Great Lakes Cruises: Great article with potential for Buffalo

[Caledon]

Great Lakes Cruises: Great article with potential for Buffalo

I was reading wargent's post about the Columbia and the Canadiana
http://www.speakupwny.com/forum/show...?threadid=4707

I was reading lcm's elses post about Great Lakes Passenger Ships and the Buffalo Casino
http://www.speakupwny.com/forum/show...?threadid=4721

And there are other posts that I have read (from numerous other posters) but I will leave it to you to find them and read them but read the article below and tell me that there isnt potential for these ships to be docking in Buffalo, visiting our Casino and other attractions, then a brief visit to Niagara Falls or Darien Lake before returning.

Here is the article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Id/8714386/

Making waves: Luxury cruise ships sail the Great Lakes
By Ted Katauskas

Luxury cruise ships, nearly absent from the Great Lakes since the rise of the automobile, are returning to the country's inland seas. Midwestern port towns have never looked so exotic.

Sometimes, at this latitude, in the upper reaches of Lake Huron, the aurora borealis shimmers above the horizon. The last time I saw the northern lights was in 1991, when I was a passenger hitching a lift aboard the Joseph L. Block, an ore carrier, from a steel mill near my Indiana hometown to the docks in Duluth, Minnesota. A dozen years later, I'm out on the same stretch of water—this time aboard Le Levant, a 330-foot French ship, rather than a Midwestern freighter. But I'm the only passenger awake, at 11 p.m., to witness the pale green curtain of light. My 90 fellow cruisers are asleep in their cabins, saving their energy for another relentless morning of touring the towns we visit during our eight-day cruise from Milwaukee to Toronto, passing through Lakes Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. With no one around but an officer on watch, I wander the deserted decks, play the piano in the empty lounge, take a seat at the captain's table in the formal dining room, where crystal, sterling, and china await another five-course dinner from our French chef, Patrice Mick. Horn blasts from a passing freighter shatter the silence.

A luxury liner navigating the Midwest's inland seas is something of a spectacle, a sight unseen since the 1930's. From the Gilded Age until the close of the Jazz Age, industrialists and socialites from Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee sailed the Great Lakes on a fleet of passenger ships that were as elegant as their transatlantic counterparts. By the end of World War II, with the increase in auto and air travel, cruise ships on the lakes had all but disappeared. Since then, American outfitters haven't given much thought to these waters, which on paper seem far less sexy than they are in reality. But a few years ago, three European companies saw the appeal of freshwater voyages, and a full-fledged resurrection is now under way. The German-owned, 400-passenger Columbus took its maiden journey from Hamburg up the St. Lawrence River to the lakes in 1997. Le Levant was launched a year later, and spends every June and July in the Midwest; a German vessel, the recently christened Orion, made its Great Lakes debut last month. Cruise enthusiasts who've sailed all the typical itineraries—the Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska—have been buying up the berths on all three ships since they hit the docks. Not only do these European-run trips reintroduce a domestic waterway to well-traveled passengers, but they also impart a visitor's enthusiasm for North America, with onboard experts lecturing on local heroes and Native American culture, and guiding land-based tours to historic sites from Michigan to Montreal.

Standing on the shore of Georgian Bay, near Lake Huron, in 1615, French explorer Samuel de Champlain believed he had found the South Sea, a passage to the Orient. That a seasoned sailor might mistake an inland lake for open ocean seems counterintuitive until you actually venture onto the Great Lakes and see how impossibly vast they are. It's difficult to comprehend how much water is out there: 6 quadrillion gallons covering 94,000 square miles, a fifth of the world's surface freshwater, enough to submerge the whole of the contiguous United States under 9 1/2 feet. Between Lakes Huron and Erie, in the middle of one of the most densely populated regions of North America, except for occasional glimpses of smokestacks and other signposts of civilization, the horizon is a flat blue line on all sides.

When I crave a respite from the evening quiet, I duck onto the bridge, something I wouldn't be allowed to do on the Queen Mary 2. Maurice, the French first officer, is at the helm (which, I'm disappointed to discover, is a finger dial on a console, not a wooden wheel), and he launches into a spirited defense of sailing the Great Lakes. "French Jesuit missionaries came to this area in the seventeenth century, and we lost control of it in 1763," he says. "But to us, this is nonetheless new. The French do not understand what it's like on these waters. Our lakes are puddles in comparison." The captain, Jean-Philippe Lemaire, assures me that he shares his first mate's enthusiasm for this unusual cruising destination, one where American values seem to have stood still for centuries.

Captain Lemaire is 47 and reminds me of Fred Astaire: handsome, deeply tanned, dashing in his dress whites. He often reminisces about his estate in Brittany; his son, a cadet in the Merchant Marines; and his late grandfather, the maître d' aboard the Normandie. He talks passionately about the engineering particulars of Le Levant: its ice hull, hardened for adventure expeditions; its 11-foot draft, shallow enough to navigate rivers. He tells me about the time he piloted the ship from Long Island to Antigua through a hurricane that lasted four days, then describes navigating among icebergs in the uncharted Arctic and journeying down the Amazon. "To arrive in Iquitos, Peru, when it's raining the dogs and the cats and I cannot see the dock, and to suddenly hear 'La Marseillaise' from a band on a dock in the middle of the jungle," Lemaire says with a sigh, "that is a gift." When asked if the lakes might seem a bit tame by comparison, Lemaire smiles. "A true professional can make even sailing into Cleveland seem special."

So if a true professional can make sailing into Cleveland seem special....why cant they make sailing into Buffalo special.

[WNYresident]

YOu know what would make this more feasible?

a LONGER SUMMER. THe ice gets in the way and the cold does too.

We have such a small window to make cruise money

[Caledon]

By the way for anyone interested in taking a Great Lakes Cruise or contacting companies involved in Great Lakes Cruises and asking them to please dock in Buffalo to see our great and wonderful city....I found the links to their websites.

http://www.greatlakescruising.com/freep_03212004.html

http://www.hapaglloydcruises.co.uk/s...php?shipId=819

http://www.escortedfallfoliagetours..../lelevant.html

http://www.greatlakescruiseco.com/

http://www.cruisingthegreatlakes.com/

Of course, if there is anyone who is a Buffalo Booster and they would do a great service to this city by inviting them to dock here, especially being that Niagara Falls is only 20 minutes away, they could see both Buffalo and Niagara Falls in a one day stop.

Our family is planning a Great Lakes Cruise, we think its a great way to really see and appreciate the entire region that Buffalo belongs....to often Buffalonians dont appreciate or reallize that they are a Great Lakes City....to often we only think of our beaches, our Harbor or Niagara Falls...there are so many people that dont think of our Canals, the Buffalo River or Lake Erie or the other Lake Cities to which we should be working cooperatively.