Now here’s a handy gadget.

That’s the CruiseWise Crowd Calculator, an online tool that tells you which ships will be in any world port on any given day, and estimates the total number of cruise ship passengers that you’ll have to rub elbows with if you're there too.

Developed by online cruise seller CruiseWise, the tool lets you search by port and date or by itinerary, the latter allowing you to see how crowded all the ports will be on a particular ship’s particular sailing date and itinerary.

The tool only uses six cruise lines as the basis for its estimates, but they're six biggies: Carnival, Celebrity, Holland America, Norwegian, Princess, and Royal Caribbean. In most destinations, the information from those lines will be a good indicator of a port's relative crowdedness, though estimates for European ports will suffer by the lack of data from Costa and MSC, two of the region's biggest cruise players.

Still, a useful tool, both for the confirmed agoraphobe and the casual misanthrope.

Princess Cruises' next ship, the 141,000-ton, 3,600-passenger Royal Princess, is in the long home-stretch of her construction at Fincantieri’s Monfalcone shipyard, near Trieste, Italy, with her debut planned for June 2013. Princess has been dribbling out information about the ship’s highlights, and this week’s dribble is in video form, touting the activities and attractions that will be available on her top decks. Check it out:

The new Royal Princess will be a new-generation ship for Princess, extending and modernizing many of the features of the line's most recent ships while adding new features like private poolside cabanas that appear to float on the water, a pastry shop, and a private dining experience called Chef’s Table Lumiere, in which diners are surrounded by a curtain of light. Another new feature, shown in animation in the video, is the over-water SeaWalk, a glass-bottomed walkway that extends more than 28 feet beyond the ship's edge and 128 feet above the water.

Following her debut, Royal Princess will sail a summer of Mediterranean itineraries, then sail transatlantic in the fall to begin a winter season of Eastern Caribbean voyages.

Soul’s apparently got legs. After the promoters of the 2013 Soul Train Cruise sold out their scheduled February 2013 voyage in just 75 days, they did the smart thing and scheduled another, which is now set to depart on October 5, 2013.

Themed on the long-running TV musical variety show of the same name, the fall iteration of the Soul Train Cruise will feature artists like Earth, Wind & Fire, Gladys Knight, Jeffrey Osborne, The Whispers, Freddie Jackson, and Sugarfoot's Ohio Players, Jennifer Holliday, Billy Paul, ConFunkShun, Jody Watley, Regina Belle, The Bar-Kays, The Dazz Band, The Mary Jane Girls, The Original Lakeside, A Taste of Honey featuring Janice Marie, DW3, comedian Alonzo Bodden, and DJ Biz Markie.

The cruise will depart San Diego aboard Holland America's Westerdam, sailing a Mexican Riviera route that will take it to Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta (the latter for two days) and include cruising time in Bahia Magdalena, a bay known for its whale watching.

Held in memory of longtime Soul Train host Don Cornelius, who died in February 2012, the cruise will offers performances, meet-and-greets with the acts, “Soul By The Sea” beach parties, retro games, a Solid Gold Theme Ball featuring the original Soul Train Dancers, DJ Biz Markie spinning the hits on deck, and other special events.

Cabins went on sale today, September 27. More info here.

Seven months out from the launch of its new 144,017-ton, 4,000 passenger Norwegian Breakaway, Norwegian Cruise Line continues to put meat on the ship’s bones. Today’s news: The ship’s two-level Mandara Spa and fitness center will offer several first-in-the-cruise-biz features, including:

• The first-ever salt room at sea. According to NCL, “Salt room therapy has been proven to alleviate respiratory and skin ailments, strengthen the immune system, promote better sleep and have a long-term positive impact on overall lung function.” The room will be designed in what the line is calling “a dramatic grotto setting.”
• A Thermal Suite offering guests unobstructed ocean views, plus 13 heated loungers, a “vitality pool,” whirlpools, a sauna, a solarium, and a steam room.
• More than 50 spa treatments for men and women, including the “24 Karat Gold Facial”; massages such as the Thai Herbal Poultice Massage, the Bamboo Massage and the Freestyle Massage; plus a mysterious something called “bliss® fatgirlslim.”
• Acupuncture, teeth whitening, and cosmetic medical treatments performed by a licensed medi-spa doctor.
• A full-service salon offering hair, nail, and waxing services, plus special kid-friendly services.
• A just-for-men barber shop offering haircuts and traditional warm shaves.
• The first-ever Nexersys interactive fight-training modules at sea, offering guests the opportunity to engage in high-intensity, interval training against an avatar, through the use of a simulator. The new “Freestyle Fight Klub” will combine Nexersys training with a cardio boxing class, utilizing the fitness center’s 12 heavy bags.
• The first-ever “Black Light Spinning” class at sea, held in a room lit entirely by black lights and neon graffiti art.
• Low-impact classes such as “Spirals” (a Pilates-inspired class that utilizes weighted balls for added resistance) and “Chi Balls” (a group class inspired by traditional Chinese medicine, combining elements of yoga, tai chi and meditation).

Additional fitness offerings will include TRX, kettle bell training, yoga, Pilates, and body sculpting boot-camp-style classes.Breakaway’s combined spa and fitness areas will spread out over more than 23,000 square feet.

Breakaway’s christening ceremony will take place in New York on May 8, 2013. On May 12, the ship will begin her summer schedule of 7-night Bermuda cruises. Beginning in October 2013, she’ll switch to a winter schedule of Florida/Bahamas and Southern Caribbean voyages.

In the latest round of self-imposed safety upgrades flowing from January’s Costa Concordia disaster, cruise industry trade groups Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and the European Cruise Council (ECC) have just promulgated a new safety policy designed to improve lifeboat operations training for crewmembers.

Effective immediately, the new “Life Boat Loading for Training Purposes” policy requires that ships conduct a full loading and launching of at least one lifeboat every six months for crew training purposes. During the training, the lifeboat must be filled to capacity with crewmembers and maneuvered in the water to facilitate familiarization with lifeboat operations. All crewmembers whose duties include the loading and/or operation of lifeboats are required to participate in the drill. The rules apply to all member companies of the two trade groups, which in practical terms means all operators of large cruise ships. Ships that carry fewer than 300 crewmembers will conduct similar training “as appropriate.”

The new policy is part of an industry-wide Operational Safety Review begun in response to the Concordia disaster. Commenting on the policy, ECC Chairman Manfredi Lefebvre said, “The Cruise industry’s Operational Safety Review demonstrates our on-going determination to ensure that cruise ships remain the safest vacation option and the safest part of the shipping industry. This policy, like all the policies that have already been developed by the Operational Safety Review, exceeds current international regulatory requirements and has been externally verified by world renowned independent experts.”

Click here to read a full version of the "Life Boat Loading for Training Purposes" policy.

Celebrity Cruises’ newest ship is on its way. Yesterday, the line announced that the 126,000-ton, 3,052-passenger vessel had successfully made the “conveyance” from Germany’s landlocked Meyer Werft shipyard, a 10-hour journey up the narrow, twisting River Ems to the North Sea. The particulars of geography, river depth, tides, and other considerations required that Reflection make the journey backward so that her stern-mounted propulsion pods could push additional water under the vessel — necessary given that her keel was sometimes only a few inches from the river bottom. Space above and to the sides of the ship was also in short supply, requiring the temporary removal of power lines that normally pass over the river, and requiring that Reflection navigate (with tugboat assistance) through some incredibly narrow passages: When the ship passed through the raised Jann-Berghaus drawbridge, for instance, the space to port and starboard was just a few feet.

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 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.

Following sea trials and the completion of finishing work in Emshaven, Netherlands, Reflection will host a number of preview events for media and travel industry partners before beginning her first cruise, which departs October 12 from Amsterdam.

This is kinda cool, in a Miracle on 34th Street kind of way: Today, Norwegian Cruise Line announced a new partnership with New York’s Radio City Music Hall that, among other things, means that the famous Rockettes dance troupe — all 18 of them (or more, if you count stand-ins and etc.) —  will serve as the godmother(s) of the new Norwegian Breakaway.

Very New York, don’t ya think? That’s by design: As Breakaway will be homeported year-round in New York, NCL has been going whole-hog into NYC iconography, even commissioning pop artist Peter Max to paint the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline on the ship’s bow.

To represent the Rockettes during Breakaway’s inaugural season, two of the troupe’s number will sail aboard the first six sailings, beginning May 12, 2013. Further bits of the NCL/Rockettes partnership will include:

• Naming NCL as the “Official Cruise Line” of the Rockettes and Radio City Music Hall, and as the “Official Partner” of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
• Special fitness classes, photo opportunities, meet-and-greets, and other events featuring two representative Rockettes, conducted during the first cruise of each month.
• A sweepstakes held during this year’s Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, which audience members can enter for a chance to win a cruise for four on Norwegian Breakaway.
• A year-round NCL display in Radio City Music Hall’s Grand Lounge, featuring an 11-foot replica of Norwegian Breakaway.

“Norwegian Breakaway is being designed as New York’s ship and we want everyone to know that this is the ‘must-sail’ cruise ship from New York in 2013 and beyond,” said NCL CEO Kevin Sheehan in a press release. “I strongly believe that the Rockettes, one of the most beloved and recognizable New York icons, are the perfect choice to serve as the ship’s Godmothers.”

Breakaway’s christening ceremony will take place in New York on May 8, 2013. On May 12, the ship will begin her summer schedule of 7-night Bermuda cruises. Beginning in October 2013, she’ll switch to a winter schedule of Florida/Bahamas and Southern Caribbean voyages.

I’m a sucker for cruises that visit stark, cold, northerly places instead of warm, sunny, southerly ones, so this got my attention: This coming August, exploratory cruise line Lindblad Expeditions will be offering its first Arctic Quest: Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic cruise aboard the 148-guest National Geographic Explorer, sailing from the waters of western Greenland to the Inuit villages of Baffin Island.

Departing August 24, 2013, the cruise will kick off in Kangerlussuaq at the head of the 100-mile Kangerlussuaq Fjord, then spend three days exploring Greenland’s coast before sailing west to Baffin Bay and the Canadian High Arctic. There, National Geographic Explorer's guests will be able to visit traditional Inuit hunting and fishing grounds, contemporary Inuit villages, and archaeological sites of the Thule people (ancestors of the modern-day Inuit), and, with luck, spot walrus, polar bear, and other Arctic wildlife. Other expedition highlights will include:

• The chance to travel with a special guest, former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, Canada’s first and only female prime minister
• A Zodiac cruise in the Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
• A visit to the ruins of the Viking village of L’Anse aux Meadows, established in 1000 and discovered in 1960
• A chance to meet Inuit artisans and learn about their carving and weaving traditions

The not-inconsiderable rates for this cruise start at $13,470 per person, double occupancy. But, if you book by December 31, 2012, they’ll throw in free charter airfare from Ottawa to Kangerlussuaq, a value of $1,200 per person.

A panel of experts examining last January’s capsizing of the Costa Cruises vessel Costa Concordia has presented a large dossier of findings to an Italian court, and reports published earlier today by the daily newspaper La Repubblica show the dossier lays principle blame at the feet of the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, and on the cruise line itself.

According to reports, the panel, led by Admiral Cavo Dragone, Rear Admiral Francesco Carpinteri, and engineers Enzo Dalle Mese and Mario Maestro, said that Costa Concordia was travelling at 15.4 knots as it attempted a sail-by salute to the island of Giglio — far too fast for such a maneuver, especially at night. The panel noted that in the aftermath of the collision with undersea rocks, there was “an almost complete omission of the entire sequence of [emergency] messages that should have been expected," and that neither Capt. Schettino nor Costa Crociere reacted quickly enough considering the gravity of the situation.

While Schettino gets the lion’s share of blame, both for attempting the maneuver and for delaying the abandon-ship order for more than an hour, the experts also noted problems with Costa’s on-shore crisis coordination team and with the crew, including possible deficiencies in their emergency training and possible language difficulties between the captain and an Indonesian helmsman.

Costa Concordia struck rocks off the coast of Giglio, Italy, on January 13, and capsized hours later. The disaster claimed the lives of 32 passengers and crew.

I tend to look at things from an historical perspective, so when I received a press release today titled “Successful Inaugural Season in Alaska for American Cruise Lines,” my first thought was, Ah, the latest fruits of Cruise West’s bankruptcy.

It was almost exactly two years ago that venerable small-ship cruise line Cruise West closed its doors, following months of shaky financials and a fruitless scramble to secure new investment. In the wake of the line’s shuttering, several established and new small-ship lines announced plans to try and scoop up some of the business in Alaska and elsewhere that Cruise West — with its well-established client base, strong name recognition, and relatively large small-ship fleet — had always monopolized.

Among those new competitors in the Alaska market was Connecticut-based American Cruise Lines, until then an entity associated solely with east coast cruises. In April 2011, ACL announced plans to visit Alaska for the first time, and now they’ve done so — successfully, by their estimation — for an entire season, and are looking forward to number two.

I haven’t sailed the route with them myself, but the ASC product seems a good successor to Cruise West. While both companies attract/attracted an older clientele and focus/focused on natural history and regional history, it’s advantage ASC in terms of hardware: Whereas Cruise West’s ships were uniformly aged and perpetually in need of freshening up, ASC’s vessels — including 100-passenger, 2005-launched American Spirit, which spent this summer in Alaska and will do so again next year — are newer, larger, more spacious, and more up-to-date, with the largest cabins in the small-ship segment.

ACL will begin its 2013 season of Alaska Inside Passage cruises on June 1, but before that happens, American Spirit will offer ten weeks of sailings in another new ACL destination: Washington’s Puget Sound & San Juan Islands. Sailing round-trip from Seattle, the 7-night cruises will troll the San Juans and Puget Sound and visiting the Washington ports of Anacortes, Friday Harbor, Port Townsend, and Poulsbo. Rates for those cruise start at $3,695 per person, while 2013’s 7-night Alaska cruises from Juneau start at $5,320 per person, including a complimentary shore tour package and pre-cruise hotel stay.