Since you began luxury cruising, have you ever had a period when you had absolutely nothing scheduled and no plans to schedule something? It's driving me up the wall! Due to family health etc, we don't even have anything scheduled on land! I am the usual organizer of these trips and I keep looking knowing I can't book anythingHow often does this happen to you and is there an official name for it? Some sort of syndrome perhaps?

We're in that situation right now, and have been for much of the past four years. My company may or may not be sold, so it's hard to plan even three or four months in advance. Two of our last four vacations were booked less than three weeks before we got on the plane - a river cruise on Avalon and a Caribbean cruise on Windstar. We were on the Mariner earlier this month, and couldn't take advantage of onboard booking because of uncertainty as to when and if we can travel.

Ideally, we plan all trips long in advance; but that just hasn't been possible lately. Not only do we have nothing booked; but we don't even know when we can take another vacation.

It was a lot easier getting of the Paul Gauguin last Saturday knowing that we'd be boarding the Silver Whisper in August. But, we don't usually have another cruise booked while we're on one. However, we always seem to have another trip of some sort planned.

We're also in a delicate position travel-wise. We've sold our house for a profit, and settled into our condo, so that's good. But I've been downsized (7 working days to go!), and so our income has been curtailed, at least for now. As I'm now 60, it's tempting to retire.

We are booked right now, on a 14-day Marquesas trip on the PG in December. After that we will probably wait until 2010, although you never know about 2009. We could either just do a cheap Caribbean trip again in the winter, or do a land trip. David hopes to be on sabbatical in the last half of 2009, so if so, and I'm not working still, we will do a land trip or a fall crossing, something I hope.

I will go completely bonkers if I don't have a trip to plan--so I'm planning for 2010, since it will be our 30th anniversary.

We are unpacking from our Oceania cruise and it was very unusual for us not to have rebooked another one. We won't be cruising now until Nov 2009 and we don't have any trips planned except a weekender in August. We know some land things we will want to plan for 2009 and 2010...but...no reservations yet for us.

It seems to happen fairly regularly, for us. Then we stumble across something we want to do, and there's a "future" again.

We haven't even done our 2008 cruise yet and I'm worrying about what we can do in 2009, let alone 2010! I do like to have something planned before I leave the ship but this time .... Lee

Our 2007 and 2008 travels have kept us too busy to think about 2009. I like having our plans made with trips to anticipate. Part of our problem is the world's too wide, with too many choices. I've declared July to be "make up your mind about 2009" at our house. We'll see what gets scheduled.

With the costs of fuel going up and luxury cruises raising their prices, we've not planned a trip for 08. Just booked a Med cruise on the Navigator for May 09 but that sure seems far away!!

Times are definitely changing...