Travelocity has a link to that BMW option.

From last night:

Thylacaleo

Thylacine.

These sound more like drug names, rather than marsupials.

From another page on the freighter cruise site

The Trinity House Vessel Patricia is a working ship offering passengers an opportunity to view the day-to-day activities she undertakes on her regular rounds of lighthouse, lightship and navigational buoy maintenat around the coasts of England, Wales and the Channel Islands.

Sigh. That would be pretty.

These sound more like drug names, rather than marsupials.

Yeah. Drugs that were banned after they resulted in birth defects of marsupial pouches.

Is that like getting a car with your vacation, or a vacation with your car?

There's also Royal Mail voyages between the UK, Cape Town, and St. Helena, calling at Tenerife and the Ascension Islands. There's a nice isolated working trip.

Bright has a real PR feel to me which rubs me the wrong way.

In my brain "bright" inhabits the same neighborhood as "clear" and thus, applied to a philosophy of life, carries a vague whiff of Scientology, which can't possibly be what the person who coined it intended.

It'd be cool if the Navy copied the freighter cruise people. You could watch planes taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier....

You could watch planes taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier....

Participate in rocket defense prepardedness drills, oops, "this is not a drill!"

We get a lot of cruises here. If you're going for the big, floating hotel type, then yeah, I would agree that Princess and Norwegian are probably the best (slight preference for Norwegian), and Carnival is to be avoided.

However, were I to go on a cruise, I would most likely choose a small line that runs much smaller ships, like the one tommy mentions above. In Alaska, a good choice would be CruiseWest [link] . I understand that this is not your target area, but looking at their website, it appears that they cruise outside of Alaska as well. As far as I know, CruiseWest is unique in that they guarantee a whale sighting on specific cruises, with a $250 refund if none are sighted. [link]

I don't know about cruising in other places, but I know that the big cruise ships up here often cruise by some of the best scenery at night, and can't get in close enough to the really gorgeous stuff. There are some smaller cruise lines that run ships that carry 75-300 people, as opposed to thousands, that can actually get in closer to the coast. These lines tend to focus more on where you are, rather than just a generic experience. They also tend to provide more education (like about the natural history and history of an area).