"Complete the fleet" or "Same ship/itineraries"?

[SailorJeff66]

There seems to be two distinct mind sets here. Some, like going on the same familiar ships, with the same itineraries over and over. Others, like myself, are "one and done" on a ship/ itinerary. I want to go to all the places and try all the ships. My brother in law and his wife? Same cruise, every year. Thoughts?

[davekathy]

To each their own. 

[SRF]

Do what makes you happy.

[CruiseKeeper]

If you cruise often enough, you can try out new itineraries and still cruise the same old same olds.  

[John&LaLa]

A little of both. We like to cruise from home, so that's Harmony and Mariner. But enjoy travelling overseas for interesting voyages and new ships

[awestover89]

A little bit of both, but itinerary is usually our main motivator. We like trying new itineraries and seeing new ports more than anything; although there are some itineraries (like the one way Alaska cruises) that we absolutely love and have no problem doing again and again. There are also ships that we absolutely love; Harmony and Symphony are our favorites in the fleet by far, so sometimes we will repeat an itinerary just to be back on one of those two ships.

 

Other times somethings are more important than the itinerary. Like when my husband's family wanted to go on a big family cruise. For that we picked a ship and an itinerary that we had done before because we thought it would offer the most for the others travelling with us.

 

Our next cruise we picked solely because it was convenient and we wanted a quick getaway. It just so happens that we've never done Navigator or the Bahamas before, so it's also a new ship and a new itinerary. But the only thoughts that went into our decision was a short cruise out of Miami on a weekend my husband had off.

[Warm Breezes]

We are a mixture of both.  I try to get at least one new thing built into our vacation.  That could be the ship, a stop on the itinerary or the embarkation port.  We have had times where we were at a port that we have stopped at many times before but on a different ship and so we may decide to stay on the ship and have enjoy it with most of the people gone.  We like to be flexible and keep our options open.

[reallyitsmema]

We try to go on new ships if we can but will repeat a ship or go on an older ship if that is all that does a particular itinerary.  We have done at least one ship in all classes except Vision class and will complete two classes of ships within the next 12 months.  We do what works for us.

[wheezedr]

We have done both.  Most times we cruise to see new places but on some occasions it is just to have a few days of R and R.  In the latter case convenience and/or cost often weighs in and we may repeat a cruise .   Even then we can vary what we do and who we do it with.

[Warm Breezes]

6 minutes ago, wheezedr said:

We have done both.  Most times we cruise to see new places but on some occasions it is just to have a few days of R and R.  In the latter case convenience and/or cost often weighs in and we may repeat a cruise .   Even then we can vary what we do and who we do it with.

I find that the cruises we take because we got a great deal and it fits our schedule are usually the most relaxing.  They are usually 5 nights on smaller/older ships with ports we have been to many times before.  We usually end up staying on the ship at the ports and just chilling on an empty ship.  I came home so much more relaxed from our 5 night Carnival Fantasy cruise with two repeat ports that we took last year over the 8 night Carnival Magic cruise we took with our kids last month with 4 ports that had one non-repeat port where we did something in every port.  Some times we just need that down time cruise to rejuvenate.  It's really nice that they are cheap on top of it.  We have one coming up on our anniversary in October on the Carnival Sensation.

[gymbomb]

We do a combination. We have an "old standby" that is our default when we want an easy, relaxing getaway. But we also try out other things as they fit into our schedules and sound interesting.

[marco]

Depends on where, when, price, etc.  We do like cruising to Bermuda and we do every couple of years, not necessarily on the same ship or line.  We take a winter Caribbean cruise every winter, also not on the same ship or line and we've done it now so many years, we rarely get off, but a 10 -14 day cruise to the Caribbean is a lot less $$$$ than flying to somewhere warm in the winter.  For us, that cruise...the ship is the destination. Other destinations we rarely repeat.

[getting older slowly]

On thing to consider is.... What choices does one have..... for us the other important half doesn't fly....

 

So we basically only cruise from our home port....   and only one cruise line does out and back cruises

 which means the options are limited to 3-5 days cruises ( too short ) or 13-14 days to one of two places...

 

Due to this... we have only have the one literary which is Melbourne to New Zealand which is half port days half sea days.....   It is still cruising and we enjoy it and love the sea days....

 

But to answer the question some like sameness and other always want something different....

 

Everybody is different ... which is just as well...

 

So when we wanted to do a longer cruise we have booked the same cruise twice so B2B 26 days...

 

Cheers  Don  

[LuCruise]

If a choice between two ships then we'll select the ship we haven't been on yet.  It may be similar to one (e.g. Same class) but it's nice to try something new and then you get different shows.  But having said that, we'll be repeating Mariner next summer.

 

For us, itinerary is second.  Ship matters more.

[pris993]

When we first started cruising we went on a different ship, often a new ship, different cruise lines even  Over 40 years 9 cruise lines  - over 60 cruises.  We repeated cruises on a few ships when they had places we wanted to visit... Holland America Westerdam,  Cunard Queen Victoria,  Princess Ruby come to mind.  Now that we are older have the Grand Princess home ported in San Francisco, we go on it often.  We enjoy taking a taxi to the ship vs flying all over the world.  Just getting lazy in our old age.  LOL

[calliopecruiser]

I have no desire to cruise an itinerary just because I haven't done it before, but I also have no desire to cruise the same cruise every year just because it's familiar.   I cruise for the sea days, not the ports, so the number of sea days (and the ratio of sea days to port days) is what's important to me.  Because of that, I tend to re-take transpacific cruises, but the reason isn't because it's a familiar itinerary, it's because it's the most likely itinerary to give me what I want (lots of sea days). 

[navybankerteacher]

36 minutes ago, pris993 said:

When we first started cruising we went on a different ship, often a new ship, different cruise lines even  Over 40 years 9 cruise lines  - over 60 cruises.  We repeated cruises on a few ships when they had places we wanted to visit... Holland America Westerdam,  Cunard Queen Victoria,  Princess Ruby come to mind.  Now that we are older have the Grand Princess home ported in San Francisco, we go on it often.  We enjoy taking a taxi to the ship vs flying all over the world.  Just getting lazy in our old age.  LOL

Good point.  Our “taxi to” port is New York. Sadly the winter itineraries (we like CT in Spring , Summer and Fall) are all on NCL or Royal Caribbean behemoth ships.  

[pris993]

1 hour ago, navybankerteacher said:

Good point.  Our “taxi to” port is New York. Sadly the winter itineraries (we like CT in Spring , Summer and Fall) are all on NCL or Royal Caribbean behemoth ships.  

I understand, we cruised RCCL early on, stopped when they started building bigger and bigger ships.   We did only 3 NCL cruises, one on the old Norway (old SS France),  the most recent one a few years ago, after they went to "free style" we found a very good fare on a 11 night in eastern Mediterranean to Egypt, Israel... so we booked it.  For the price we paid okay.   We skipped the MDR after trying it for lunch and dinner first day... made sandwiches and salad from the buffet salad bar the rest of the trip which was fine for us.    Cabins were fine, entertainment good, food so so but adequate.  We had done similar cruises on Cunard,  HAL, Princess and Crystal... so obviously we knew what we paid on other lines by comparison we could not complain.   NCL okay for the right price.    I might consider if was a home port ship but book after final payment if possible.