Easy Going

With Its Budget Cabins, EasyCruise Puts the Next Generation of Cruisers at Sea

On the party deck of EasyCruise One -- an orange cruise ship coasting along a breezy trail of moonlight one evening -- a short man in a white shirt was being freaked on the dance floor by three young passengers. A Madonna song begged (forced?) them to dance. So powerful were their thrusting hips that the cocktail in the man's hand was splashing wildly, much like the starry Caribbean waters I often found myself gazing at just over my sunburned shoulders.

It was past 1 a.m., and the man in the middle was screaming for mercy. But you could tell that he loved it.

"Hey!" I yelled from the sidelines. "Aren't you the cruise director?"

"Do you see a badge on me?" he yelled back.

"I saw a badge on you earlier!"

"That's right -- 'saw,' baby! Past tense!" he said before sliding deeper into the booty vortex.

Chances are, most cruise directors wouldn't recommend the thrusting of hips when, for a substantial segment of cruise-ship enthusiasts, hip surgery is no laughing matter. That's why the waves EasyCruise is making are so notable: The ship's attracting the kind of passengers who have the young legs to surf them.

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According to the Cruise Line International Association, an industry trade group, the average age of cruise ship passengers is 50. When London-based EasyCruise made its maiden voyage last summer to the French and Italian Rivieras, the average age on board was 32. That's a real generation gap, somewhere at the bottom of which a shuffleboard court is collecting dust (EasyCruise doesn't have one).

The formula is easy enough: EasyCruise gets younger passengers into its nearly 90 rooms (170-person capacity) through its inexpensive, flexible, pay-what-you-use approach to sailing the seas and rocking the boat.

The ship operates more like a hotel with a rudder. Passengers can check in or out at any port on the ship's week-long itinerary, as long as at least two and no more than 14 consecutive nights are booked. And with upcoming summer destinations like Portofino, Monte Carlo, Cannes and St. Tropez just a night's dream away from one another -- the ship does most of its sailing in the early hours of the morning -- EasyCruise doesn't need Vegas shows on board when its itinerary is the best show on Earth.

"We are the only cruise ship of its type that offers a different port each day," said cruise director Neil Kelly a few days after being freaked. "We want people to get out there and experience more of what we are offering, which are the different locations."