16 | WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
travel
The offer seemed too good to be true: a
three-day cruise to the Bahamas for
$129. At a minimum, that’s room, meals
and transit abroad for about the price of
an average hotel room.
Budget cruises abound in the ever-
growing industry, where 18 new ships
are expected to launch this year, accord-
ing to the Cruise Lines International As-
sociation. Based at the Port of Palm
Beach in Florida, Bahamas Paradise
Cruise Line operates a pair of ships that
go back and forth to Freeport on Grand
Bahama Island, about 90 miles away,
year-round.
I booked a $129 sailing on the 1,680-
guest Grand Classica, formerly the
Costa neoClassica, launched by the Ital-
ian line Costa Cruises in 1991 and repur-
posed in 2018. Double-occupancy rates
currently run from $99 a person for an
interior cabin to $459 a person for a
suite. With tax and fees, the bill was
about $210, still a good value, provided
the ship was clean, the food edible, the
resort amenities diverting. I embarked
in late May to find out.EMBARKATION GANTLET
Most cruises from Florida depart from
Miami, Fort Lauderdale or Port Canav-
eral, each accessible from a major air-
port. Palm Beach offers fewer flights,
but the cruise line’s website suggested
getting tickets aboard the new Bright-
line train from $10 for the 43-minute trip
between Fort Lauderdale and West
Palm Beach.
The sleek, snub-nosed trains operate
from modern downtown stations that al-
lowed me to conduct my own pre- and
post-cruise shore excursions on foot.
From the West Palm station, it was a 10-
minute Uber ride to the ship.
After a quick check-in, boarding the
ship required running a gantlet of peo-
ple with something to sell: the photogra-
pher, shore excursion staff, restaurant
and alcohol reps. I’d prebooked an ex-
cursion, passed on the $33 upgrade to
dine in the steakhouse and received a 6
p.m. seating assignment in the Yellow
Elder dining room by a weary reserva-
tionist.
Judging from the size of the five-deep
sales force handling alcohol, booze iswhere the cruise line makes money. One
tout explained that drinks on the ship
are $12 each, and if I had five a day I
would be better off buying the 10-drink
package at $75.99 (there’s also a nonal-
coholic package for $35, and unlimited
soda for $21).
When I mentioned that struck me as
ordering my hangover in advance, they
pushed a bucket-of-beer package. I fi-
nally relented and purchased a bottle of
wine when the sommelier promised to
store the unfinished bottle and bring it to
me at dinners nightly ($49).THE RESORT AT SEA
Having taken bargain cruises, I was pre-
pared for a tiny, interior, windowless
room. Instead, exterior cabin 6126 had a
large porthole window next to a small ta-
ble and two chairs, a queen bed, mini re-frigerator and relatively spacious bath-
room with a curtained shower. Internet
access cost $15 for 24 hours.
Up four floors, past the Tuscan land-
scape art that betrays the ship’s origins,
there’s a fully equipped gym that in two
days of use I shared only once, with a
staff dancer. It is part of the spa, offering
a range of treatments from $20 brow
shaping to 75-minute Balinese mas-
sages for $180.
At the 5 p.m. sail-away party by the
aptly named Plunge Pool (there’s also a
small adults-only pool), entertainers led
passengers in a conga line and the
Macarena. The ship comedian, Vince
Taylor, reminded the crowd, “Remem-
ber, what happens on the cruise stays on
Facebook!”
At the bar, I ordered a Bahamian
Sands beer ($6.50) and met a multigen-erational family from Georgia celebrat-
ing a daughter’s graduation from medi-
cal school; a Colombian mother and
daughter who praised the trip as “más
económico” compared with alterna-
tives; and young couples across the ra-
cial spectrum cruising for the first time.
My fellow passengers were also far
younger than the 50-plus set that tend to
dominate longer cruises. The company
says its core demographic is 25 to 45.
Some took the cruise to gamble in the
ship’s casino. Others combined it with
an island resort stay, getting off for a few
days before returning (the cruise line
sells ship and hotel packages). At dinner
— a light “Floribbean” meal of shrimp
cocktail and seared tuna niçoise salad —
I met Kathleen Young from Central Flor-
ida, who uses the ship monthly to avoid
flying on a small plane to the island,where she was receiving treatment for
cancer.
“They practically pay me to cruise,”
she said, enumerating her $129 booking,
including 10 free drink tickets and a $
shipboard credit, perks that are often in-
cluded in sales (my package included
both, but until I met Kathleen I didn’t re-
alize you have to ask for the drink tickets
at the bar, as they were not distributed
at check-in).
My new ship Sherpa, Kathleen intro-
duced me to many secrets of the cruise,
including the seated breakfast in the
dining room unknown to buffetgoers,
using drink coupons to buy 1.5-liter bot-
tles of water (the ship prohibits bringing
your own) and hitting the lounge to
catch Sax and Songs, made up of a saxo-
phone player and an R&B singer. She in-
sisted on sitting in the front row for thenightly Las Vegas-style musical review
performed by a cast of 10 talented sing-
ers, dancers and aerialists and carried
on at the late-night Latin dance party
when I called it a day. Most of the enter-
tainment was free, except Vince Taylor’s
hilarious, R-rated stand-up show, which
cost $9 for two tickets during a two-for-
one sale.GOING ASHORE
“Who wants to go to the No. 1 party
beach on the island?” bellowed our bus
driver on a Best of Grand Bahama shore
excursion after we’d docked on the sec-
ond day.
Not me, but it was too late. I’d already
signed up for the trip with Bahamas Ad-
ventures ($52). My intended excursion,
to bike around the island ($89), was can-
celed for low enrollment. Unfortunately,
the “best” island itinerary, involving two
shopping stops and a nature center fol-
lowed by an overcrowded beach club
blaring Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the
U.S.A.,” wasn’t close. When the early
1:45 p.m. shuttle back to the ship didn’t
appear, a band of five of us pressed the
staff, who eventually put us on a bus
with passengers of the Carnival Free-
dom, also docked for the day.
The happiest passengers back on the
Classica had taken one of the beach ex-
cursions ($39 to $89) for a long day of
uncomplicated sunning and swimming.
On the bus ride back to the ship, a Car-
nival Freedom guest asked me if Baha-
mas Paradise was like Carnival. “Not
exactly,” I said, and when our ship pulled
out that evening, I could see how right I
was: The Freedom had a ship-top bas-
ketball court, water slides and a giant
screen beside the pool.
For $129, you give up such ship ameni-
ties. But I also gave up FOMO, the fear of
missing out that strikes me on ships
with daily schedules of spinning, salsa
dancing and cooking classes. (Though
there are some activities, including a
scavenger hunt that required partici-
pants to find a man wearing a bra,
among other absurdities.) For the most
part, the ship frees you to sunbathe,
read and, of course, party. It’s a good val-
ue and value was the talk of the ship, on-
board and off.
“Can you believe that ship’s going
through the Panama Canal,” said the im-
migration officer back in Palm Beach as
I disembarked, mentioning a coming
nine-night cruise. “Only 500 bucks.”A 3-day cruise for $210? Worth it, and more
FRUGAL TRAVELERBY ELAINE GLUSACThe 1,680-passenger Grand Classica charged $99 a person, plus taxes and fees, for three days in an interior cabin on a cruise from Florida to the Bahamas.PHOTOGRAPHS BY BAHAMAS PARADISE CRUISE LINEThe demonstration using the cellphone
as a digital hotel room key didn’t quite
go as planned. The hotel manager held
his phone up to the room’s door lock, and
nothing happened. Realizing his Blue-
tooth was turned off, he tried again. Now
the door’s sensor flashed green, while
the phone screen informed him that the
door was unlocked.
Like the majority of travelers, I had
never before used a mobile hotel key,
even though the first version of the sys-
tem was installed nearly a decade ago.
Today, about a million hotel rooms
worldwide are estimated to have some
version of a lock that can accept a cell-
phone-generated digital key, according
to Nicolas Aznar, president of the Ameri-
cas division of the Swedish-based lock
maker Assa Abloy. Hotels are accelerat-
ing the installation of these systems to
increase revenue, drive customers to
loyalty sites and offer a better guest ex-
perience.
The locks also accept card keys, so
many hoteliers are promoting the mo-
bile keys as an optional perk for loyalty
members: When combined with online
check-in, guests in countries that don’t
require a passport to be shown can go
directly to their rooms without a stop at
the front desk. And, because the keys
are downloaded through a hotel app, the
host has a presence on the guests’
phones and can offer other services.
The number of hotels in the United
States that have digital keys available
rose from 6 percent in 2016 to 17 percent
last year, according to a survey by the
American Hotel & Lodging Association.
Marriott International, Hilton, MGMResorts and Disney hotels are among
the brands offering loyalty members the
option of using digital keys at some
properties.
Some, including Hilton and Marriott,
only allow a single phone to receive a
key during a stay, and other guests in
the room receive RFID (radio-fre-
quency identification) card keys. Like
the card keys, the digital keys can be
used to access elevators, fitness centers,
parking garages and other common ar-
eas. Some mobile keys require the user
to touch a button on their phone screen
to unlock the door, while others require
that the phone be held up to the lock.
Digital keys are hugely popular with
travelers in some areas, like Silicon Val-
ley, but Mr. Aznar estimated that only
about 10 percent of all hotel guests use
them, over all.
“Every new technology generates a
little fear,” he said.
One of those who shied away during a
recent trip was Lexi Galantino, 23, a SanFrancisco-based software engineer who
specializes in protecting privacy. Ms.
Galantino was set to try a digital key at a
hotel in Kauai, Hawaii, in April, but as
she was downloading the app, she opted
instead for a card key.
“I was a little bit spooked by some of
the security things,” she said.
Last year, the Finnish cybersecurity
firm F-Secure Corp. revealed that after
thousands of hours of work it had found
a flaw in an older model RFID-style dig-
ital hotel lock that could allow hackers to
create a spoof master key. It worked
with Assa Abloy to patch the software,
which was used in 42,000 properties in
166 countries, said Tomi Tuominen, of
Helsinki, a researcher.
It will take years to know if other dig-
ital locking systems are secure, since
there are so many manufacturers using
so many different technologies, he said.
On top of that, there are potential vul-
nerabilities in the apps that are used to
access the keys, and in guests’ phones
themselves, he said.
Marriott International expects to ex-
pand the use of its Mobile Key technol-
ogy from the 1,800 hotels that currently
have it available to its Bonvoy program
members to all of its 7,000 properties by
the end of 2020, said a spokesman, John
Wolf.
Hilton has installed Digital Key for
Honors members at more than 4,250 of
its 5,700 properties worldwide over the
past five years, said Nigel Glennie, a
Hilton spokesman. There is no target
date for completing the rollout, he said.
“Right now there is no chain that is
not at least talking about it and trying to
do something about it,” said Mr. Aznar of
Assa Abloy.A hotel door key on your phone
BY KAREN SCHWARTZHilton has installed its Digital Key tech-
nology in the last five years.HILTONHistorically, vineyard visits rank high
on the eye-roll list for children.
But California’s Napa Valley is trying
hard these days to attract families, aim-
ing to entertain visitors of all ages with
hiking, biking, camps and non-snooty
farm-to-table dining experiences. Even
some vineyards are getting into the
game, offering lawn games and grape
juice tastings.
On a recent trip with my 13-year-old
daughter, Brette, we had fun there.
I kept the itinerary simple: recrea-
tion-spliced days with foodie interludes
to keep energy high and complaints low.
Wine would be but a detail in an active
mom-and-daughter getaway.ON THE MOVEWe kicked off the trip at
Skyline Wilderness Park, hiking
through wildflower and chaparral-
speckled woodland where clusters ofbutterflies and hummingbirds made fre-
quent cameos. Then, we zipped over to
Clif Family Winery. Over chive-dusted
bruschetta and arancini balls, I had
three sips (I was driving) of a perky Vio-
gnier that elevated the food to heavenly
heights.SPA AFTERNOONCalistoga is famous for
geothermal hot springs, and I was
thrilled when the no-frills Dr. Wilkinson
Hot Springs Resort allowed Brette to
join me for a treatment. We hopped into
concrete mud tubs (secret ingredient:
nutrient-rich volcanic ash) and finished
with a 30-minute massage. (Minimum
age for mud treatments, which start at
$105, is 13.)WINE COUNTRY BY BIKEOne morning, Dave
Brazell of Adventures in Cycling de-
vised a child-centric wine tasting itiner-
ary that included a picnic lunch. Instead
of driving to tasting rooms, we cycledthrough scenic backcountry roads and
past a geyser, where we paused to dip
our fingers in steaming puddles.RIDE THROUGH THE VINESAnother way to
experience the spectacular landscape is
by horseback. We signed on with Napa
Valley Trail Rides for a 30-minute mosey
through the rolling vineyards of Shady-
brook Estate at Rapp Ranch (where
there is also a tasting room).FARM-TO-TABLE TREATSBreakfast all day
excites every child. Gillwoods Cafe in St.
Helena serves up classics like whipped
cream-topped French toast, strawberry
pancakes and hearty omelets.FUN FAMILY LODGINGTucked within a can-
yon and under a canopy of ancient pine
and oak trees, our cedar-shingle room at
Calistoga Ranch felt like a luxe tree-
house. Hands-on farm experiences help
make it a paradise for children.Exploring Napa with the family
BY AMY TARA KOCHLEPARISRUSSEDECHANEL
“AIGLEPROTECTEUR”NECKLACEINPLATINUMANDDIAMONDS
DiscovertheHighJewelrycollectioninspiredbyGabrielleChanel’svisionofRussia.CHANEL.COM/PARIS-RUSSE/EN
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