Tammy Laughlin

Tammy is a long-time resident of south Florida, a transplant from the mid-west at the age of nine. She graduated from Kansas State University and worked in various social service fields including: child protective services; teen runaway intervention; adult guardianship; and medical services planning. After her first introduction to cruising in 1999, Tammy was forever hooked. She met a man who loved cruising even more than she did and the rest is history. 

Why I Created Shipdetective

I first had the idea of a cruise guide after putting together cruise information for our shipboard wedding back in 2004. We sailed a 7-day cruise to the Eastern Caribbean on the Star Princess along with a group of 11 sailing with us - about half of the group had never cruised before. The embarkation advice and tips for maneuvering around the ship turned out to be the most useful.

I created another guide for a group of six family and friends for a 14-day Southern Caribbean cruise in December 2005 aboard the Sea Princess. We were frustrated with the lack of good information on the Internet for cruisers at the time and cruise lines were just beginning to understand the power of the internet. It took a solid month to research and compile the guide for our cruise. We had 10 ports on our itinerary and by the end of my research I had accumulated a stack of information and thought, “why not share this with other cruisers?”

After months of organizing the information and learning web building software, Shipdetective.com was published in January 2006.

The website had an immediate positive response and readership increased over time, so we became serious about maintaining the information and expanding the pages. Knowledge is power and most first time cruisers don’t have a clue what they should ask a travel agent or cruise representative.  Besides just knowing how to have fun, cruisers need to be aware of safety risks both on and off the ship.  We think passengers take safety for granted no matter what the destination just because the atmosphere onboard is so festive. 

Besides safety, a traveler can save so much time by planning ahead. Cruise ships usually stay in port eight hours or less. If you know what you want to see and do in advance, you can spend more time doing rather than figuring out where to go and how to get there.

Know before you go! Do your research. Sail around Shipdetective and see what you can find out about your next cruise vacation.

Happy Cruising Everyone

Tammy