Without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest trend in cruising right now is not cruise ships,

but private islands. And every cruise line, it seems, is doubling and tripling down on its

private destinations because they're real moneymakers, number one, and guest satisfaction

generators number two. And you can make the argument that which should really be priority one

or priority two. But the bottom line is, they're very popular and they're undergoing a major renaissance.

The days of going to private islands in which there was a slab of beach, maybe an umbrella, and hot dogs and burgers seem to be mostly behind us, although some of the aging private destination still have that.

Nonetheless, I wanted to talk about this trend.

And I was actually checking out some YouTube videos out there, as I usually do each evening, and I came across my

favorite channels, which is Life Well Cruised, and Ilana Shattower did a video about ranking the

private islands, and I'm not just having Alana on because she did rank Cocoa Key as number one. I mean,

she passed the test, obviously, but I really thought this was a perfect excuse to talk with Alana on here. I've known Alana for a couple of years now. We've gone to some events together. But this is an opportunity to talk about this hot trend. And, of course, why Cocoa is amazing. But Alana, welcome to the Rerlanda blog podcast. Oh, thanks so much. I'm happy to be here. Of course. So why Cocoa is amazing. But, Alana, welcome to the Rolkawlog podcast. Oh, thanks so much.

I'm happy to be here. Of course. You know, like me, you've, you know, you've been cruising a lot and you've seen this trend, this shift, if you will, from, as I mentioned in the beginning,

where private islands really went just from, you know, beachfront day to like, I mean, almost

theme park level activities. What has been your, are you in favor of this trend? Do you like

where this has been going? What's your kind of take on where we are in the private destination

market currently for cruise ships? Yeah, overall, I like it, actually. I mean, it's not every destination that's a

private island. So I do think times have changed. I actually do remember going to Cocoa K in 2008.

I have some pictures. They're not on social media because I had no cell phone at the time that

took pictures. But it was like you said, it was like a slava beach. I mean,

it was nice. It was fun. It was like a perfect beach day, but times have changed. So I do think

having more activities, more variety, and one of the things that I do like about Cocoa is they

do have quite a lot of things. So whether every private island needs to be theme park-like,

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