Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses the best way to book your next cruise with Come Cruise with Me’s Daniel Kline.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, joining me now is Daniel Kline. He is the editor of Travel Hosts’ Come cruise with me, Dan.
Always great to see you. Welcome back to the program this morning. Yeah, Jeff, thanks for having me.
Cruise, cruising, it is the, you know, it is one of the things to do, Dan. How has cruising, going on cruise ships, increased in popularity over the last several years?
Daniel Kline, Come Cruise with Me
So, we had a little blip with the COVID pandemic. You may remember that. I don’t remember that very well.
But cruising has grown every year. And the reason cruising has grown is the value you’re getting compared to most vacations is very high. So let’s say, and I’m a Disney theme park pass holder, so I’m not dissing Disney in any way.
But if I’m gonna go to Disney with a family of four, I only have a family of three, but let’s say we borrow someone else, family of four, tickets alone on a seven day visit will cost me close to $2,000. It can vary, call it $1,500 to $2,200, depending on time of year and which parks you go to. That’s before I have a place to sleep, a meal, any additional things I might spend.
On a cruise ship, it is reasonable to say that that family of four, for maybe $2,500 to $3,000, now you could also spend $50,000 if you want, could get on a family-friendly line like Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian, you could get on a family-friendly line and your room would include all your food, three meals a day, seven meals a day if you want, in multiple restaurants, usually all you can eat pizza, usually room service with a very small fee where you can get as much as you want. All the shows are included.
So there’s all sorts of entertainment. The pools are included. So it’s a very good value.
And again, it comes down to finding the right cruise for you, because there’s some people that are not gonna be happy in an inside cabin with their two kids and their wife on a carnival cruise. That might not be it for them. But then there’s some families that are not gonna be happy with a luxury cabin on a maybe more adult cruise line, like Celebrity.
So you really have to pick and choose and do your homework. I always suggest work with a travel agent. We partner with a travel agent.
I won’t mention them. You can see it in our website. But, and find someone who it’s their job.
There’s a lot of hobbyist travel agents, just like there are hobbyist real estate agents. Find someone who’s really making their living that way, because that’s a person that’s going to all the trainings. That’s a person that has better access to discounts.
And they’ll really help you map out your plan.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So Dan, is there a cruising season or is it really find a cruise any time of the year, anywhere on the planet?
Daniel Kline, Come Cruise with Me
In Florida, you can cruise any time of the year. If you wanna do Alaska, which I mentioned, I did last summer in our earlier conversation. Alaska is when the weather is nice.
So it’s basically maybe May to October. It can vary a little bit by cruise line. And it’s the same thing in Europe.
Most of the major American cruise lines will transfer ships to Europe during the warmer seasons. Now there are European cruise lines that maintain a year round presence. Places like Australia may only have say a Royal or a Celebrity or a Carnival ship for part of the year.
That could be based on demand, not always weather. But here in Florida, you can cruise all year. There’s always a ton of ships.
But hurricane season, which is basically summer through early fall, if you’re worried about motion sickness, that might not be the time for you. But the bigger the ship, the less of a concern that is.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So Dan, assuming you wanna go on a cruise and you wanna go out of Florida, one of the other ports, what type of turnaround time? I mean, can I book a, you know, I could go to the airport today, right now, book a flight and fly out from Charlotte to anywhere in the world, really. Is there a lag or a time that you have to wait between booking?
Daniel Kline, Come Cruise with Me
It’s a really good question. There’s no longer the possibility of like going down to the port and trying to negotiate a deal. In reality, most cruise ships sell out or reach profitability early.
So your best time to book a cruise is usually right when it goes on sale. That said, your travel agent gets emails. I get emails as a travel agent every day that say, hey, we’re having trouble with this ship.
You can throw in an extra $100 in credit. You can lower the price. You can give them a free dinner, whatever it is.
So there are deals to be had, but the hard and fast rule is you need to be on the manifest 48 hours ahead to be cleared by the Coast Guard. Now that really means that three days before the cruise, a good travel agent could probably book you. Most, I would say four days, and there’s not gonna be a lot of inventory.
Now, there are things that happen. If there’s bad weather in the Northeast, you might be able to get on a cruise because people cancel or have insurance, or every now and then there’s something goes, I don’t wanna say titanically wrong. That’s probably the wrong word to use.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
That’s a bad analogy, Dan.
Daniel Kline, Come Cruise with Me
But like maybe a ship has to stay out at sea one extra day because of weather. They won’t sail into a dangerous port, and sometimes they can’t dock. So that cruise might change the itinerary of the next one, and people might miss it.
So there are occasional random deals to be had, but it’s usually on ships that weren’t selling well anyway, so the deal was usually pretty good in the first place.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
What types of benefits are on? You mentioned the food. You talk about the pools, and I’ve never been on a cruise, but of course I’ve seen documentaries, et cetera.
What are the types of things you can get on a cruise outside of the food?
Daniel Kline, Come Cruise with Me
The documentaries are not usually about how great it is to cruise.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
No, they are not, but I mean, they show you the bowels of the ship. It’s kind of interesting if you like logistics.
Daniel Kline, Come Cruise with Me
So for me, Jeff, what I like about cruising is when you go with other people, and I travel while my wife’s not a cruiser, and my son has a job, I cruise by. I take my mother. We were with a group of 200 first responders a couple of weeks ago.
Is that everyone can have their own vacation. So I have to work during the day. I’m gonna be sitting in the coffee shop with my laptop.
That doesn’t mean my mother has to sit next to me. She might go to the pool with a book. She might do a trivia game.
She might go take an art class, whatever it is. So if you’re with your kids, you can put them in the kids’ club for part of the day. Maybe they wanna watch the movie, but you don’t.
It’s a closed atmosphere. So within what the rules are, depending on the age of your kid, you can let them do things without you being there. I’m a big sit-in-a-hot-tub guy.
A lot of people aren’t. I like to watch live music at night, but I prefer a solo performer to sort of a band. I’m not dancing.
I wanna watch a guy play guitar while I perhaps sip an adult beverage. Cruises have gotten away, at least the mass market cruises from Enrichment. There’s not a lot of classes.
There might be a Macallan liquor tasting you can pay $60 for, and I actually really like that class. So sometimes you gotta be a little careful about how salesy something might be. Maybe you’re a spa person.
I’m a big fan of paying for the thermal spa, which is usually either a pass you buy for the week, or you can buy, and you go sit in a cold plunge, and then a sauna, and then a steam room, and then a salt room. And to me, that’s a good excuse to put my phone down and relax. For a lot of people, it’s about the food and the production shows, like the big Broadway style, or a guy on a unicycle who juggles bowling balls, or whatever it is.
It really is about what you like, and that comes down to picking the cruise line. If you want a party atmosphere at night, you probably don’t wanna be on Princess, or Holland America, or Celebrity. You probably wanna be on Royal Caribbean, or Carnival, or Virgin.
So it’s really about matching what you like to do. If you’re a foodie, you wanna go on a cruise line that has the opportunity to have some unique culinary experiences. If you’re someone who likes a fancy adult beverage, maybe you wanna look into which cruise lines have the best liquor setups.
And I know that on Norwegian, we got to try a lot of whiskeys that I wouldn’t have been able to try on other cruise lines. So it’s all the little things. Are you a beach guy?
Are you a museum guy? You gotta kind of figure that out.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, it sounds like you can, I think what’s unique about, and I’ve gotta wrap, but I’ll just close out by saying, it sounds like you can personalize, just like you can at a resort in St. Lucia, as an example.
Daniel Kline, Come Cruise with Me
So it sounds like it’s a- I’ll close very quickly. We took my partner, Todd Campbell, I’m a business partner, on a cruise last week, and he got off in every port. We only got off in one, because we’d been to those ports.
We’ve seen those sites. We didn’t need to go to the port or to whatever it is. We didn’t need to do any free shopping.
Some people, that’s what they wanna do. They wanna go to Nassau and hit every store and buy every knockoff Rolex they could find. It’s really about, I say to people, let your group do what they want, but come together at dinner.
Most nights, try to eat dinner together and have that shared experience, but other than that, I try to put no pressure on my traveling companions and let everyone have the fun they wanna have.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, really well said. Well, Dan, we’re gonna have to leave it there. It’s always great to see you, my friend, and look, we look forward to having you back again very soon.
Daniel Kline, Come Cruise with Me
Nice to be here. See you soon.
#Booking #Cruise