Business: Boom in Sunshine Cruises

Games, meals, movies—and a few bugs

Tall drinks, potted palms, dance floors full of would-be Fred Astaires and Ginger Rogerses beginning the beguine —such were the romantic hallmarks of overseas travel in the days when people traveled over the seas in ships. By 1960, though, more people were crossing the Atlantic by air than by water, and the big luxury liners had begun a long slide into nostalgic memory; hardly any are left on the Atlantic run. Yet down in the Caribbean, the glamour of the swaying grand saloon lived on: cruise ships, populated primarily by the gray and affluent set, visited...