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Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am proud to host Hugo Ortega a multi-talented seafarer who can bring a multitude of perspectives to the listeners of the show.

Hugo Ortega is a Superyacht Captain 500T, educator, and founder of Superyacht Sunday School, a global platform helping aspiring crew enter the luxury yachting industry. From his humble beginnings in the Bronx to captaining superyachts around the world, Hugo now mentors’ newcomers through accessible, expert-led courses that break down industry barriers. He also appears on Below Deck Season 12, as the new Bosun, bringing his experience and passion for adventure to the screen.

Find Hugo/Super Yacht Sunday School online

Website: https://www.superyachtsundayschool.com/

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@superyachtsundayschool

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@superyachtsundayschool

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/superyachtsundayschool

Facebook: https://facebook.com/Superyacht.Sunday.School/

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In the last couple of years, we have started checking off some bucket list cruises. Given that they are bucket list destinations, vessels, or both it is of little surprise that several of those bucket list check offs made it on to this list. And as we have a number of bucket list cruises in front of us, i suspect this list will evolve over time. Like later this year, our next cruise is a bucket list trip to the Panama Canal on Holland America Lines flagship, Rotterdam, and if what I have researched turns out to be the case I suspect it will crack our top ten.

This is an absolutely subjective list, not just that it is our opinion only, but offered from the perspective of non-professional reviewers. We don’t have a YouTube channel, so we don’t go over ships anywhere near as comprehensively as many of those content creators. We just thought it would be fun to do. Exactly half of the top ten were before The Joy of Cruising Podcast was created, and the other half have been since the podcast, and thus we have done a reflections podcast for each of the five on the list that we have done since the podcast started two and-a-half years ago. So, you could check them out if you missed them.

Paul’s article about the AmaWaterways AmaKristina Soulful Experience cruise at Quirky Cruise https://quirkycruise.com/amawaterways-soulful-experience-cruise/

1. AmaWaterways, AmaKristina by Friends of Festival At Sea

2. Fire & Ice, Hawaii to Alaska to Vancouver on Norwegian Spirit

3. Celebrity Beyond Mediterranean

4. Soul Train Cruise on Holland America Line Nieuw Amsterdam

5. The Smooth Jazz Cruise on Celebrity Millenium

6. Explora Journeys, Explora I

7. Virgin Voyages Scarlet Lady Transatlantic Cruise

8. Festival At Sea On Celebrity Equinox

9. Carnival Mardi Gras

10. Royal Caribbean Symphony of The Seas

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Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am proud to welcome Alissa Musto, Recording Artist, Singer, Pianist, Actor, Miss America Finalist. And Alissa performs as a guest entertainer onboard cruise ships. I am as passionate about music and comedy as I am about cruising so when I get a chance to have a conversation with an entertainer who also has performed on cruise ships, I am in my glory.

What a resume! Alissa’s website describes her as “Retired pageant queen playing piano around the world,”

A Musician, Singer-Songwriter, Actor, Miss Massachusetts 2016 & Miss America Finalist, World Traveler, Vanlifer, Sailor, Reality TV Contestant, Harvard 2016, University of Miami (MM?) 2019, and, 30 under 30. Wow, I want to hear about it all.

Of course, what we on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, most want to hear about is Alissa being a guest entertainer for Holland America, Princess, Celebrity, MSC and Norwegian Cruise Lines. Alissa has dazzled audiences while sailing through over 50 countries. The song quickly hit 20,000 views on Facebook and Alissa's story was featured in Conde Nast Traveler, GEN (a Medium publication), The Washington Post, the cover page of The Herald News, NBC Boston, Good Morning America and ABC's national lifestyle network, Localish.

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Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome freelance travel writer Ashley Kosciolek. Ashley is a former editor at Cruise Critic for 12 years, but I really got to know her work during her time writing mainly about cruises but also some general travel articles wrote about cruises for The Points Guy. Ashley can address virtually any cruise-related topic from the consumer side, and even make topics about as exciting as watching grass grow—like travel insurance—worth reading about. On numerous occasions over the past couple of years in response to one of her articles, I considered reaching out to her regarding visiting us on The Joy of Cruising Podcast. I finally get a chance to welcome Ashley.

Ashley Kosciolek is a travel writer with nearly 20 years of experience covering the cruise industry. Following more than a decade as a staff editor at TripAdvisor company Cruise Critic, she spent four years as a senior writer on the cruise team at The Points Guy, with coverage ranging from ship reviews, destination reports, and industry news to tips articles, planning pieces and first-person features. You can also find her freelance work on Cruise.blog, Royal Caribbean Blog, and Cruise Radio. Ashley has sailed with every major cruise brand (and most of the lesser-known ones, too) and has been quoted as an expert by USA Today, the Associated Press, CBS, Forbes, NBC News, the Miami Herald, the Huffington Post, "Good Morning America," The New York Times, and more. You can follow her adventures on Instagram: @slyjabroni.

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Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Janet Bava, Chief Commercial Officer, Windstar Cruises. We have had several small ship specialists on the podcast as well as leaders from some of the lines, and of course passionate cruisers providing us their cruise reports from their time on various small ship and river cruises. This is the first time we have exclusive focused on Windstar Cruises, and I am excited to meet Janet and learn about Windstar.

Cuban born and Miami raised, Janet Bava found her love for travel at a young age. She had her first taste of cruising at the age of 15 when she celebrated her quinceañera onboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship and never looked back. She describes herself as a cruise lifer and internationally travel driven — she even met her husband while traveling through Italy during her college years.

Prior to joining Windstar Cruises during the summer of 2023, Bava was most recently the Chief Marketing Officer for AmaWaterways River Cruises, and she has spent upwards of 20 years working in the travel industry. Most notably, prior to AmaWaterways, Bava was the VP of Marketing (The Americas) for Silversea Cruises where she fell in love with small-ship luxury cruising. Graduated from Florida International University with her Marketing and International Business degree, she always dreamed of working for a global brand poised for expansion and that would allow her to focus on bringing people from all over the world closer together. As a member of Chief [Professional Network for Women], she enjoys connecting and supporting women executive leaders and emerging future female leaders in the corporate world.

She prides herself on being a results-driven professional who is able to lead by example and set a clear vision for her team. Bava values collaboration, creativity and innovation. She sees the advantages of leveraging new emerging technologies to consistently deliver results and she looks forward to further elevating the Windstar experience ensuring every touch point with our guests can be 180 degrees from ordinary.

There's one thing Bava has that never expires — her passport. If she could, she would explore the whole world on a ship with her beloved colleagues, family & friends. With an already accomplished travel portfolio, Bava is most eager to experience Tahiti and the Middle East the Windstar way, on an intimate private-yacht style cruise delighting in the culinary experiences this award-winning global travel brand is renowned for.

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Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am proud to welcome Emily Gelineau, a Grammy award-winning Violinist, Pianist, Vocalist, Composer and Arranger who is known for interpreting modern styles of music from jazz to country, pop to rock, and world styles such as French and Brazilian music. Emily performs as a guest entertainer onboard luxury cruise ships. Listeners know I am as passionate about music and comedy as I am about cruising so when I get a chance to have a conversation with someone who has performed on cruise ships, I am in my glory.

Residing in the USA for 4 years, Emily is a graduate from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. She has performed live and recorded with many infamous and influential artists across the world, including recording Violin for the 8-Bit Big Band on their 2022 Grammy-Winning arrangement of “Metaknight’s Revenge”. Today, Emily is a well sought-after musician on the Jazz scene in Australia and overseas, whilst regularly earning composing commissions, arranging for orchestras and organizations such as RWS Entertainment and the Perth Symphony Orchestra, composing for media, and performing at sea.

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Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul. I am delighted to welcome this week to The Joy of Cruising Podcast, Justin Sorrell aka MrBucketlist. Justin is a video creator and influencer and the creator of the 19k subscribers MrBucketlist YouTube channel where you get to follow his adventures not only on the seas but anywhere else. You see MrBucketlist is a certified thrill seeker, never He cruises exclusively solo, which is relatively atypical for men, and has done 30 Solo Cruises—3 of which involved leading MrBucketlist group cruises.

As suggested by Justin’s brand name, cruising is only one aspect of his adventure seeking lifestyle. He has checked off over 150 items on his bucket list in numerous forms. Justin is a confirmed thrill seeker having visited over 80 Theme Parks; 49 of 50 States—and that will soon be 50/50 as he just booked a Hawaii cruise for this Spring; and 5/7 Continents.

And then there was this statement on the MrBucketlist homepage, and Justin became a new travel role model of mine: “I vacation every 2 weeks!”

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Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am proud to host Christian McBride, multi Grammy-winning jazz superstar bass player! We talk about performing at sea, and hear about Christian’s inaugural charter cruise, Christian McBride's World at Sea, January 20-27, 2026. The cruise will be on Celebrity Summit from Ft. Lauderdale, stopping at Jamaica and Grand Cayman.

Christian McBride is creating a new kind of experience for jazz fans while breaking new ground for artists as he takes on a "captain" and completely immersive role on his upcoming cruise, Christian McBride's World at Sea (produced by Signature Cruise Experiences whom we hosted on the podcast when they were called, Jazz Cruises, Ep 113). Music cruises have gained in popularity in recent years and give fans an incredible opportunity to personally engage with their favorite artists (running into them all week long on the ship...at the buffet, the pool, during shore excursions together, seeing concerts in smaller venues than they would on tour) but Christian is in a unique position where he's not simply one of the acts booked onto a festival at sea. Instead, he curated the cruise, building a completely personal environment and atmosphere to share with jazz fans by inviting his friends and peers like Samara Joy, Angelique Kidjo, Ledisi, Jose James, Cecile McLorin Salvant and 40 more musicians to join them. Plus, he's a prolific musician, in several bands at any given moment so it's no surprise that his time on the cruise will be no different than on land: He is bringing three of his bands onboard and will perform with each of them separately.

Christian has performed on over 400 recordings, leads six different bands, has been the Creative Chair for Jazz at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is the artistic director for the world-renowned Newport Jazz Festival, curates the James Moody Jazz Festival and he hosts the popular NPR show "Jazz Night in America."

Christian McBride's World at Sea: https://mcbridesworldatsea.com/

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