Cruises

All aboard! Last call for all ship passengers on pier 12. I know summer is sadly over, but that doesn’t mean the fun and festivities have to stop. Let the vacay vibes live on forever! We are about to embark on a journey around the 7 seas and learn all about the business of big boats. Whether you’re into lavish voyages, endless activities, or just wanna see sunsets from different places and perspectives, as you stuff your face in the buffet, then this episode is for you. Man overboard! All hands on deck as we dissect the diverse world of cruises on this week’s episode of FYI!

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foreign[Music] All Aboard last call for all ship passengers on pier 12. I know summer is sadly over but that doesn't mean the fun and festivities have to stop let the vacay Vibes live on forever we are about to embark on a journey around the seven seas and learn all about the business of big boats whether you're into lavish voyages endless activities or just wanna see sunsets from different places and perspectives as you stuff your face in the buffet then this episode is for you Man Overboard all hands on deck as we dissect the diverse world of cruises on this week's episode of f why I welcome to for your info English you got it[Applause][Music][Applause][Applause] hello hello hello Amigos welcome to another exciting edition of FYI this is the topic base show where we'll learn about everything and anything all while we have fun and remember if you have any ideas for upcoming topics I'd love to hear from you drop me a line oh and I'd like to send a special shout out to all of our friends who listen in on ivox recently ivox wrote an article and they recommended some of their favorite podcasts to learn English and guess who was on the list that's right yours truly FYI so thank you very much to ivox and everybody who listens to us over on ivox just another amazing Milestone so are you guys ready to go on a cruise well let me start off by saying I've never been on a cruise I'm dying to go on a cruise but I've never been on a cruise now I've flown a half a million times but a cruise well I'll tell you in the bonus part why I never went on a cruise a cruise that I have pending and this is for family reasons but I'll tell you all about that in the bonus episode and just a quick reminder there's a bonus episode every week and you can get that bonus episode if you're a patron along with PDF documents with all the vocabulary expressions and structures and if you're in our higher levels our super duper students and our Interstellar students well then you'll have access to weekly classes with me where we go over all the interesting things from each episode and if you're in our Interstellar level well then you get all that and a private class with me every month and a lot of people say it's a deal a bargain I suggest you go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso and take a look and let me know if you have any questions and I'd like to take a moment to send a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students Lina Javier Paco Roberto Jose Maria Mila and Alex and don't forget about my Interstellar students Carmen Isa Bako David and Edgar I just want to tell you guys keep up the great work I mixed extremely proud of each and every one of you and those of you who haven't joined us yet what are you waiting for you'll get tons of amazing content exclusive content every week and all that is over on patreon.com Alberto Alonso so let's take a look at the intro I started out by saying all aboard I think that one is pretty self-explanatory then I said last call for all ship passengers now last call means Ultima Yamada but if you hear this in a bar setting in a pub or in a bar it means it's the last chance you have to order some more alcohol so if a bartender says last call that means order your last drink or drinks depending on how much you like to drink and then I said for ship passengers on pier 12 and passengers I think that one's pretty easy a pier is a doc you call it and I chose the number 12 because my daughter was born on September 12th and then I said I know summer is sadly over I know I miss it too it seems like it was many moons ago that means a really long time ago but that doesn't mean the fun and festivities have to stop then I said let the vacay Vibes live on forever a lot of V's in there and remember Spanish people V and B don't sound the same let the vacay Vibes live on forever and we don't say vacation I've heard a lot of students say vacation it's vacation vacation so that's why we say vacay the same way you say vacas and Vibes is short for vibrations it's a word you'll see pretty often then I said we're about to embark on a journey a journey is not una hornada it's a false friend is a work day a journey is a voyage a trip and to Embark is to start it sounds like embar to board and the Seven Seas where did I get that from well it's time for my singing moment on the show I travel the world and the Seven Seas everybody is looking for something the seven seas and we're gonna learn all about the business of big boats well in this case they are ships and what's the difference boats and ships I asked Google the same question and it says that ships are 20 meters so anything below 20 meters long is a boat and those small little ones the row boats those are also called dinghies but we're going to talk about these huge ones today then I went on to say whether you're into lavish voyages and lavish is another way of saying luxurious and avoid as I said before is another way of saying a trip a more poetic way of saying a trip and it's not Voyage like the song voyage no we say Voyage it rhymes with Bridge language voyage and don't forget about the endless activities and we're going to talk about a lot of the amazing amenities that are available these days when you go on a cruise or maybe you just want to chill out and see the sunsets from different places and perspectives well different places because cruises often have several stops and different perspectives because we usually see the sunset from Land I've never seen one yet as I said before but I imagine sunsets and sunrises are truly amazing on a cruise ship and don't forget about the buffet I know you say Buffet we say Buffet people stuff their faces at the buffet and that means to eat a lot to stuff your face and if you stuff your face afterwards you're going to say I'm stuffed that means I'm really really full as always think of words as ideas or concepts instead of just one dimensional words and I've heard this from everybody everybody who has ever gone on a cruise has put on a few pounds you say ponerkilos but obviously in the United States we say to put on some pounds and then I said man overboard which of course I had to do that but How likely is it that somebody's gonna go overboard when you are on a cruise well it's highly unlikely in fact in the last 20 years around 300 people have gone overboard and in most cases it was not an accident it was on purpose and also the expression to go overboard means to do it too much I think you say basarse in Spanish man you got too many balloons for the party you really went overboard and will look at a lot of idiomatic expressions in the bonus episode obviously idiomatic expressions that have to do with ships which we now know are 20 meters and over and please let's pronounce that word ship not sheep ship because a sheep is bad ship so let's ask this question is there a sheep on the ship oh and by the way the word sheep that's an irregular plural one sheep two sheep and yes like you do in Spanish if we can't fall asleep we count sheep especially if we're on a cruise ship ooh ship and sheep you don't know how many times I've heard those words mispronounced so as always let's kick off defining what an ocean liner is a cruise ship is because they're different an ocean liner is more like the Titanic or the Queen Elizabeth these were these lavish luxurious boats that went to a specific destination and ocean liners sit lower in the water than cruise ships and they have a pointed bow and the bow is the front of the ship also ocean liners are better equipped to handle bad weather and they also minimize the feeling of movement aboard the ship which is really important if you get seasick nobody wants to get seasick cruise ships on the other hand are more raised and they're not as aerodynamic but also remember they don't have to go as fast they're cruising and cruising means going at the same speed maintaining the same speed whereas those ships the Titanic the Lusitania they were trying to be the fastest ones to cross the Atlantic so the modern day cruise ships are not really good at dealing with bad weather inclement weather as we say and cruise ships also the purpose I mean they're meant for vacationing you're supposed to hang out your vacation is supposed to be on the ship okay you may stop at a few different ports and get off but you don't have to you've got tons of activities to do on board you don't ever have to leave the ship if you don't want to and there isn't a specific destination you stop at a few different places there's no real Rush whereas the old school ocean liners they went from Southampton to New York or any other Atlantic Crossing kind of like the plains in fact planes replaced ocean liners so now that we've gotten all that technical information out of the way without getting too technical because I like to keep it simple I like to put it in layman's terms we're not trying to get an engineering degree here we're trying to learn about cruise ships while we practice our English listening and we can practice our speaking but that's in your hands folks you have to repeat what I say aloud especially when you hear new vocabulary and if you're a patron you have PDF documents where you can follow along you even have worksheets where you can see how much of it you remembered or how much of it you know before you listen to the episode I guess it just depends on your level either way if you want those accompanying materials all you have to do is go to patreon.com Alberto Alonso let's take a look at the history as I said ocean liners were the only way to really cross the Atlantic if you wanted to go from Europe to the United States you had to take an ocean liner and it would take around a week and most of these were steam ships so there was no practical purpose anymore it just made sense to fly just the time you saved was worth it and I looked it up the first cruise liner purpose-built Cruise liner was the princess in Victoria Louise which was built in 1901 by the American Hamburg company it was the first ship designed specifically with cruising in mind and in the early days it was incredible I read that they had cows on board yeah you heard right they had cows on board well people drink milk right where do you get milk from a cow you milk the cow and you get milk the word ordinar is a very logical word in English but also there was another reason if they got stranded at sea or had a problem well then they would have tons of meat but I can just imagine you know you're sleeping in your cabin and in the middle of the night you hear and you're thinking is that my stomach am I hungry maybe I need to go back to the 24-hour buffet and stuff my face and we'll look at a lot more fun fun facts in the bonus episode some that will absolutely blow your mind but even though the princess in Victoria Luis was the first ship designed specifically with cruising in mind the true modern day cruise experience as we know it today began in the 1960s as I said the industry turned away from the transatlantic Roots the same routes that were being used for cargo and they turned it into a luxury entertainment experience and cruise ships became more casual you didn't have to wear a tuxedo anymore the British call it a dinner jacket and they started to tour different places like the Caribbean islands and other amazing destinations but modern cruising didn't really catch on I mean 1960s is when they started experimenting but it really didn't catch on until there was a very popular TV show about a cruise ship does anybody know what TV show I'm talking about let me play a little piece of the intro for you but I know in the United States everybody from my generation to my parents my grandparents was familiar with this classic show let's see if you recognize the opening theme[Music] Apple promise is something for everyone to set a course for adventure your mind on a new road man The Love Boat that's right it's the love boat and it came out in 1977 and it was kind of this show about people who were on a cruise ship and you know there were Affairs relationships I mean it was really like a soap opera but it brought cruise ships into the public eye and in a major way remember TV was King back then and all of a sudden people all over the United States wanted to go on a cruise they wanted to see if it was like it was in the show and from what I've heard from people who work on cruise lines or who have worked on cruise lines it's pretty nuts at least with the crew members which they have their own quarters their own area where they don't mix with the guests and I've heard that they party like rock stars people are hooking up with each other they're drinking like fish well think about it sometimes they're on board for three months eight months some of the contracts that they might get and we'll talk more about the crew a little bit later on but if you haven't checked out The Love Boat check it out it was responsible for making the cruise industry as big as it is today and how big is the cruise industry Oh I thought you'd never ask well as of December 2021 there were 323 cruise ships operating worldwide with a combined capacity of 581 200 passengers cruising has also become a major part of the tourism industry with an estimated Market of are you ready for this number 29.4 billion per year and over 19 million passengers carried worldwide annually as of 2011 and the industry is growing at a tremendous Pace in the bonus part we're going to take a look at the largest ship right now but guess what it's about to be overtaken that's right so as we're doing this as I record this right now the biggest boat in the world is being built so records don't last too long in the cruise ship industry it seems like they're building boats left and right and I guess that's great it's supply and demand if there's a demand then they've got to have enough boats and Industry experts say that the X expected amount of passengers in 2027 will reach 40 million a year 40 million people who want to get on a big boat and have tons of fun together with their family with their friends or who knows with other singles just like them oh yeah there are singles cruises and in the bonus part we're going to take a look at all kinds of wacky cruises that you can take and as always fun facts let me give you a fun fact right now almost all cruise ships these days dwarf the Titanic that means they make the Titanic look very small the Titanic could hold 2 400 passengers some of the larger cruise ships today can hold double that so if you saw the Titanic in the water these days next to these cruise ships it would look like a toy like the one my daughter has in the back and we'll look at some more fun facts in the bonus episode as I said the three biggest lines as far as how many ships they operate are number one Royal Caribbean there are people who say Caribbean and Caribbean but in the case of the company it's always Royal Caribbean they have 28 cruise ships at the time of the recording of This podcast next is Carnival Cruise Lines with 24 cruise ships and then MSC cruises with 23 and there are more being built as we speak and here's a trivia question for you what is the cruise capital of the world hmm I'll tell you what you can give me a city or a state okay so I just gave you a huge clue there it's obviously in the United States well Florida is the state they have five ports Cruise ports and Miami is the city that holds the title of the cruise capital of the world but hang on one second in 2022 Port Canaveral surpassed Port Miami by Passenger numbers in 2022 Port Miami welcomed four million 22 544 Cruise passengers hey a good exercise would be to write down these statistics in every episode you'll get some statistics so if you want to practice numbers that would be a great way to do it let me give you the number again so in 2022 Port Miami welcomed 4 million 22 544 Cruise passengers now in Spanish that's and let me just remind you where you guys put a decimal point we put a comma so you switch them so written that's four comma zero two two comma five four four all right let's try another one Port Canaveral welcomed four million seventy two thousand three hundred and Ninety Six Cruise passengers during that same period did you write it down let me give it to you again four million seventy two thousand three hundred and ninety six and notice I didn't say four Millions I said four million all right in Spanish here I go cuatro Millions me remember it's written with commas not points so that means Port Canaveral had about 50 000 more passengers in the same time period so does that mean Port Canaveral is now the cruise capital of the world well either way if you said Florida you were right and we'll wrap up the first part of today's show talking about the world's largest cruise ship again this is as of 2023 as of the recording of This podcast and the information is already outdated the largest ship in the world is drumroll foreign Caribbeans wonder of the Seas but don't celebrate too much wonder of the seas because soon you will be surpassed by your successor icon of the Seas which will measure 365 meters and I don't even want to think of all the amenities it has on board but we're going to talk about amenities fun facts weird cruises the most expensive Cruise in the world living on a cruise ship the costly construction of ships of course we're going to talk about food as well and we'll learn all about the word cruise and other interesting idiomatic expressions all that and much more in the bonus episode so I hope you'll join us there and if you don't well that's okay too whatever floats your boat to each his own I sure hope you enjoyed this week's episode of f why[Applause] foreign[Applause][Music][Music]