Fifty Years at Sea: Megaships vs Classic Cruising

I took my first cruise in 1976. The ship I fell in love with barely exists anymore.

I have been going to sea for pleasure for fifty years. That's not a boast — it's a disclosure, so you know where I'm standing when I tell you that today's megaships and the cruising I fell in love with are, in almost every way that matters to me, two different hobbies wearing the same name.

I'm not here to tell you the big ships are bad. They aren't. They're astonishing feats of engineering and, for the right traveler, genuinely wonderful. But if you're the kind of person who cruises for the sea — for the quiet, for the long unhurried days, for never once standing in a line — you should know that what I found in 1976 is still out there. You just have to know which ships still keep it.

What it was actually like, back then

My first ship carried fewer than a thousand guests. This was the era that the old Love Boat television show captured — the Pacific Princess, the ship that made America fall for cruising, held only around 600. You could walk the whole vessel in fifteen minutes and, by the third day, you knew the room steward's name and he knew how you took your coffee.

There was one main dining room, one seating time, and a table you returned to each night with the same handful of people, who by the end of the week were friends. There were no reservations to make because there was nothing to reserve. You didn't download anything. You didn't get a notification telling you your dinner slot was in twenty minutes on the other end of the ship. You wandered onto the promenade deck, found a chair, watched the water, and that was the entertainment — the sea, the ports, a book, a conversation. The pace was the product.

It was, in a word, unhurried. And it never made you wait for anything.

What the megaships changed

Now consider the other end of the spectrum. Icon of the Seas carries up to 7,600 guests at full capacity — 5,610 at standard double occupancy — looked after by a crew of 2,350. That is not a ship in the sense I grew up with. That is a small, floating city, and like any city, it runs on logistics.

To get the most out of a vessel that size, you plan. You book your dining weeks ahead. You reserve show times. The app pings you. On a busy sea day you may queue for the water slide, queue for the popular restaurant, queue to get off at the tender port. None of that is a flaw, exactly — it's simply the cost of cramming a water park, a dozen restaurants, an ice rink, and a shopping promenade onto one hull. For a family with restless kids, or a first-timer who wants maximum spectacle for the money, that trade is often well worth making. The megaships earn their popularity honestly.

But it is managed fun. You are, gently, on a schedule. And the one thing the original experience promised me — that I would never have to wait in line on my own vacation — is the first thing a ship of 7,600 cannot deliver.

The ships that still feel like 1976

Here's the good news I wish more people knew: the cruising I love didn't disappear. It got smaller and quieter and moved to the edges of the brochure.

The last true ocean liner. Cunard's Queen Mary 2 carries 2,691 guests and remains the largest ocean liner ever built — and the only ship in the world still making regularly scheduled transatlantic crossings between New York and Southampton (Cunard's own page tells the story). Seven nights with nothing but ocean outside the window, a proper library, a ballroom, and afternoon tea, is as close to 1976 as modern cruising comes — with better plumbing.

The genuinely small ships. Lines like Windstar, Seabourn, and Silversea run vessels carrying a few hundred guests rather than a few thousand. On a Windstar ship — most carry well under 350 people — there is no line, because there is no crowd. The crew learns your name because they can. A Seabourn or Windstar sailing is expensive, yes, but it buys back the exact thing the megaships sell off: space, quiet, and the freedom to do your own thing on your own clock.

The smaller traditional ships. You don't have to go ultra-luxury, either. Holland America's older, mid-sized ships — the likes of Volendam and Zaandam — still have promenade decks you can actually walk, a gentler pace, and a crowd that came for the sea rather than the slides. If you'd like my specific under-the-radar picks, I made a whole list of them in the ships retirees quietly love.

What I tell people now

When friends ask me which to book, I don't answer with a ship. I answer with a question: what do you actually want from a week at sea?

If you want energy, choice, a kids' club that runs like a small theme park, and a ship that's a destination in itself — book the megaship and enjoy every loud, dazzling minute of it. There's no shame in it; it's a marvel.

But if you want what I wanted at twenty-five and still want at seventy-five — the horizon, the hush, your own pace, a crew that knows you, and a vacation with no lines and no notifications — then book smaller. Book the ocean liner, the little luxury yacht, the older mid-sized ship. It costs more per night, often, but you're not paying for less ship. You're paying for fewer people, and after fifty years I can tell you that's the single most underrated luxury at sea.

The cruise I fell in love with is still out there. It's just quieter now — which, honestly, was always the point.

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Sail the last ocean liner: Queen Mary 2 · Cunard's official Queen Mary 2 page

More for the seasoned cruiser: Under-the-radar ships retirees love · How the megaships compare: Icon of the Seas