travel forum set up to do this, by the way.

As long as everyone knows CC is what it is, then there should be no problem.

Cheers,