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

I'm your host Matt Hodgeberg, and this is episode number 282.

With 2018 coming to a close, I can't help but look back on my busiest and most exciting year of cruising on Royal Caribbean yet.

Across eight sailings, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to take a variety of sailings to many different destinations across Northern America, although primarily I ended up in Cozumel.

But on this week's episode, I'm sharing my top five cruise memories of 2018 and inviting you to share yours as well.

Here we go.

With just days left in 2018, I was driving to the bank the other day and my mind started

wandering to where it normally ends up, which is, of course, well, thinking about going on

a cruise. And I had such a fun year of cruising this year with the most cruises in one calendar

year that I've ever taken. I recall last year

doing five sailings, thinking to myself, I had truly reached a pinnacle of cruising excellence

only to hit eight sailings this year. Of course, the amount of sailings you go on is insignificant

compared to the power of the force. No wait, insignificant to to the experiences one has on those sailings.

We visited a lot of places, got to try different things, and see ships that were new to me.

And so this week, I wanted to count down my top five cruising experiences and talk about why

stood out to me.

This is in no particular order, although I do think my number one is number one for a reason,

but we're going to go backwards here, starting with, of course, getting to go on the brand new

symphony of the season. Any year in which I get to go on not only a new cruise ship, like to me,

but a new cruise ship to the fleet, that's an exciting thing. I've been lucky enough to be able to

sample a number of new

Royal Caribbean ships over the last couple of years, going back to, you know, quantum of the season

...