Ok, so I came on here for some advice because our parents love cruise critic so much and we need advice on what to do for a surprise cruise for our parents! The short story is this: my sister and I have bought a cruise for our parents 20th anniversary and we have a little extra to spend on it after the fare and we need some advice from people "in the know". My mom and Dad took a cruise for their honeymoon 20 years ago and they loved it...they have been talking about it and reminiscing for 20 years about it. Their plan was to take another one this summer, they have been saving for 2 years and they put a down payment on it last summer. This has been a hard year financially and in December they decided they couldn't afford to take it. 😞
The problem is, they had already bought the plane tickets and they can't get a refund on it. So their plan is to go to the port city (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) and try to find a place to camp (they are hoping to only spend $500...on a 2 week trip!). They are trying to be excited about it but they are so disappointed and not really looking forward to camping in Florida in June. So my sister and I had both already been saving money (her for a car and me for a senior trip) and we kicked it up into overdrive this year and managed to save enough to buy the cruise! We just bought the tickets and we have a bit left over to spend and this is where we need your help! What would you suggest we do with the extra? What would you want? What can we do to make this the most magical cruise ever?
Here are our thoughts...They are in the cheapest stateroom category...we could upgrade them to an Oceanview? They were going to stay in an interior room originally so I know they are ok with it but is an Oceanview a lot better? We have already prepaid the crew gratuity so, in theory, they could take the whole cruise and not have to spend another penny...but we could just give them onboard credit if there are other things to buy onboard? Do most people go to the restaurants that cost extra? We could prepay that for them...or do most people eat at the free food places? Any other better ideas that we don't know about?
As you can see we are out of our depth here! Any thoughts or advice is greatly appreciated! We are so excited to give this to them and we want it to be the trip of a lifetime! We are telling them next week and we want to have everything done and ready to go so we have to decide what to do quickly!
Also, if it helps, we have about $600 extra to spend and the cruise is the June 10th Caribbean East/West Adventurer on the Caribbean Princess. SORRY this turned into a long post and THANK YOU in advance for your help!
Jax and Emily