Welcome Aboard!

Thanks for taking the time to check out our blog. If you’ve come to this page because you love to cruise, then you’re in good company.

My wife Janis and I are also avid cruisers. And you’ll almost always find us cruising along with two family members who are also cruise addicts, Janis’ son Paul and his wife Debbie.

Over the past several years we’ve traveled on several cruise lines, but we’re really partial to Carnival. We don’t have anything against the other cruise companies, it’s just that Carnival is a good fit for what we like to do.

Early in 2013 I got an opportunity to start a project that involved publishing digital magazines. The dramatic increase in the number of people using iPads and other tablet devices has created a huge demand for these types of publications. So I decided to explore the possibilities.

Initially I considered launching a digital magazine based on golf. My skill level as a golfer is pretty average, but my love of gadgets is off the chart. So I thought it might really be cool to combine these two interests by creating a magazine that would publish reviews about all types of golf gadgets.

But then just about the time I was ready to begin, it dawned on me that going on cruises is even a stronger passion of mine. And more importantly, it’s a passion I share with my wife Janis. So that would mean it’s something we could work on together.

So that’s what we did. I started investing a lot of time, and a fairly good amount of money, gathering the resources I would need to make it happen. It was a bit more complicated than we originally thought, but in April, 2014, we finallypublished our first issue of Fun Time Cruisers digital magazine.

In order to test how much interest there might be we offered the first issue for free. Within a short period of time approximately 450 people took us up on the offer. If you weren’t one of them, you can still get your own free copy. Instructions can be found on the “Magazine” page of this blog.

Most of the feedback was very positive, so we went ahead and started planning for subsequent issues. But before we actually published the second issue, I thought it would be best to find out if folks were actually willing to pay a reasonable price. I’m really glad we did the survey at that time.

The results helped me realize that, while a lot of people really enjoyed the magazine, the value for most of them wasn’t sufficient enough to justify the price we would have to charge to make the whole thing financially viable.

That’s when we announced our decision to drop our plans to publish a digital magazine. Not surprisingly, a lot of our raving fans let us know how disappointed they were.

So that’s why we created this blog. I’m pretty sure we’re going to be able to include many of the features that were planned for the digital magazine. It won’t be exactly the same, but it’s our intent to have it be as close as possible.

As a start, we have posted some of the content that was already scheduled to be included in the second issue. If you and other visitors show a pretty good level of interest in these topics then we’ll continue to develop the blog further.

So please go ahead and look around. And once you’ve had a chance to explore, please let us know what you think.

Happy cruising … Bernie Perry