Cruising, going on a cruise. Going on a journey of advertising discovery.  Both of these concepts address scale. On one reading scale is self-evident.  the size of the cruise ship is simply getting larger and larger.  On another level the scale of historical research into the cruise holiday.  When does it start, where are the ‘pinch points’ where is the change.   The significance of cruising on the tourism business cannot be overlooked. How and why cruising became established is the purpose of this study. The intent is to show how advertising of cruise ships since the 1980s, has become centered not on the ship and the destination, but also appeals to the individual lifestyle that can be found on board.  By inference this also is a reflection upon the lifestyle the consumer desires or envisages for themselves as being deserving, (Patsiaouras and Fitchett, 2012). It will be demonstrated that the print advertising of cruise ships in the later 20^th Century owes its theoretical foundation to the early work of Velben,(1925) and later Packard (1961). The analysis relies on the concept of motivational research to illustrate the historical change in cruise advertising