Taking a Transatlantic Cruise for the 1st time! HELP Please

[Basket cruiser]

We are taking our first 14 day cruise. We are leaving from Ft. Lauderdale and will fly home from Barcelona, Spain. We are excited, however, I would love to know if anyone else out there has ever taken this re-positioning cruise before? Not sure what to expected on a re-positioning cruise. We love cruising on RCC and I'm sure that part will be fine. I have never been at sea for 7 days without land, jsut curious if anyone has done this before?

 

Thanks loads.

Basket Cruiser

[xpcdoojk]

We are taking our first 14 day cruise. We are leaving from Ft. Lauderdale and will fly home from Barcelona, Spain. We are excited, however, I would love to know if anyone else out there has ever taken this re-positioning cruise before? Not sure what to expected on a re-positioning cruise. We love cruising on RCC and I'm sure that part will be fine. I have never been at sea for 7 days without land, jsut curious if anyone has done this before?

 

Thanks loads.

Basket Cruiser

 

First, welcome to CC.

 

Second, yes Transatlantics are a great value, and are the best itinerary to really get to experience all the ship has to offer. I personally prefer the relaxation you get on a west bound transatlantic, each of those 6 days are basically 25 hours long, where as most of yours will only be 23 hours long due to time zones. On the upside your flight will be a bit less jet lagging. I have done one TA and will do my second this fall. Spain is lovely, so have a great cruise.:cool:

 

jc

[Tucker in Texas]

Are you on the Navigator? We are. There is a lively forum going. Go down to roll calls and click on it to join.

 

This will be our fifth trans-Atlantic. We like the sea days but, also, going to different ports and not having to pack and unpack. We figure we will be back on a land tour to give the ports a "proper" tour but will have an idea of what we want to explore further.

 

The biggest issue is clothes. Between the airlines weight limits and the change in temperature, you need to layer. Having done it the other way meaning we were in Barcelona in November, I found that I did quite well with a long sleeve turtleneck and jacket. I, also, had a sweatshirt packed in case it was really cold but didn't need it. I did use it on the ship on the early sea days if I wanted to spend any time outside. Husband did o.k. with a lined windbreaker.

 

There are three formal nights but I have seen less and less of tuxedos and more and more suits, dress slacks and sports coats. Unfortunately, I see a few t-shirts, jeans, and ball caps. To my knowledge, no one has been turned away dressed that way. Husband takes a suit and I take a long black dress with three different tops. The dress for dinner seems to be either "smart" casual or formal. Smart casual means nice slacks and top or skirt and blouse or sun dress. For the men, khakis and golf or sports shirt works. Some men wear a sports coat or blazer over a golf shirt or sports shirt (sans tie) but the majority stick with slacks and collared shirt.

 

If you are a bridge player, they will (or have had) ACBL sanctioned bridge games on sea days in the afternoon. You can pick up a partner if you don't have one. Sometimes the directors will have a lecture in the morning. In our forum group, we are getting up activities, too, like mystery, slot pull, cabin crawl, gift exchange.

 

If you are a reader, bring your books with you. I don't know about the Navigator but on the Voyager, the library was a joke. When we left from Galveston which I live near and didn't have airline weight issues, I took a couple of shopping bags of books and "donated" them. They were gone instantly. Not even a dictionary or almanac (to dispute trivia answers) were to be found.

 

If you are an ice consumer, bring a canvas six pack cooler and ask your steward to keep it filled with ice because the ice buckets are teeny tiny and the ice is melted by noon. I keep mine in the shower as it tends to "sweat." Our cabin stewards have ignored "extraneous" matter in our cooler.

 

Any other questions, feel free to e-mail me at whitlock@alumni.utexas.net. Please join our forum and sign up for Mix and Mingle.

 

Tucker in Texas

[dramaqueen4lyfe]

Welcome to CC. Lots to read and to learn here.

We love Transatlantic and Pacific cruises. We have done several. We love the sea days. I love to play Trivia and that goes on several times a day. We have crossed the North Altlantic South Atlantic and the Pacific between Vancouver and Hawaii. As another poster has said, the west bound gives you the extra hour on several days whereby the eastern takes it away but nevertheless, they are great cruises with unique itineraries.

[gagirl7143]

When you lose the Days ****** you just have to make the return trip and collect them back!!!! :)

[Momof2angels]

My husband and I really enjoyed our transatlantic! Mainly because we had an opportunity to get to know other passengers. When you are on a ship for 7 nights, with ports most days, I feel like it's go go go. On the transatlantic we got to meet some people, participate in activites and hit the spa. No rushing around!!!

Enjoy!

[ClipperMiami]

We are also on the Navigator TA to Barcelona. This will be our third TA, the previous ones in 2007 both EB and WB on Brilliance. My wife and I both greatly enjoy the relaxation of the sea days. If you like activities there are plenty for you. If you prefer relaxation and quiet there is plenty of that as well.

 

Join the Roll Call and find out what's going on. Right now people are planning some non-RCCL excursions so you may want to catch up and consider joining one or more of them. And join the Meet and Mingle so you can meet everyone after we sail.

[robtulipe]

We did a TA on Century for the first two weeks of Dec.08 that went from Barcelona to Miami. It was very cool at low to mid 50 F in Europe, low 60 F in Morocco, mid 60 F in the Canaries and mid 70 F crossing over. We used our aft balcony and the pools, which are all outdoors on this ship, every day crossing over. The sea were fairly calm with notations of slight or moderate from the captain in his daily update. If you check the following site just before you go it will give you an indication of what the temperature and seas will be like for your crossing. The southern route is definitely the route to take as the seas tend to be calmer and warmer there, even in the late fall.

Click on a section of the map to enlarge it.

Also with the west bound cruise you get five 25 hours sea days upon leaving the Canary Islands. That plus the hour set back when leaving Europe gives a extra 1/4 day of cruising. By the the morning of the sixth sea day when all time changes were done, there were all kinds of people up at 5 or 6AM because of the time gained. By comparison, as others here have stated, on a similar number of nights east bound TA cruise you lose 6 hours thus is a 1/2 day shorter than the west bound TA.

http://www.wunderground.com/MAR/mmm.html?map=wave&animate=1

Initial map is wave height, click on buoy/water temps in Select a Map Type to get that reading.

[aggie1]

My DH and i did the west bound TA on VOS from Barcelona to Galveston. We only had 5 sea days as we also stopped in the Carribbean. Loved the west bound as I could shop all I wanted and then not have to fly home. Kids picked us up as we live about 1-1/2 hrs from Galveston. Stay some days in Barcelona after cruise as it is a wonderful city. Also we sailed in December and the seas were absolutely the calmest I have ever seen. The only swells we encountered was the Gulf of Mexico coming from Cozumel. Enjoy your cruise and the days of relaxation.

[negc]

Agree with positive posts about the wonderful aspects of transatlantic cruises.:) We enjoy the fact that only a one way flight is required since we live withing driving distance of the US port where we will arrive at the end of the westbound cruises, and any hours that you lose on an eastbound transatlantic, we will gladly pick up when we head back from Harwich to Boston.:D

[Missus Makkem]

We are taking our first 14 day cruise. We are leaving from Ft. Lauderdale and will fly home from Barcelona, Spain. We are excited, however, I would love to know if anyone else out there has ever taken this re-positioning cruise before? Not sure what to expected on a re-positioning cruise. We love cruising on RCC and I'm sure that part will be fine. I have never been at sea for 7 days without land, jsut curious if anyone has done this before?

 

Thanks loads.

Basket Cruiser

 

all the time....TA s are great!