Do you cruise 'just' for itineraries or are sea days important?

[fredflint]

We usually book Transatlantic cruises for the sea days and lack of children/first time cruisers   people on TAs tend to be more seasoned travelers.   We do have a  28 day cruise booked for 2021 that has a fairly port intensive 14 day part and then 14 days crossing back to the US.  I guess this time in 2 years I can report back 🙂

[Ken the cruiser]

6 hours ago, Ombud said:

As another thread has me wondering if we go for itineraries, sea days, or a combination of both? I love sea days but itineraries are relevant.

(Is it really the attainment of elite status that causes cruisers to go astray to other cruise lines?

By CarelessAndConfused, 14 hours ago in Princess Cruises) 

On sea days I love music, reading, no timelines......

We used to plan cruises based on the itinerary, but also we enjoy having fun things to do on sea days and going to the evening shows. However, as we have now been to many of our bucket list ports, we are finding we are leaning towards longer itineraries with plenty of sea days. This is why we now mostly book with Princess for their longer, more unique itineraries, and with Celebrity because we can usually get a great deal on their transoceanic cruises. We used to sail with HAL and Oceania, but their cruises have just become too "relaxing" for us.

 

As far as loyalty points go, yes, we also enjoy those, but they aren't the main reason we now sail with Princess and Celebrity. If they were, we would have stayed with HAL with our 4* status and Oceania with our silver status.

[satxdiver]

We choose our cruises based on the itinerary.  Given that we like sea days mixed with days in port.  All endless sea days is boring and all port days is exhausting.  Nice mix would be sea day followed by port day etc.  We have been on a few TA and enjoyed it with both times west bound.  Last month we did the HI cruise out of San Pedro and the 5 sea days returning was getting a bit old but good training for our up coming cruise across the equator (third time).  A little of each is the spice of life to us.  All in all itinerary is higher on the desired list than sea days.

[tanyaewa]

Every cruise is different but we’ve never cruised for sea days.  We would never stay on ship in any port.  I’d rather not cruise there if I didn’t want to go there.

10 day Med with 7 ports was perfect. Any 7 day should have at least 3 ports preferably 4

[GUT2407]

I need sea days to recover from port days. One cruise had three ports in a row (a couple of times) -and each time I was exhausted by day three. Of course I didn’t HAVE to do things each day, but as I had no idea if I would get back there I wanted to, a sea day between would have been nice to recover.

[vampiress]

i like a nice mix of sea and port days.

[SargassoPirate]

When we first started cruising we thought port days were important.  After a while, the port days became less important - especially in the Caribbean - and we began staying on the ship on some port days and enjoyed relaxing days on board.  Now it's to the point where if we do decide to get off the ship on a port day we avoid the cattle calls and scheduling of the ship's excursions and do our own thing or book a private tour with a local.  We don't do ABC tours anymore - another blessed cathedral, another blasted castle.

 

We also tend to book transocean cruises to get to or return from a land vacation on another continent.  We still love cruising, but are done with the floating amusement park big ships and look for ships that offer a wrap-around promenade, comfortable standard balcony cabins, a guest laundry on board, mostly adult itineraries or all adult lines/ships, and good reviews by other CCers.

 

Fortunately, there are many cruise lines and many ships to choose from.  

[villauk]

We book for itineraries. I presume most that say they don’t get off at ports are referring to Caribbean itineraries as there’s so much to do and see at many other ports throughout the world. After a couple of consecutive sea days, we are climbing the walls - not sure at this point in our life that we could sail on a TA - maybe when we are older and the kids aren’t sailing with us any longer.

 

We are limited to sailing during peak periods, so some itineraries aren’t available to us presently. Hopefully, when we’ve retired (still got a good few years to go yet), we’ll get an opportunity to take the longer sailings. That being said, we always try to cruise for at least 10 nights and then add on pre or post cruise stay as it’s not worth the airfare otherwise.

[polmcs]

At first, it was all about the ports of call and visiting new places, but nowadays, the more sea days the better, though if a port intensive bucket list of places came up, I would book that itinerary no question asked. 

 

We did 3 cruises this year and not once did we get off the ship before the end of the cruise. OK, one was San Pedro to Vancouver and one was Vancouver to San Pedro, so we didn’t have any choice 😉 but we did book those as short little relaxing breaks (and to “cheat” on Elite qualification). Thanksgiving was a Mexican Riviera cruise that we’ve done a few times before, so no need to get off the ship.

 

Next year has us on a HI circle (done this cruise twice before) so will definitely be looking forward to the sea days in both directions, but there are a few bucket items to do on the Islands, so will definitely get off in port and then we also have an AK circle out of San Pedro that has a number of sea days, but the ports of call are as equally important as sea days for this cruise. 

 

The last cruise that that we took purely for itinerary was the Oz-Fiji cruise for our 20th wedding anniversary last year, but it did have a decent number of sea days included which didn’t hurt. 🙂 

[milolii]

All very good posts here.

 

We enjoy a mix. Appreciate ports for hard to get to places in a timely fashion such as the Med or Baltic.  
 

Appreciate sea days after a land trip or long flights. And as a break durning a port intensive cruise. 

 

Had a port canceled once and actually had a wonderful day at sea. 
 

But after 2 days ready to get off for a few hours, so have not done long ocean voyages.  
 

 

[MissP22]

We enjoy those sea days since we just cruise for the ship but even better is when we hit any port in the Caribbean- everyone else abandons the ship for tours and leaves the ship for our enjoyment.

The more port days, the better.😎

It doesn't get better than that. 

 

[BigGuy25]

We’re in the “mix of both” camp. Love sea days (we’ve done several Transatlantics) but also enjoy immersing ourselves in the local cultures we visit through the use of private shore excursions.  Usually, we like a sea day after each few port days.  At least for us, too many port days in a row causes use to arrive home after a cruise needing a vacation!!

[5:00_Somewhere]

Sea days are definitely important to us, and sometimes as important as the port itinerary, depending on our reason for the cruise. For instance, we did an intensive Mediterranean cruise in August-September and purposely chose an itinerary that had a sea day after every 2 port days, which was great for helping keep our energy up for running around site-seeing on port days. On the other hand, we just did the traditional 7-day Eastern Caribbean cruise with 3 ports (including Princess Cays) and 3 sea days, which we love just for relaxing. We've been to all the ports so many times we don't do a bunch of running around or site-seeing on this itinerary, but maybe just visit some of our favorite spots in port, or sometimes just stay on the ship to enjoy when everyone else is in port. 

[CRUISEWITHH]

17 hours ago, jondfk said:

 

Honestly, more important than either is proximity.  When possible we prefer to drive to the pier, at least one direction, being California based that leaves us with few options and Princess is the only line with a ship based in our home port of San Francisco.  These factors overcome itinerary or sea day / port day considerations.  

I ditto the above... We've been there and done that in our over 550 days on Princess as well as many cruises on other cruiselines and visits to over 100 countries.  Now we prefer local cruises (California Coastal and Mexico) when we can drive to the port, Los Angeles for us, and relax and make the ship our destination.

[LB_NJ]

It depends on price and the ship.

 

If it is really, really, cheap (about $125 or less per person per night for everything including tips) we will go on a cruise just to get away and don't really care about ports.  For much more than that there are very nice land based destinations that for use are better.

 

I would also consider the QM2 for a cruise with lots of sea days because we like the ship.

 

Otherwise we care about the itinerary and that is the driving force in picking a ship.   

[Sea Hag]

sea days are just as important to me as ports of call. 

[MISTER 67]

We live in Florida and have been everywhere we have wanted to go on cruises like Europe, Bermuda, Panama Canal and the Mexican Riviera , we dont fly anymore so all our cruises are out of Florida and we just  sail in the Caribbean and have done a few partial Panama Canal cruises but the port charges are ridiculous. For us the ship is the destination and we love sea days. We hardly get off the ship anymore except for St. Thomas where we stay in the port area, either Havensight or Crown Bay. Once in awhile we leave the ship in San Juan and stroll through old San Juan. On our last cruise in early December we did get off the ship in Falmouth Jamaica because we never have never been there and we stayed in the shopping area at the port. 

Edited December 28, 2019 by MISTER 67

[dfields1814]

We used to like the majority of days at a port with a couple of sea days now and then. Now my wife is battling medications for cancer so suddenly sea days are more important for her. She doesn't have to do anything just sit there and enjoy the sea and be pampered by the staff! Times and circumstances change. 

[Tatka]

For us it depends on the purpose of particular cruise. We do 5-6 a year.

If we cruise in Europe we carefully pick itinerary and plan ports. Seadays there are nice, but mostly to catch a breath. 🙂 

Then we have some itineraries where some ports are important, like Canada New England where we do some adventures in some ports.

Same happens on some Caribbean itins, but with 25 or so we really been everywhere.

So it’s a beach or occasional adventure.

 

Some cruises are my working cruises. There are also some almost minutes ones where I might work 2-3 days from the ship. Mostly to Florida/Bahamas. I work during the day and don’t even go to ports (we always leave ship otherwise)

[BarbinMich]

We started cruising in 1994 and primarily in the Caribbean, doing 1-2 a year.  After my DH retired in 2001 we started doing TAs in spring and fall and 1 Caribbean in Jan.  While DH was working we did a number of 1-week land trips in usually just one country (or region) of Europe, but TAs let us visit coastal cities, not usually visited on a land trip.  So all-in-all we've had a pretty wide experience in Europe and N.A.  Lots of good memories, now that we're no longer able to cruise due to DH's poor health.  Cruise while you can!  Should mention that we have also done a number of auto and fly-drive trips over the years in both the US and Canada, starting with our honeymoon 51 years ago <g>.

[generichandle]

We recently returned from a cruise 28-days LA to Sydney. It was 9 shore, and 19 sea days. I found this a pretty much perfect distribution. I love sea days, and am never bored. The shore days on this cruise were Hawaii, Polynesia, and New Zealand, so very good indeed. Hard to find any complaint, even though storms made us miss Milford Sound day. 

 

So, I am great with Trans-Ocean cruising. I find cruises with many shore days and few sea days to be too frantic. Want to see everything, but at my own pace.

[Crystal04]

I get bored of sea days really quick.  I would never be able to do a Transatlantic. 

[kywildcatfanone]

I typically don't care if it's a port or sea day or where it goes.  I cruise to be in warmer weather than at home.  Weather, which is always a guess, is most important to us at this stage of our lives.

[OzKiwiJJ]

We love sea days so often choose cruises, like repositioning cruises, that have a higher percentage of sea days to port days. In fact I would be more than happy to board a cruise in Sydney, head out to a pleasantly warm part of the South Pacific and cruise around in circles for two weeks without a single port stop. The ship is the destination in this case.

 

But there are times when we want port stops. We regularly do NZ cruises to catch up with friends and family in many of the ports we stop at there. We also love going to new places and in May we will be doing a 26 night Western Europe cruise that has only one or two sea days but which goes to some very interesting ports. 

[villauk]

3 hours ago, BarbinMich said:

We started cruising in 1994 and primarily in the Caribbean, doing 1-2 a year.  After my DH retired in 2001 we started doing TAs in spring and fall and 1 Caribbean in Jan.  While DH was working we did a number of 1-week land trips in usually just one country (or region) of Europe, but TAs let us visit coastal cities, not usually visited on a land trip.  So all-in-all we've had a pretty wide experience in Europe and N.A.  Lots of good memories, now that we're no longer able to cruise due to DH's poor health.  Cruise while you can!  Should mention that we have also done a number of auto and fly-drive trips over the years in both the US and Canada, starting with our honeymoon 51 years ago <g>.

 

 

I think age does have a lot to do with it. You’ve been married about the same number of years I’ve been alive, so I probably will have a different perspective by the time I’m of a similar age. We fly to virtually all of our cruises, don’t live anywhere near a port, so it can be shorter to fly to Europe (mainland) and embark on a ship than driving to our nearest port. We also take land trips in Europe as it’s much closer for us and we still travel as a family.

 

We say our teens are very lucky as they’ve been on all our sailings and seen much of the world - more than we had seen at their age. On a side note, our honeymoon was to your west coast and island-hopping in Hawaii (many moons ago but not quite 51 😁).