[gonzobonzo]

> The point was "most people dream of cruises to interesting places, not cruises themselves" and your response was "people don't want to take vacations to boring places either"

No, my is that just as many people dream of going on the cruises themselves, so you can't simply slice that out and say "transportation is transportation" just like you can't simply slice out the fact that the beach someone is going to is in Thailand and not closer by. It may be an incidental part of the vacation fro some people, but the people paying more to go to Thailand are doing it because Thailand is important to them, and the people paying more to be on a cruise are doing it because a cruise is important to them.

I understand that people who don't cruises might not understand that, but that's not terribly surprising, is it? The people who do will pay vastly different prices depending on the ship they're going on, and some people say they don't even get off on certain destinations and stay aboard the ship. Depending on the individual, the destination is more incidental than the ship. This is also obvious if you notice that when people take a cruise, they are significantly decreasing their time at these destinations in order to increase their time at on the cruise, which wouldn't make any sense if the cruise was just a means to get them to a destination.

At the very least, people should notice all the people who will pay money to have a boat take them around in a circle for an hour, and realize that some people do really like just being out on the water (though cruises are usually much more than that, but it's another topic).