Gimmicky, circus-like cruise ships too much?

"And they will be less like ships than like frantic amusement parks with bells clanging, lights flashing and crowds rushing from one spectacle to another," he added.

The Queen Victoria, for example, is a huge new cruise ship that will have a veritable circus aboard, he said.

New ships will have "circus-training programs," "bungee jumping" and "clown acts."

"These will be added, presumably, to the rock-climbing walls, boxing rings, bowling alleys and vertiginous Jacuzzis jutting out from the top deck and hanging perilously over the sea (the latter have become standard on some ships," he wrote.

Another new ship from Costa Cruises will have extra-charge, spa cabins so close to fitness rooms that those staying in them can walk to the showers in their bathrobes.

On some of the new ships, the democratic, one-class policies of cruising will be totally jettisoned. There will be a "ship within the ship" - an area enjoyed solely by passengers paying higher fares, a number of restaurants to which they alone will be admitted, lounges set aside for the elite.

"I find these developments deeply disturbing and reflecting a lower level of culture, education and maturity in our nation," he wrote. A cruise should be sufficient in itself, he adds.

"It is an opportunity to venture out onto a new and unfamiliar area of the world - the vast oceans. It is sufficiently different and sufficiently provocative of eternal questions, that it need not be aided by bungee jumping, amateur boxing, glass-blowing exhibitions, rock-climbing and wave-surfing," Mr Frommer said. A cruise should be an occasion for conversation and reading, he added.

"In place of this, the cruise ships are becoming amusement parks geared to a child's mentality, raucous and hyperactive, the equivalent at sea of what gyms at home and on land normally provide. Why go to sea to become part of a crowd, to engage in bungee-jumping, rock-climbing, wave-surfing and glass-blowing? Or to listen to lectures on better makeup and gardening?" asked Mr Frommer.