Itinerary - Which to choose? Southern vs. Western

[JennLuvs2Cruise]

My vote definitely goes to the Southern Carribean! :)

[Hoops_Baller]

I have been on the Eastern and Western. The Eastern is similar to the Southern. This is a tough call. I was faced recently with the decision of doing the Southern verses the Eastern.

 

What helped me decide was the following:

 

The southern itinerary allows you to see more ports. It is generally an older ship that sails out of San Juan. The air to fly into San Juan is often expensive and Carnival would fly be in via a red-eye which I hate. You would also connect through Miami to get to San Juan.

 

The Eastern and Western tends to have newer ships. The air is less and if you are using Carnival, they will fly you in the day before. This is assuming you live in the West Coast.

 

St. Thomas is nice. St. Marteen I could pass on that one. The other ports on the Southern, I have not been to.

 

The Western has Cayman Islands where you can swim with the Sting Rays. Belize you can raft down a river and Cozumel is a nice island. I went to Roatan and that is very economically deprived area. That city I could pass along with Belize.

 

Have you looked at the Valor Eastern itinerary? I am going on this one in 2 weeks and that is the one I decided on. The main reasons is that it is a newer ship. I do not have to take a red-eye. The ports combine the best of the Eastern and Southern. You go to St. Thomas, San Juan, Grand Turks and Half Moon Cay (HMC) and it costs less than the cruise out of San Juan.

 

Half Moon Cay is Carnival's private island in the Bahamas. I hope its as nice as Disney's private island. The boat docks on the island and when you look around there is nothing but the ship and the island and water. The island is small and its not commercialized.

 

I hope this helps.

 

I will check out the Valor itinerary. Cost is not much different as the curise is less from San Juan, and the airfare a bit more. I live on the east coast and Air Tran flies there at a reasonable cost.

[Hoops_Baller]

Wow! Southern in a landslide. Appreciate the input/opinions. Keep them coming with reasoning and/or things that you liked to do at the different ports.

[jamesnjill]

Southern! we just did it last year when they still had dominica on it and loved it so much we might do it again next year.