alternate to Cruise Critic?
 

After many years on Cruise Critic, I have had enough of their censorship and heavy-handed moderation. They have no private messaging function, and their moderators routinely delete posts and ban users with little justification.

I would love to find the flyertalk equivalent for cruising but have not found any viable alternative so far. Any recommendations?

A similar discussion here. One post in there suggests other websites that have forums are: CruiseMates, CruiseTT, and CruiseFish. On the destination side, for places that are heavily visited by ships, I have found similar info on excursions in the tripadvisor forums. But have never been able to find a community with significant activity/participation that answers specific questions about ship operations, booking options, or benefits like CC.

Thanks for the reply.

CruiseTT - not very active, and no Seabourn forum.
CruishFish - seems to be defunct
CruiseMates - took me to Fodors.com

So far I'm out of luck in finding an active online community (for Seabourn passengers mostly). There are a couple of Facebook communities, but I hate FB and don't do social media in general.

I think you’re out of luck. The old and now defunct CruiseMates came close but even they were pretty heavily monitored, very similar to Cruise Critic. Cruise Fish never got traction and folded pretty quickly. I know of no other and I’ve been cruising and active on the Internet since 1993.

Perhaps we can start something more active here on this FT Cruise forum ? .. for Oceania , Regent , Seabourn , Tauck .. and ?

Seabourn Sailors is active on Facebook, so I have been told. I do not do FB, so have never participated.

Sure, start a forum on here so five people have a special place to post. Even on CC, the Seabourn forum is not active relative to Crystal and SS. I agree, CC has heavy handed mods that go beyond some stupid policies.

CruiseFish was great for tracking pricing at category level but they haven't worked for over a year, probably due to something about a pandemic.
I too have been stuck with CC and have used FB for specific cruises or specific vessel/companies.

I used to be heavily active in Cruise Critic and made several very close friends through it. All but few have completely switched away and are now using Facebook groups.

I do Fb but have never been fond of the Groups - I need indexing and the ability to search ;-) I'm not actively cruising now (which reminds me, we have a Seabourn deposit I think expires this year; I need to see what happens with that) so haven't been using CC lately but agree all the issues you mention aren't new.....

I use the Silversea FB group but even it has its limits. For instance, you can’t recommend specific travel agents or agencies. It also appears while they will tolerant some complaints an out and out rant will get deleted. I think part of that is that Silversea management does follow and participate in the group. I imagine if the moderators allowed too much negative Silversea would bail on the group.

There are a couple of Seabourn facebook groups I lurk in. They aren't TOO heavy on the drama usually, but right now with people posting about being quarantined it's getting to be a little much.

The reddit cruising group has more activity than there is here, but really Facebook groups and Cruisecritic are the main go to ones in my experience. They certainly do have limitations as you've pointed out.

Facebook groups, in my experience, have been much more active and informative. I do monitor Cruise Critic, but participate less and less. The roll calls are a joke, since you have no way to PM people to make arrangements, etc. Moderation is over the top.

I guess I'm in the minority, but I appreciate most (not all) of the moderation on CC.
When I first started there, I backed off a bit, because there was a bit too much unpleasantness, especially varieties of ad hominem type attacks. I don't see how those facilitate anything useful.
And then, at some point a few years ago, the tone seemed to change, rather suddenly. I have no idea if something "official" happened, or there was more active but quiet moderation, or what. But it made it so much nicer.

We've gained a LOT from CC, for cruises, and sometimes for land trips via their ports of call sections.

I do not participate on Facebook for several reasons. Full Stop.

GC

I prefer the software used here on FT to that used by Cruise Critic, so I would enjoy a forum here, if more people would participate.