I have a much different take than most of this thread: cruise ships let people pretend to "travel" without actually traveling. You don't have to find a hotel (not that that's ever been hard, and now with the Internet it's trivial), and you don't have to research what there is to do and arrange it (ditto).

They're for people too lazy to travel. The absolute last thing I want is to be regimented into groups with 2,000 other people. And, by the way, catch their diseases, which is something that happened to cruise passengers even before the pandemic.

I found, when I went to Alaska, absolutely everyone asked, "Oh, did you go on a cruise?" No, I flew and rented a car. You should try it.