CRUISING INTO FALL: JUST SHIFT INTO CRUISE CONTROL ON AUTUMN SHIP TRIP.

Byline: Lisa Thatcher Kresi Dallas Morning News

A cruise vacation is the ultimate no-brainer.

From the moment you get off the plane and the suited cruise-line rep efficiently checks you off her list, corrals your baggage and directs you to the bus, decisions are no longer yours for the making.

You don't have to negotiate traffic or read a map. You don't have to figure out where you'll eat or lodge. You don't have to read a guidebook and doggy-ear the pages with the must-sees. And when you wake up each morning for the next 10 days there's a new city to explore - without all the packing and unpacking.

Return to your cabin after dinner and you find it miraculously straightened. The wet towels have been picked up off the floor. The newspapers are stacked. Even the zipper on your luggage has been repaired.

Don't feel like dragging yourself to breakfast the next morning? Just tell Wendy the cabin steward and your wake-up call is coffee and croissants. The only hitch: deciding who has to get out of bed to open the door.

Nothing doing

A fall-foliage cruise from New York City to New England and Canada is a bit like an episode of Seinfeld: Nothing really happens.

Everything on the Royal Princess is perfectly orchestrated and controlled. The latest edition of Princess Patter tells you what city you're in, whether the evening's dress is formal or casual and the suggested wines for dinner. You can read everything you need to know about Montreal or any of the other six ports in your daily four-page Port Guide.

The timing on the cruise is as fine-tuned as Jerry Seinfeld's jokes. Afternoon tea is always precisely at 3:30. Jackpot Bingo and the morning Ping-Pong tournament take place exactly as advertised in the Patter. And no matter how confused you are about whether you're on Tour A or Tour K, the staff always gets you to your ``Adventure Ashore'' on time.

In fact, the only surprises are the leaves (even the captain can't command them to be at their peak) and the weather (hurricane remnants mean a day of ``lumpy seas'').

As I said, nothing really happens - and, boy, is it great.

Water therapy

Watching the water is a popular activity. You can do it for hours.

You watch it the moment the sun dawns pink on the Atlantic. You watch it when you're supposed to be reading in a deck chair. You watch it from the Jacuzzi one foggy night. And you watch it as the full moon rises during an evening stroll.

``If you just sit and look at the water, it mesmerizes you,'' says Mary Lou Brey one afternoon over tea and scones. She and her husband, Jim, live in Richardson, Texas. ``We have just a crisis an hour in Dallas - family, work - and I'm sure they're still happening. But what are we going to do? Swim ashore?

``It's so relaxing, I sort of do a Scarlett O'Hara when I think of problems at home,'' she says leaning forward and smiling. ``I'll think about them tomorrow.''

When you're not watching the water, you're enjoying the waterfront views - the mansions of Newport, R.I., the lobster boats of Bar Harbor, Maine, the villages clustered along the Saguenay River, the night lights of Quebec City and New York City.

After a day of water-watching, you sure meet a lot of nice people. There's Jim and Nancy Harrison, the couple from Tulsa, and Dallasites Benny and Mary Evelyn Hopper. They're table mates.

``One of the most important things on a cruise is the people at your table,'' says Nancy. ``We've counted our blessings more than once. It's embarrassing to sit at a table when someone is complaining to the waiter the whole time.''

Jim even makes friends in the ship's laundry room. ``I met six or eight people doing laundry,'' he says. ``You meet a lot of interesting people from all over the country on a cruise - they can't get away from you.''

You also meet a lot of characters.

Like the gym junkie from Brooklyn. He joins you on the Stairmasters as the sun sets over Boston and the ship slips out to sea. He details his health regimen. He tells you about the time he ran a marathon. He fills you in on his thyroid condition. You learn the number of leg-lifts (462) and sit-ups (352) he does a day and are told the strongest part of his body is his stomach.

``Guess how old I am,'' he urges. ``Come on.''

You guess 68.

Gotcha. He's 82, he says, grinning.

After a few days on the ship, you feel as though you're in a small town, where everyone knows your name and folks like to stop and chat.

The cruise crowd

This is the Harrisons' third cruise and they're talking about why they like cruising:

``You can dress up or you can dress down,'' says Nancy, who packed two sequined dresses, one for each of the cruise's formal nights. ``I like the dressing-up part. I don't get to usually. They need to have more formal nights.''

Jim laughs. ``I don't particularly like to dress up,'' he says. ``And I don't think everyone should dress up in a dress like me.''

Yes, a dress - complete with expanding balloons strategically placed underneath. The Tulsa couple is big on joining in and livening up the cruise crowd. Nancy volunteers to be grilled during the ``What's My Line'' contest (no one can guess she's a sheriff's deputy). Jim has volunteered to play Dolly Parton in Princess' ``Love Boat Legends'' show. He'll wear the dress and a big wig and lip-sync to ``Here You Come Again.'' In another act, four women don wigs and appear as the Temptations. Russ the mortgage broker stars as John Travolta in ``Saturday Night Fever.''

``People ought to do it,'' says Jim. ``You got to get in there and have fun - be a part of the cruise crowd.''

When do we eat?

Everyone on board is talking about the poor man who fell in the breakfast buffet line and hit his head. Passengers were said to have stepped over the poor guy to get to the buffet.

Wouldn't want to miss a meal, you know. It could be an hour before the next one.

A New England/Canada cruise, in particular, is pure decadence. If you take advantage of every opportunity for lobster, you'll spend the entire 10 days wearing a bib.

You can have lobster medallions and lobster bisque on board. You can have lobster baked, broiled, sauteed or stuffed with crab meat in Bar Harbor, Maine, a McLobster sandwich at a McDonald's in Saint John and two lobsters for lunch during a tour of Nova Scotia.

The food is zillionaire rich. ``If you don't like all that fancy food,'' Nancy advised before the cruise even started, ``just ask your waiter the night before for steak and potatoes - even a peanut butter sandwich - and you'll get it.''

Dishes marked with an asterisk on the menu are described as low in calories, and a note says the maitre d' can arrange for ``special diets.''

``It might be heart-healthy but it's still a lot of food,'' says Benny Hopper. Midway through the trip, he and Mary Evelyn are happy with cheeseburgers for lunch. Jim goes so far as to ask for a bologna sandwich one night for dinner.

But you're in it for the long haul - roast duckling, brandied scallops, champagne waterfalls and all.

Spa-ing partners

The poor man who fell in the buffet line has to be airlifted to the nearest hospital for scans and X-rays. The entire crew moves into emergency mode and the whole exercise goes off without a hitch.

``Oh, sure,'' jokes DJ Robb, the disco entertainer, when he sees you wearing robes and walking into the ship's Spa and Salon. ``We're havin' an emergency here and you two are primping and pampering yourselves at the spa.''

Hey, you had an appointment.

Don't wait for a day at sea to do the spa thing. Do it on the first day, the first hour, your first minute aboard. After 55 minutes of massage you don't know whether you're relaxing with chamomile or revitalizing with eucalyptus, but you are sound asleep.

If nothing really happens on a cruise, how come you're so tired?

OUTTAKES

Mary Evelyn and Benny Hopper have said the same thing on each of their three cruises. And, now, on a cruise to New England and Canada, the Dallas couple is saying it again: next time, not so many organized tours.

``We always say that,'' says Mary Evelyn, ``and then two or three years later, we forget. We read about a tour and it sounds like the thing to do.''

In some cases, an organized tour is the thing to do. It's an easy way to see many sights in a short time. And the ``Adventures Ashore'' brochure is filled with so many hard-to-pass-up choices - seal watching, lobster cookouts, a seaplane excursion - you want to do them all.

Other times, an organized tour makes you pretty cranky. You may find yourself bus-bound in a city known for its walkable downtown. Or, the tour isn't as you imagined. In Bar Harbor, Maine, for example, what's described as a photography tour specially designed by a local photographer (``Bring home fantastic pictures'') is really a trip through Acadia National Park in a yellow school bus with few stops for snapshots.

Some tips:

Read up on each port of call and chat with the ship's shore-excursion managers to determine where to go it alone and where to be part of the cruise crowd.

Be careful when you pre-register for tours. What sounds do-able at home may not be when you're on your ninth day of a cruise and eighth tour.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--color) You can take plenty of shore excursions, participate in an array of activities and gorge yourself on a banquet of food or you can just watch the leaves change color on a fall foliage cruise aboard the Royal Princess.

Princess Cruises

(2--color) 's picturesque fishing village, Peggy's Cove, is included in one of the fall foliage cruise shore excursions.

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News

(3) The chic, photogenic town of Bar Harbor, Maine, is one of the ports of call on the fall foilage cruise.

Box: OUTTAKES (see text)