Every year, there are a number of awards that are giving out the cruise industry.

There's a lot of them, actually.

And quite frankly, I'll be honest with all of you, I don't pay that much attention to awards in general. I mean, in some cases, their popularity contest, sometimes they're based on who knows what. But obviously, at the end of the day, they're people's opinions. And ultimately, I don't choose my cruises based on other people's opinions. I might take it in for consideration or look at what people are thinking and certainly read some reviews for, you know, entertainment and kind of just getting some insight into what's changing, what's new and different within the cruise industry. But cruise awards have always been a topic that I've kind of looked at, analyzed, and kind of just like, okay, whatever. But they do get a lot of attention because

at the end of the day, I don't care what cruise line you are, you want to be number one. You want

to get recognition. You want to be the very best, right? And even for me, as a Royal Caribbean fan,

I'll be honest with all of you. When I look at these awards, oftentimes I'm looking to see,

you know, it's like validation. If Royal Caribbean wins every single award,

then I'm like, yeah, well, they should have done that. Exactly. That's what I thought. And then when they don't win the awards, then you get upset and like, oh, I can't believe it didn't happen. And this year, Cruise Critic put out its awards for 2025. And, you know, of all the awards that are out there, I give Cruz Credit a little more credence. We've had a number of folks from Cruise Critics here on this podcast.

I quite frankly, you know,

Val, awards that are out there, I give cruise security a little more credence. We've had a number of folks from cruise critics here on this podcast. I quite frankly, you know, value what they have to offer. I think that their approach, how they do things essentially kind of is the way that I would want my site to be running away. So we're kind of like-minded in that regard. Now the awards that came out this year. I don't see eye to eye on them. I'll be honest with all of you. I think some of the awards, and I've felt this way about a lot of awards in the cruise, like regards if it's from Cruiserator in general. Some categories, I think, are skewed towards certain cruise lines, and it will always, almost always be like that. And I feel like it's unfair in some regards.

We'll get to that in a moment here.

But Royal Caribbean did win some awards in certain categories and win nearly as many as I think they should have gotten.

And I think some of these awards are, I don't know, I mean, part of it is I looked at the

methodology because the awards that they're offering,

the Cruise Critic Best in Cruise Year Awards, combine not only the reviews of the editorial staff,

but also the reviews they get from the travelers, right?

Regular people.

And that's good and bad. On the one hand, if you have, you know, 10,000 reviews, well, that's a good number. It's a healthy number of reviews to get a sense of things. But I also feel that, you know, again, we've talked about this. We had a great episode if you haven't listened to it with Colleen McDaniel on here, talking about, you know, reviews in general and how they can, you know, we're talking more about AI and things of that nature. But when you're talking about reviews from non-professionals, in a lot of cases, you know, you're going to get, it may skew in certain directions. You know, if you get a lot of people, cruise critic can have a lot of readership from one cruise line, not so much from another one. And I'm not saying that their reviews are bad or anything like that. I don't think the data is bad. I just, again, I feel like in a lot of cases, you're getting fans. Like, and that's not a bad thing. You're going to have Royal Caribbean fans who go there for the Royal Caribbean message boards. You go there, Carnival fans with the carnival stuff. Anyway, I don't agree with some of the awards that were given in the way they were done. And today, I wanted to share some of those. Like number one, best ocean cruise line virgin voyages.

Now, according to Cruise Critics editors, Virgin Voyages has redefined cruising, delivering cutting edge innovation, and really all-inclusive fares and exceptional onboard experiences exceeding every exception along the way. Now, have I been on a Virgin of voyage cruise? I have not. I have a negative

view of Virgin Voyages in a couple of ways. I think they came into it to, like they said, you know, Virgin Voyages is redefined cruising. They came into it with this way, they have this, I think, this attitude of, we're not a cruise line, man, we're coming into it with, we're going to be totally different. And then, you know what they did? They, like, walked a lot of that back. Some

things they did shade. I do like the fact that they're nearly all-inclusive. That is a really, for a mainstream cruise line slash premium line, I think that is a wonderful change. And I welcome that. I think it's great. I hate their adults-only focus. I think it's silly. I think it's

childish. No pun intended. I think it is, it's the wrong direction, quite frankly. But I also think

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