Get the Picture Package worth $399??

[mmcruise]

We would love to have some nice family photos taken on our cruise, plus some of DS, and DH and I would love to get individual shots we can use for LinkedIn and other professional purposes. If it was $249 or less, would be great. But $399! Holy cow.

 

Anybody done this for THAT much money? Is it worth it?

[1948buddy]

A lot of people may disagree, but we get the photos we like the most by doing them ourselves, and having other cruisers and crew do it for us. I walk the deck in the mornings, while wife sleeps in, and I almost always find couples who are thrilled for you to take their photo together, and if you get the background just right, and the sun in the right direction, it's amazing how good they can turn out. We used to do the ship photos, now we do not even look at the samples.

[nancronin]

Check out this thread - already has a lot of info on the pictures:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1471470

 

:)

[Karen_N]

We would love to have some nice family photos taken on our cruise, plus some of DS, and DH and I would love to get individual shots we can use for LinkedIn and other professional purposes. If it was $249 or less, would be great. But $399! Holy cow.

 

Anybody done this for THAT much money? Is it worth it?

 

I personally think you will spend too much time waiting in line, trying to get as many photos as possible, to get your moneys worth. Sometimes the lines can be pretty lengthy.

We did a Disney package recently and we spent a great deal of time hunting down photographers, waiting in line to see characters etc.

 

While we have a few very nice cruise pictures, I really don't think we ever spent more than $100.

Just my opinion.

KN

[mmcruise]

Thank you - I've been reading that thread but didn't want to hijack it. The highest price listed there is $349, which is still staggering. It's pretty amazing how much the prices seem to vary.

 

We've been to Disney a bunch of times and always do the PhotoPass and thought it was very worthwhile - but never paid more than about $150 for that. (Edited - thought it was $99 but just double checked).

[ksuds]

I think the picture prices are way overpriced. We usually just use our free coupons we get in our booklet. Sometimes we don't even use them for ourselves. We try to find people on the cruise that would love pictures but can't really afford the high price and we go down with them and use our coupons so they get them free.

[LittleMissMagic]

Sometimes we get really good pictures, but sometimes we get really bad pictures.

 

I'd be hesitant to pay that price up front because you just don't know what the quality is going to be.

 

On our last cruise, we ran into two awful photographers - one who cut my the top of my father's head off in every shot, but included background outside of her white backdrop. Simple solution: flip the camera and take a vertical picture. Sometimes the photographers just aren't on their A-game. (I'm actually really suprised that they even put these photos out on display - it just showed how terrible the photographer was. I was really tempted to complain, but the line was ridiculous.)

 

However, we have had some beautiful family portraits taken on cruises. Our last cruise was definitely out of the ordinary. Still, I wouldn't put down that kind of money and risk not having any good photos due to amateur photographers.

[baggal]

Tip: This only works if you have the right technical equipment. Take and then buy one good generic family photo on the ship. Bring it home and then scan it into your computer. Most computers have a reasonable easy photo editing program. You can crop photos of your husband and yourself and use those photos to upload to linkedin, facebook, etc.

 

Only you can decide if spending $399 on photos is worth it.

[mmcruise]

Although I'd love some pix electronically, it still feels like too much money. My profile picture was taken on the Eurodam, when the photographer got bored and called it a night way too early, and we took turns taking pictures against their background with a bunch of strangers. One of my favorite pictures ever. Guess we'll just take our chances with our own cameras and then buy a few of theirs like we always do. Scans never look quite as good as we want them too.

 

In short, there are so many better things I could do with $400 - especially with your story, LittleMissMagic.

 

Thanks for the ideas, everyone!

[goinmobile68]

Four hundred bucks-wow! Put 100 in your pocket, use the rest to buy a really decent camera-there's some really nice ones out there for that kind of money and you'll use it for more than one series of family pics. Make friends with someone who's carrrying even better equipment than yours-they may just have too much money, but chances are they have some experience & skills. Most folks will be glad to help out (after a recent trip I don't think there is a point & shoot made that I haven't handled!)

 

Here's where the last $100 comes in-memory is cheap & those tiny cards are a lot easier to transport without damage than prints! Take time when you get home to relive your trip & choose the ones to have printed. Remember, YOU own the memory so you can have as many printed as you want-for a LOT less than on board.

 

Repete as many times as desired on as many cruises as desired!

[ChevyCruiser]

I think I've only ever purchased two photos from the ship in over 25 cruises. That was early on and we thought it would really be neat. We never did anything with them and I don't even know where they are now. We don't even pose anymore, we walk around the boarding photographers, the port photographers, and wave off the formal night photographer.

 

$400.00? Yikes!

 

However, I do hope of people take advantage of the package price since it means a big profit for the cruise line and helps subsidize the cost of my cruise fare!;)