advice please?!

[catharina]

Hi, my name is carina and I am from Holland. I will be getting married in March 2005 and we want to make a cruise for our honeymoon! We are doubting between 2 cruises (being young first timers):
Celebrity Zenith 14 day cruise, but we can only afford an inside cabin then
Brilliance of the Seas, 11 day caribbean but with a D1 balcony cabin.
Please can you advise me, what is the best line-ship for a nice honeymoon? I want all your tips and opinions! Is something extra done for a honeymoon?

Love Carina

[MandyGirl]

Carina -
Where exactly are you looking to cruise? Southern Caribbean? 11-14 days would be AWESOME, and you would not have as many children on the cruises that are longer than 7 days. That is definitely a plus for taking a longer cruise, plus you will want time to relax/recover from your flight (we just flew back from Scotland/London this week and are finally getting caught up in rest!!)

A cruise will be what YOU make of it. One person may tell you that they absolutely LOVE a cruiseline, while the next person can tell you nothing but negatives. We've cruised on Celebrity, Holland America, and Norwegian... and of course we could be nit-picky and look for negatives, but we would return to any of those cruiselines again. They each had different positives that were unique to each other. Plus, many cruiselines are owned by the same company (ex: Royal Caribbean and Celebrity are owned by the same company; Carnival Corporation owns Carnival, Holland America, Windstar, recently purchased Princess, etc.)

Don't fret over an inside cabin - unless you are going for a balcony, you are never in your cabin except to sleep and shower and... [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] It's your honeymoon! [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] Of our 4 cruises, we have booked 3 insides and one suite - and the next cruise this November will be an inside. We take the money we save and use it for onboard extras (spa packages, drinks) and fun excursions at the ports. You could always book an "inside guarantee" and IF you get upgraded to an outside or even a suite or balcony... then that is just a nice little extra! Only drawback is you don't choose your specific cabin.

We love the Caribbean, but we are "beach people" and don't like cold weather. What are some of the ports you are looking at?

Celebrity does have a fabulous AquaSpa, and we have done some couples treatments on Celebrity. Very romantic for a honeymoon. Also, Celebrity would have smaller, more intimate ships (like the Zenith). Royal Caribbean Brilliance is a larger ship I believe, but I have not cruised on RCCL. We have found that we enjoy the smaller ships, but that is just our personal preference (we are ages 29/31).

Your travel agent can make a note that your cruise is your honeymoon, and you should be invited to a honeymooner's party with almost any cruiseline you take.

A cruise as a honeymoon would be fabulous, and I would suggest to "go for it"!! [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

~ Mandy

[url="http://www.cmgoddard.com/pages/2/index.htm"]NCL Sky 12/2000[/url] - Western Caribbean
Celebrity Galaxy 12/2001 - Southern Caribbean
S/S Norway 03/2003 [url="http://www.cmgoddard.com/pages/3/index.htm"]wedding cruise[/url] - Eastern Caribbean
~~~~~ [url="http://messages.cruisecritic.com/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=927093444&f=158097554&m=8703069907"] Married on the beach in St John! [/url] ~~~~~
[url="http://www.cmgoddard.com/pages/2/index.htm"]HAL ms Maasdam 11/23/2003[/url] - Western Caribbean
HAL Zuiderdam 11/2004 - Eastern Caribbean

[Truluv]

If you're going somewhere warm, a balcony will be very welcome. We enjoyed Celebrity, but it was quieter and more formal than our Royal Caribbean cruises. The disco on our Celebrity cruise was very quiet. Longer cruises tend to have older passengers, and schools aren't out in March (unless you're cruising around Easter time and it's Spring break!) so you may have more older fellow-passengers anyway. Everyone will have a different opinion, but I'd suggest going on Brilliance of the Seas and enjoying a balcony on your honeymoon. Also -- Zenith is an older ship, and Brilliance is one of the newer RCL ships. Check out the ship pictures at Travelocity.com You'll have a great experience on either ship -- HAPPY HONEYMOON!

[MandyGirl]

Good point about Spring Break timing, truluv. I totally missed that tidbit on the date. Our Spring Break in the Dallas area is normally mid-March (I'm a teacher). We married on a Spring Break cruise last year, and our ship was packed with Spring Breakers. (Spring Break varies from school district to school district in Texas) Some cruiselines specify an age of 21 while others specify an age of 25 to travel without guardians (if you are concerned about college spring breakers). But... if you are choosing a cruise that is longer than 7-nights like you are looking at, then you have a very small chance of getting younger cruises with you.

On either line, you should be pleased. A cruise is always what YOU make of it! [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] And fortunately both Royal Caribbean and Celebrity are owned by the same company. Unless the Celebrity cruise has ports of call in the extra three days that you woudn't see on Royal Caribbean (that you might like to see), I'd say go for the balcony since it's the same price as the inside on Celebrity 14-day cruise. Celebrity is known to have superb food, but good food is good food to me. But again... if there is a port on the 14-day cruise you're dying to see since you have flown so far, then that may be worth it. [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

You might want to go over to the Celebrity or RCCL boards here on CruiseCritic and post a thread titled "RCCL vs Celebrity" - I bet you can get lots of input there.

~ Mandy