My in-laws, who are in their late 60's, take 2-3 cruises a year. They took one cruise already during the Omicron spike in December (somebody on board their ship tested positive) and they will surely take more cruises this year no matter what happens. Hell they didn't cancel their cruise in MARCH OF 2020 when COVID originally broke and keep in mind cruises were one of the first places where COVID spread.
Cruises are kind of like the civil war, the people who are into them are REALLY into them.
Agree on the frustration around long-term planning. I was usually the kind of person before the pandemic who planned vacations 6+ months in advance, hell once I planned a vacation 1.5 years in advance. Can't do that now. I planned my trip to Malta a month in advance and Omicron broke out during that month.
I have a week off for Spring Break in April. What I'm doing is planning like 3 separate possible trips, and then hopefully one of those ends up being possible/workable with how the pandemic and entry rules break out between now and then.
I book my trips well in advance too. British Airways let you book up to 354 days in advance (don't ask me where they got that specific number) and I've already got my annual November/December London flights booked; I also have much-rescheduled trips to Vilnius, Stockholm and Bratislava booked for the upcoming spring. If you know you're going to go somewhere, you may as well plunk your money down now and get your seat booked.
Travel is life...everything else is just details. If the airline flight lanes are up and running on the days I've booked, I want to be ready. To the fullest extent possible I'm going to be travelling, rather than let some stupid virus push me around. (And so far so good - my London trip from this past November/December, including two rapid-antigen tests, went off without a hitch.)
