Going on a cruise today, whether it's Royal Caribbean or really any other line, has changed a lot over the years, no doubt about that.

And as we always like to in this episode of the podcast, we like to look back sometimes and kind of reflect on how things have changed.

And I thought this is actually a really good opportunity because our good friends over a cruise critic are actually celebrating their 30th anniversary.

30 is a big number. And it also coincides with, of course, a lot of changes in the cruise industry along the way. So I wanted to talk about maybe some things we've seen over the years, you know, kind of covering the cruise industry. And to join me on today's episode is Chris Grafausk from Cruise Critic. Chris, welcome back to the Royal Green Blog podcast.

Oh, thanks for having me on. It's always fun. Absolutely. And, you know, it's, first of all,

congratulations on 30 years, Cruise Critic. I don't think you were there for all 30 years,

but congratulations to the company on 30 years for all that hard work. I mean, that's a lot

of coverage over the years how many

years have you been at cruise critic i've been there for only 12 years so i i appreciate um you know 30

years uh we like to say 30 years on the internet is like 100 in real life right so yeah i mean

cruise critic started as an aOL chat room for people that might remember the days of dial-up.

So really, everything's come a long way since then, that's for sure.

Heck, yeah. And by the same token, the manner in which we cruise today has changed a lot over

those 30 years. You know, I got started cruising in the late 90s or literally the early 2000s was

kind of my when I really got my feet wet with it. And we've all seen changes. Heck, we've seen

changes in the last five years, right? Going back to, you know, pre-COVID versus post-COVID.

But it's incredible to think about. And I got to give full credit. The cruise critic team came up

with some interesting data kind of talking about some

these hot topics over these past three decades that have really changed a lot.

And some things have changed a lot.

Some are actually, I think, maybe more or less the same, but we'll talk about all that.

But it's really interesting, Chris, to look at how sometimes it's like the more things

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