January 31, 2005

8:17 AM

VacationFilter: After 15 years of work, I'm ready for a real vacation. Do any of the DC-Metro Area Folks have a good travel agent they can recommend for planning a Cruise?
posted by ad hoc to (4 comments total)

I don't mean to be the pooper of parties here, but are you sure you want to go on a cruise?? After years of saying I wanted to go on a cruise I finally went on one, and while it was a fine thing to do, I felt it had major drawbacks. Perhaps if you design the cruise right you can avoid this, but I felt the biggest problem was that you have to get off the ship at a certain time in the morning at every port and then you have to be back on the boat at a certain time every evening. This means that one, you can't explore at your own leisure and two, you spend a lot of your allotted time on shore making arrangements to get to and from wherever they drop you off. I constantly felt rushed and disappointed that I didn't get to fully experience the places we went.

Also, you will be charged for every soda, water, juice, etc you have, regardless of whether it's alchoholic or not. Let me tell ya, on a 5 day cruise, this REALLY adds up. Very annoying. On a 7 day cruise, which I took, it was shocking. And the beers, etc are not cheap either. Also, expect to be badgered by the waitstaff at evey moment to order a drink.

Ignoring that, there really is not much in the world prettier than the being alone deep in the ocean under a clear, star studded night sky.

Anyway, I don't think I'll do a cruise again, but if you end up doing it, good luck.
posted by spicynuts at 8:28 AM on January 31, 2005

We went on a cruise for our honeymoon and loved it. If it helps, we went through these guys who seem to have agents all over the place.

I went Royal Caribbean (and plan to go again in about a year), everyone I know who has gone with them was basically happy. Some people I know complained about Carnival, though. (I believe the phrase "wal-mart of the seas" was used.)

I do believe some lines actually are all inclusive (I want to say Celebrity or Princess, but I'm not 100% on that). On the others you will pay through the nose for anything other than water, lemonade, or ice tea. We bought a drink card, it was something like six alcoholic drinks for $24. Good deal, and they had one for pop, too.
posted by Kellydamnit at 8:43 AM on January 31, 2005

Along the lines of Kellydamnit, a blogger I came across was planning her first cruise and asked questions of her readers--they might be useful to you (and a lot of discussion about the paying for drinks/soda thing):

http://zia.blogs.com/wastedbirthcontrol/2004/12/cruise_question.html#comments
posted by handful of rain at 8:49 AM on January 31, 2005

If you decide to book it on the internet, I've had good success dealing with the folks at Pavlus Travel in Arizona. I've used them for tours, not cruises, but they have very good prices with good service.
posted by smackfu at 8:59 AM on January 31, 2005