The fifth and final ship in Celebrity Cruises' gorgeous Solstice class is one step closer to service.

This week, at the Meyer Werft shipyard in land-locked Papenburg, Germany, the 126,000-ton, 3,052-passenger capacity Celebrity Reflection was towed backward out of the yard's massive enclosed building dock and moved to an outdoor quay, where her construction will continue until mid-September. At that point, she'll make "the conveyance," a winding 12- to 15-hour journey up the narrow River Ems from Meyer Werft to the North Sea, where her sea trials will take place.

The conveyance mode of getting ships from Papenburg to the sea wasn't a problem in 1795, when Meyer began building small wooden ships, but conveying today's massive cruise ships is a major production that involves towing the ship backward so that her stern-mounted propulsion pods can push additional water under the vessel — necessary given that her keel will sometimes be only a few inches from the river bottom. To give her even more boost, the Powers That Be will be carefully monitoring the position of the moon and tidal conditions so they can peg the conveyance to the time when the river will be at its maximum depth. On a typical conveyance of a ship this size, the passage to port and starboard is nearly as tight at the space below the keel: When the ship passes through the raised Jann-Berghaus drawbridge, for instance, the space to port and starboard can be as little as two feet.

Celebrity Reflection is the tenth ship Meyer Werft has built for Celebrity, going back to 1988's Horizon, which sails now under its same, original name for Spanish line Pulmantur. Meyer Werft has also built Celebrity's Zenith, Galaxy, and Mercury (all now retired from the fleet), and current fleetmates Century, Solstice, Equinox, Eclipse, and Silhouette. Reflection will be the most different of the mostly similar Solstice-class ships, with a wider hull and an entire extra deck holding 72 new staterooms, including 32 large AquaClass Suites. She'll also have all the innovations debuted last year aboard Celebrity Silhouette, including new relaxation and dining options at the grassy outdoor Lawn Club, a gourmet beer bar, and a calm "tree house" lounge called The Hideaway.

Celebrity Reflection is scheduled to enter service on October 12, 2012, sailing a 9-night European cruise from Amsterdam to Barcelona.

Me personally, when it comes to Christmas, I'm a "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" kind of guy. Snow. Warm coats and gloves. Christmas trees in racks on the sidewalk, waiting for families to take them home.

But that's just me. For folks in other climes, Christmas means entirely different things — like the Louisiana and Mississippi things American Queen Steamboat Company will be firing up come December this year, when it's offering five "Old Fashioned Holiday" voyages aboard the paddlewheel steamboat American Queen. The company promises authentic Cajun and Creole Christmas traditions including Christmas bonfires on Louisiana's levees, special Christmas shows in the ship's Grand Saloon, door-decorating contests, a visit from Santa Claus and his elves, and a flood of regional holiday cuisine, including a Réveillon menu that includes Sazerac and Champagne cocktails, tomato aspic with fried oysters, deviled eggs with lump crabmeat and caviar, pheasant gumbo, pork grillades over savory grits, almond tarts, and bouche noel.

Trips are available round-trip from New Orleans or between New Orleans and Memphis:

• 7-night Old Fashioned Holidays voyages sail Memphis to New Orleans on Dec. 1 and Dec. 21. A voyage upriver is also available from New Orleans to Memphis on Dec. 20. All itineraries call on Vicksburg and Natchez (Mississippi) and St. Francisville, Baton Rouge, and Oak Alley (Louisiana).
• A 5-night New Orleans round-trip voyage departs Dec. 8 and calls at the ports of Natchez, Oak Alley, St. Francisville, and Baton Rouge.
• A 7-night New Orleans round-trip voyage sails Dec. 13 and calls at Oak Alley, St. Francisville, Natchez, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and Houmas House (Louisiana).

Fares for 5-night holiday sailings start at $1,395 per person, double occupancy. Fares for 7-night voyages start at $1,995 per person. All journeys include a 1-night pre-voyage hotel stay, all shore tours in all ports, and complimentary house wine and beer with dinner.

Kids . . . They have no patience. They can't sit still. They either eat everything or they won't eat anything. Or maybe that's just my kid?

Anyway, MSC has just announced two new kid-friendly dinner options — which could alternatively be called "parent-friendly" options:

• Happy Dinners: With Happy Dinner, waiters serve kids their full meal from the kids' menu at the same time parents get their opening courses. When the kids finish, kids’ center staff members pick them up and bring take them elsewhere to play, leaving parents to enjoy the rest of their dinner in peace.
• Fun Time Dinners: With this option, MSC has taken kids out of the dining room equation entirely. Instead of being seated with their parents, kids ages 3 to 11 can dine in a separate, specially decorated area of the buffet restaurant with the entertainment team, then play at the ship's children's centers (the Mini Club and Junior Club) until their parents pick them up. The option is available every night, with three nights per cruise designated as theme parties: the Welcome Party, Italian Party, and Farewell and Birthday Party.

Both dinner services are available free on all MSC ships, effective immediately. Parents just need to register their kids in advance with the Mini or Junior Club and complete special “dinner coupons.”

Simultaneous with introduction of the new dinners, MSC will also be offering a new program at the kids' center designed for babies and toddlers ages 10 to 36 months, who must attend with their parents. Kids' club members will organize age-appropriate games and activities that include musical games, baby disco, puzzle games, drawing, and building with bricks.

And of course, per the MSC usual, kids 17 and under travel more or less free when sharing a cabin with two adults. Fees and taxes still apply.

Cruisers of a certain vintage and inclination will remember Windjammer Barefoot Cruises, the self-styled pirates of the cruise business. For decades, the family-owned line offered weeklong (and longer) cruises on a fleet of old-fashioned tall ships and one shady-looking cargo/passenger vessel that kept them all supplied. The vessels prowled the Caribbean like privateers, scooping up passengers at different island ports and taking off on itineraries that were only kinda-sorta thought out ahead of time. And people loved it, to the point where I think it's safe to say Windjammer Barefoot had some of the most loyal repeat passengers of any cruise line, ever.

Case in point: After the line collapsed with a reverberating kaboom in 2007, a group of former passengers and officers and crew got together and formed what looked at first like a rebirth of the old line. Named Island Windjammers, the new venture got off the ground in late 2009, offering weekly 6-night cruises from Grenada aboard the 101-foot, 12-passenger brigantine schooner Diamant: 100% casual (like Windjammer Barefoot), 100% laid back (ditto), but quite a bit less shady.

Over the next couple of years, the line began developing its own personality, to the point where I really don't need to preface any discussion of it with a long rehash of the Windjammer Barefoot story. But, old habits die hard. So let us now consign Windjammer Barefoot to, in the future, a significant footnote in the history of living, breathing cruise line Island Windjammers — especially because today they fulfilled a dream they've talked about since the beginning, and began building a real, true tall-ship fleet.

Meet the Sagitta:

Late Tuesday evening, Hurricane Ernesto — the fifth named storm and second hurricane of the 2012 season — made landfall in the southern portion of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, causing minor damage to the facilities of the Costa Maya port facility, but no structural damage.

Ernesto has already been downgraded to tropical storm status, after forcing Disney's Disney Fantasy and Carnival's Carnival Dream, Legend, and Triumph to alter their itineraries.

Boarding a cruise ship is often not the funnest thing in the world. There's all that waiting in line, then more waiting, then waiting for the cabin stewards to clean last week's schmutz out of your stateroom, then waiting and waiting and waiting for your luggage to show up so you can change out of your sweaty T-shirt. Folks who book suites often get a "get on board fast" pass, but the rest of us usually have to do the whole slog.

But maybe we don't.

Beginning August 20 aboard Carnival Imagination and August 25 aboard Carnival Liberty, Carnival Cruise Lines is trying out a new program called "Faster to the Sun," which offers priority embarkation, early stateroom availability, express luggage delivery, priority dinner seatings and tender availability, and choice of early or late debarkation, for a price of $49.95 per stateroom — potentially not a bad deal, considering it's the same price regardless of how many people you have occupying that stateroom. For a family of four, that ain't bad.

The package also includes express access to the ship's guest services desk for anything you need during your trip. Not sure how that works — do you stride up to the front of the line, waving your pass? — but some folks'll dig it.

And good news for Diamond- and Platinum-level members of Carnival’s VIFP (Very Important Fun Person) Club guest recognition program: You get the program free.

The package is currently bookable via the shore excursion section of carnival.com.

Here's a nice marriage: Lindblad Expeditions, the name to beat in small-ship adventure travel, and Sea Cloud, probably the most pedigreed cruise vessel afloat. Lindblad has just announced that in 2013, it will be chartering the famous tall ship for three 7-night cruises sailing the Caribbean's Lesser Antilles islands, departing February 28, March 7, and March 14.

Sea Cloud (photo: Sea Cloud Cruises)

Talk about history: Sea Cloud's goes back to 1931, when Wall Street tycoon E. F. Hutton commissioned construction of the four-masted sailing ship (then known as Hussar) from the Krupp family shipyard in Kiel, Germany. Outfitting of her interior was left to Hutton’s wife, heiress and businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post, who spent two years on the task, eventually drafting a full-scale diagram showing every detail of her design, down to the placement of antiques. After the couple’s divorce, Post renamed the vessel Sea Cloud and sailed her to Leningrad, where second husband Joseph E. Davies was serving as U.S. ambassador. World War II saw the vessel commissioned to the U.S. Navy, which removed her masts and used her as a floating weather station. After the war, the vessel passed through numerous hands: first back to Post, then to Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Montinas, then to a number of American owners before she was purchased by German economist and seaman Hartmut Paschberg. A lover of great ships, Paschberg and a group of Hamburg investors put up the money for an eight-month overhaul that restored Sea Cloud’s original grandeur, full of marble, gold, and mahogany detailing. Today, the ship is owned by the Hamburg-based Hansa Treuhand Group and offers cabins for 64 passengers, the luckiest (and richest) of whom can stay in Post’s own museum-like suite, with its Louis XIV–style bed and nightstands, marble fireplace and bathroom, chandeliers, and intricate moldings.

But back to the present: Lindblad's Caribbean sailings aboard Sea Cloud will sail round-trip from Barbados, visiting Dominica, Iles des Saintes, St. Lucia, and the Grenadines; offering opportunities for snorkeling in the marine reserve of the Tobago Cays and the Grenadines; and carrying aboard several experts (including some from the National Geographic Society) to help illuminate guests' experience.

Rates start at $6,990 per person, double occupancy.

So Norwegian Epic has this show, Legends in Concert, which features a cast of celebrity impersonators, a.k.a. "tribute artists." Over the past couple years, the show has rocked legends such as Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Garth Brooks, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, and, most recently, Steven Tyler, Lady Gaga, and Elvis. Beginning November 3, 2012, the lineup will make another of its regular switch-outs, with new impersonators coming aboard to do their best Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, and Jimmy Buffet. One of these things is not like the other?

Lest the talent go unnamed, J Lucas will portray Michael Jackson, Marva Scott will be Donna Summer, and Barrie Cunningham will portray Jimmy Buffet. All three work with the Las Vegas–based Legends in Concert organization, which has presented celebrity tribute shows in that city for the past 25 years and (according to them) "assembled the greatest collection of live tribute artists and celebrity look-alikes in all of show business." During Epic's upcoming Caribbean season, Lucas, Scott, and Cunningham will perform six 45-minute shows over three days during each 7-night cruise, plus three nights of “Unplugged” shows in the Manhattan Room, the ship's New York–inspired supper club.

Norwegian Epic will offer 7-night Eastern Caribbean cruises from Miami between November 3, 2012, and April 13, 2013, visiting St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Nassau, with three days at sea.

The average cruise ship these days carries several thousand guests, while the average pool deck is stocked with several hundred decks chairs. No matter how you do the math, it's still a lifeboats-on-the-Titanic­­­ calculation: not enough for everyone on board. That can be OK since some of us (me, for instance, with my Irish-white skin) prefer to flit from shady spot to shady spot, but when folks get all possessive about their deck chairs, planting their flag and expecting to own them throughout the day, things can get ugly.

Enter Carnival. In a post on his popular Facebook page this past Monday, Carnival Senior Cruise Director John Heald announced a new policy that's being tried out aboard the new Carnival Breeze. It started with this announcement that was recently sent to every onboard cabin TV and posted on the giant SeaSide Theatre screen above the pool:

"We went with 4o minutes," said Heald in the Facebook post, "as we felt that this was a fair amount of time if guests get up to eat, drink, pee, swim or slide."

According to Heald, the deck chair policing program will be tried out during Breeze's current and next cruise, then adjusted as necessary before being rolled out to the rest of the Carnival fleet.

"It has been noted by the beards who read this page how important this was to you," said Heald, "and I have pushed hard to the most senior beards to get this done and my thanks to them for listening and acting."

As of this writing, the Facebook announcement had 770 "likes" and 358 comments, many along the lines of "Well it's about time."

I'll make this fast, 'cause time's a-wastin': Up in Maine, the coastal schooner J & E Riggin is offering a truly last-minute deal on a 5-night package that includes overnight lodging tonight, admittance to the Maine Lobster Festival tomorrow, a lobster dinner on the fairgrounds, and a 4-day Maine Lighthouses & Lobsters sailing that departs Saturday morning and includes a beachside lobster bake. The per-person price is $629, a 30% drop from the previously advertised $899. Travelers who join the trip on Friday night instead of tonight can sail for $551 per person.

The Maine Lobster Festival takes place at Harbor Park in Rockland, which is also J & E Riggin's home port. If you want to make a reservation, you can call 800-869-0604 or click www.mainewindjammer.com.