Florida to Cuba

[Lc1102002]

Hi, I'm planning a cruise from florida to cuba.  I'm considering NCL or Royal Carib.

I need help deciding if one cruise line is better then the other.  and how many days in cuba i should plan on.  I was surprised to see so many of the cruise offers only 1 night in cuba which seems hardly enough.  Any guidance and suggestions would be welcome.  thanks!

[3bzmom]

3 hours ago, Lc1102002 said:

Hi, I'm planning a cruise from florida to cuba.  I'm considering NCL or Royal Carib.

I need help deciding if one cruise line is better then the other.  and how many days in cuba i should plan on.  I was surprised to see so many of the cruise offers only 1 night in cuba which seems hardly enough.  Any guidance and suggestions would be welcome.  thanks!

May want to reconsider Havana. It will likely take them a long time to recover from the tornado.

[Cienfuegos]

Viking Ocean has one remaining early 2019 Cuba cruise, calling on Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba.  But not Havana.

 

A bus trip was offered for folks who want to see Havana

[Nancy&Frank]

We are doing Azamara Cruises.  They do 3 full days in Havana, 1 day in Cienfuegos and 1 day in Santiago de Cuba.  This seems to be the one with the most days in Cuba.  It is a nine day and leaves from Miami.

[Lorey2007]

I read this on a travel site:

 

“He is reporting that the primary tornado damage was in the Naranjia and 10 de October neighborhoods. While we are saddened to hear this rare Cuban tornado has caused both property damage and loss of life, these are not areas where travelers would be visiting and it is unlikely to impact operations for any tour operators.”

“The tornado hit some of Havana’s residential neighborhoods away from the traditional tourist sites,” said Ronen Paldi, president of Ya'lla Tours USA. “The damage, as well as fatalities, are bad, but have no effect to the tourist sites.”

[SteveGT3]

We did a Cuba cruise on Azamara Journey in early Jan. The ship stayed overnight in each of the 3 ports - Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. We chose Azamara because of the overnights and it was great. 

[LadyMac72]

29 days until my cruise to Cuba!  I emailed our tour guide after hearing of the tornado to check and see how he and his peeps made out... he was pleasantly surprised by my contact and assured me that the tornado was localized and would not impact tourism.

Edited January 31, 2019 by LadyMac72

[riffatsea]

We are going on Oceania to Cuba because their itinerary had 2 days in Havana(with an overnight) and then 1 day each in Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. Not sure why I didn't book with Azamara with overnights in all the cities? Perhaps it was the date/length of the cruise?

It sounds great. I did not book with the larger cruise lines because they do fewer cities in Cuba and add on other Caribbean islands which don't interest me at all.

 

I too have heard from folks on the ground that the tornado was in specific neighborhood and not the whole city!

Edited February 1, 2019 by riffatsea

[SteveGT3]

We chose Azamara for our Cuba cruise because of the eovernights in each of the 3 cities. Plus, we are Elite Plus and that status carries over on Azamara cruises. 

[KimberlyC]

I was in Fort Lauderdale when the tornado hit last Sunday, I boarded the ship on Monday, spent Thursday and Friday in Havana and just returned from Majesty of the Seas yesterday. I can attest to the fact that Old Havana itself was not badly affected by the tornado at all. The outskirts is another story from what I heard but we were only in port from 8am Thursday until 1pm Friday which is not nearly enough time to venture far for those of us who hadn’t seen Old Havana before.

 

As for which line, this was my first time on RCCL.  I’ve previously sailed on Norwegian along with 4 other cruise lines.  4 people in our group sailed Norwegian less than a year ago.  We would all say Norwegian hands down (those 4 made a lot of comparisons not in RCCL’s favor), but in fairness, it is impossible to compare this cruise to other cruises. The port at Havana currently can’t handle the larger ships. The Majesty of the Seas is the oldest ship in the RCCL fleet and it’s evident. It may be the same with Norwegian but I didn’t personally select our cruise so I didn’t research it. We had a group of 11 and for the few who hadn’t cruised before the ship was nice. For everyone who had anything else to compare it to, the ship was dated and lacking many amenities.  Now we knew the ship would be smaller and dated before we cruised. We knew that besides Johnny Rockets, there are no specialty restaurants. But there were several things we didn’t know. For example, the RCCL app to message each other on the ship doesn’t work on Majesty and the Digital photo package available on every other RCCL ship is not available on the Majesty. Also, the staterooms are among the smallest at sea and there are very few balcony cabins. The ones they do have are mostly suites and come with a big premium price tag. Deck 9 has larger cabins but an obstructed view - I went for that just to have the extra size because these cabins are SMALL comparatively speaking.

 

I’ve never had more problems on a ship than our group had on the Majesty - mostly IT related. Example, our group decided to book an excursion on the fly the day before we reached Key West (conch train) and when 4 of us booked just prior to second dinner seating our tickets couldn’t be printed due to printer issues so they were to be delivered to our stateroom later that evening. Didn’t happen so I was dealing with guest services at 1am prior to an 8:30am excursion. The booking never went through and apparently the problem couldn’t be fixed due to IT issues. I was told to return at 7:30am so I did but the issue still couldn’t be fixed at which point I raised holy hell. To their credit they did everything to make it up to me afterwards, but this was just one of 4 major problems our group experienced. That’s 4 major problems more than I’ve ever had before and far too many for a 5 night sailing. 

 

Our group had an amazing time overall due to the PRIVATE tour we booked in Havana and just being on vacation together, but while I can recommend Cuba I can’t recommend sailing on RCCL’s Majesty of the Seas. Perhaps I might enjoy one of RCCL’s newer ships, but the Majesty of the Seas simply isn’t up to par despite having a great crew onboard.