Welcome to the Royal Crimean Blog podcast, a weekly look into the world of Royal Caribbean cruising.

I'm your host, Matt Hotschberg, and this is episode number 33.

With the new year nearly here, I can't help but look forward to cruising in 2020, and what I'd like to do differently.

A new year is the perfect opportunity to improve how I cruise, and I've got five ways I hope to change my approach to

cruising in 2020. Here we go. Like so many people, I always look for the new year as an

opportunity to, for ways to improve with the new year, right? New year, new year, new you, all that

kind of stuff. And that's not limited to just like lifestyle or things like that.

Cruising is part of that.

And because I am a cruiser, I look at ways that I could improve in 2020.

So this week's episode is all about that.

I came up with five things that I hope, think, and pretty sure I'm going to be doing differently in 2020.

And I say that because I'll be honest, it's, you know, you kind of, this is the same reason

why it's hard to lose weight and commit to, you know, exercise programs, is that you just

end up going back to your old routines.

And cruising is no different than that.

And one of the truths I have learned over the years of myself cruising

is that I very much get into a routine and it becomes comfortable and I just end up doing that

routinely over and over and over again. And sometimes it's fine. And there's some things that actually

do work and some things that don't work. And other things I'm just looking to improve upon.

And I think that's kind of the theme of these five things that I have

chosen for this week. So let's start with number one, which is planned shore excursions earlier.

And this is something that I recognize I have to change. In the last two cruises I've taken,

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