Murray On Travel

The 2009-2010 Princess sailings will now add both shorter and longer sailings.  The Spring and Fall will see short one to four night sailings running between Seattle and Vancouver, Los Angeles and Vancouver, and San Francisco and Vancouver.

Longer sailings include week long Coastal Wine Region cruises and a seven day  West Coast and British Columbia trips.  These trips will include special tours, guest speakers, and other programs.

These trips ar available for booking starting today.  With $99 per person Escape overnight fares.  Captain's Circle club members can see $10-50 discounts. 

Princess will also be offering a variety of new options for their transits of the Panama Canal.   Contact your travel agent for details.

The www.Carnival.com website has had an extensive redesign, adding new features, better navigation, and improved layout.  Site now includes virtual tours, new videos, images and improved server response.  The site now has improved descriptions and photos of it's 22 "Fun Ships".

The Gifts and Services section now allows site visitors to send gift items to ship guests staterooms prior to their Carnival cruise.

If your a skier you may avoid advanced trails marked as "Black Diamond", but as an airline passenger you may not want to avoid this path.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is rolling out Black Diamond lines at airports across the country. Passengers in these lines experience the same screening procedures but they are expected to be frequent travelers and familiar with screening process.

Airports with these new "Black Diamond" screening lanes are: Boston, CIncinnati, Dallas (love field), Denver, Houston Hobby, Oakland, Orlando, Pittsburgh. Statistics show that passenger waits have decreased slightly, but some people don't understand the system and just head for the shortest line.

It appears that as experienced travelers are separated from families, and infrequent fliers, the number of securty alerts has dropped. The infrequent fliers feel more comfortable, and less rushed, knowing they are in a line with others like themselves. Rather than feeling that they may be holding up frequent fliers who are waiting behind them.