Carnival, Celebrity, Disney, Holland America, NCL, Princess . . . they’ll all be flocking here next year to join our own P&O, Cunard, Fred Olsen and Thomson. Not to mention Italian giants Costa and MSC.

More ships are being built, and the cruise lines are pulling out of Alaska because of excessive taxes and stringent regulations, so the vessels have to go somewhere, and they won’t all squeeze into the crowded Caribbean.

Just how hectic it can get there is demonstrated not just by my picture of P&O’s Ventura and the Carnival Splendor together at Grand Turk (above) but by a snippet from cruise director John Heald’s blog.

He is currently working on board Carnival Dream, which can carry up to 4,600 passengers, and whose sister ship, Carnival Magic, will soon be in the Mediterranean.

Over to John:

Make no mistake, we’re likely to have similar problems even at bigger ports such as Barcelona, Malaga, Civitavecchia, Naples, Venice and Athens, and there’s a limit to how many passengers smaller destinations can absorb.

At least some of the smaller ships, like P&O’s 710-passenger Adonia, and the Olsen fleet for example, can get off the beaten track and away from the crowds. As the new brochures hit the travel agents, I’m going to have my atlas ready to pinpoint the location of places such as Bourgas Koper, and Zadar. They might even need some new guidebooks writing . . .