[Inspectorette]

It depends on the cruise line. Carnival is well-known for being a party cruise line. We went on a 7-day a few years ago. Never again. At 2:00 a.m. one night, there was a raucous bunch careening through the hallway outside our stateroom chanting, "Toga, toga, toga". They make it really easy to run up a huge booze bill - they issue you a ship credit card. The booze and the gambling are where they make their big money.

Check out some websites and see which lines cater to your demographic. Some are geared toward the geriatric set, others are luxury lines, etc.

[mollynme]

It depends on the cruise line.

That is true and it also depends on the time of year.

I have 5 (soon to be 6) cruises under my belt, all on the "geriatric" Holland America Line. The vast majority of passengers on each of my cruises (but one) have been in the 50 - 60 year old range (hardly geriatric).

The exception was the cruise I took over a spring break a couple of years ago. The demographic was a lot younger with teens everywhere. Even then, I have never run into loud drunken parties, passengers throwing up in the hallways or doing unspeakable things in the pools - all of which I have heard about on lines like Carnival, Norwegian or Royal Caribbean.

I would recommend checking out websites like the cruisecritic.com mentioned in the article. There are sections for each of the major (and minor) cruise lines where users post threads, etc. I often see threads asking for someone to "Convince me why I should sail on this line", etc.