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When choosing cruises what are your priorities?


ilikeanswers
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I have to start out with the question of whether or not the cruise leaves from some place that my air travel hating DH can manage. We flew from Sacramento to Seattle last September, and he's still complaining. This limits things a lot!

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I choose by WHEN I want to go..followed by the ship that does that timeslot with the best cabin I'm willing to pay for...with the most port days (hubby HATES sea days!)....And it must have WARM weather. Going to a cold climate isn't a "vacation" for me.

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Generality the itinerary drives our decision. However if we get a ridiculously low offer as a last minute cruise then it is just the chance to be away for virtually nothing and my DW doesn’t care where we go.

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I'm time-limited, with only particular weeks or months when I can get away -- next week, for example, or within a week of my daughter's graduation. That narrows the choices considerably, and makes the whole process less overwhelming.

 

From there, I start to research the balance of opportunity cost (time and hassle getting to the port), actual cost (in dollars to be spent), and specialness of the experience. For my upcoming trip, I needed a quick, warm, and relatively hassle-free getaway from where I live, so that immediately limited my choices to one particular week in the Caribbean. Given the nature of this trip, I also needed for it not to be a party boat, which narrowed the search further to the smaller luxury lines.

 

My third layer of decision-making is driven by the nuances in different itineraries, promotions being offered, and the possibility of loyalty perks. Again, using this trip as an example, the cruise line was offering a 2-category cabin upgrade, free excursions, and super-cheap airfare. They made my choice easy.

 

When I'm less time-bound, I jump to the nuances in itineraries and let that drive my schedule, rather than the other way around. For example, I'll be in Asia for several months next year, and thought I'd add on a cruise while I'm there. I found the itinerary I like best, and did the rest of the planning from there.

 

I hope this isn't more info than you wanted. I love planning my next travel opportunity, wherever and whenever it might be ... so I think about it a lot!

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It depends. For our cruise this month, just getting on the ship was our goal--and we did not get off the ship in the two major ports (St. Thomas and St. Maarten). We did get off the ship in Princess Cays. So the passenger experience on the ship was the most important factor (and the fact that we got a great price and lots of on-board credit). I would not, for instance, have taken the same itinerary on some other cruise lines even at the same price.

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Must depart and return locally, Mrs Gut is prohibited from flying. (That is limiting).

 

Then it has to be when we can both get time off work.

 

Then have I got the $$$$ or know I’ll have them in time.

 

Then what ship.

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Itinerary is first-including time in port.

 

Ship is second. We avoid older ships with known issues, ships that are noted for poor maintenance or are run down because the time between refurbs has been extended by the cruise line in order to defer expenses.

 

Cruise line is next for attributes like entertainment, food, dining options, enrichment speakers, etc. We recognize that these attributes can vary widely between different sailings on the same ship or between ships in the same cruise line fleet.

 

Price/benefit. We typically book inside the final payment window.

 

Potentially cruise air. We had a tie on a last minute Med cruise a few years ago. We needed one way air home. One of the cruise line air programs had a great price on the right airline/right routing for us. That nailed our decision.

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We used to pick based on home port, then ship. We didn’t concern ourselves with itinerary so much. It was basically “get our butts on a ship.”

 

We were more interested in the sailing experience, than the ports so lots of sea days were fine. By sailing experience, I don’t mean the same as what most mean when they say the “ship is the destination.” We don’t like the big mega ships with their theme parks, shopping malls, casinos and big production shows.

 

We want a nice cabin with a balcony - doesn’t have to be a suite (one of these days I WILL book a suite [emoji41]), good food, good service and to just relax and enjoy the sea and the sky and each other’s company away from the every day grind... and maybe a fun game of trivia now and then.

 

We are older and retired now, so we are looking further afield or should I say further asea. We are willing to fly to cruise now, where before we weren’t. If we are flying to a port, we definitely want a longer cruise and we really prefer longer anyway.

 

We are paying more attention to itineraries now, bu not so much specific ports as general areas. We have learned over the years that it’s not wise to choose a whole cruise based on a particular port, because so many factors determine whether or not you get to that particular port. So many times I have read tales of woe here because someone’s itinerary was changed - mostly due to weather and the missed the port they really wanted to visit. If the port is that important - fly there and stay.

 

So we pick regions - Alaska, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, then work from there. We like smaller ships, with a smaller number of passengers. We want an advantageous crew to passenger ratio.

 

We like a little luxury, if we can get it. We still want the sea and ship experience, more than the ship entertainment factor. So we pick an area, a ship or cruise line, and price out the cabin we want. If it works budget-wise - book it, Dano! If not we go back to the drawing board and adjust until we find something that suits our fancy, and the budget

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

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Since retiring we find ourselves cruising less in favour of independent land trips.

 

We still do cruises but we typically include them in our land tours. Often at the last minute. If we are travelling and find ourselves close to a port we often take a look at the last minute offerings on cruises. We keep our land trips flexible so change is seldom an issue for us.

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My priority is the itinerary. The ship is a very comfortable floating hotel. I prefer maximum port days and minimum sea days.

 

I totally agree! I would much rather have more port days and minimal sea days. I'm going on a cruise this October with THREE sea days and while I know I'll have a great time with my friend (she's never been on a cruise before, it's a girls vacation instead of the typical me & hubby) - i'm not a fan of all the sea days.

 

I would have preferred sailing out of San Juan b/c you don't usually have as many sea days, but the cost to get there was super expensive and I didn't want to take a chance on prices not going down before the fall.

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