the lowest figure on this site, and what the figure costs you
Eastern Caribbean Cruise Vacation Package, Seven Nights On A Large Ship
This is the lowest priced thing this office books, and the reason is arithmetic: an eastern caribbean cruise vacation package on a large ship divides one crew, one kitchen and one hull across several hundred paying people.
Seven nights, from $1,120 per person.
Nothing here counts you and nothing here follows you off the page. One word can be written down, and only the word yes, so this strip stops coming back. What that means in full.
The figure is $1,120 per person for seven nights, and it includes a bed, three meals a day and transport between four islands. Nothing else on this site comes close, and the reason is not a sale. A ship carrying three thousand people spreads one hull, one engine room, one kitchen and one crew across three thousand fares. A guide and a driver cost the same whether two people or twenty sit behind them, which is why the private pages carry the figures they carry. Here the arithmetic runs the other way and hands you the difference.
What you pay for that eastern caribbean cruise vacation package is not money. It is time standing still, and choices made for you before you board. Dinner is at a fixed hour assigned to your cabin number. The shore trips worth doing are gone. And the tender port, if your route has one, will take ninety minutes off your morning.
This page says all of that up front because the alternative is a phone call on day two.
- What size this is
- Several hundred aboard means the ship is a small town with one exit ramp, so every good thing on it has a line in front of it at the hour everybody wants it.
- What is actually included
- Seven nights in an inside or ocean view cabin for two; all meals in the main dining room and the buffet; the fixed dining seating assigned to your cabin; port fees and government charges quoted at confirmation; a written cabin and deck confirmation before deposit.
- Who else is on it
- Somewhere between eighteen hundred and three thousand two hundred people, plus eight hundred crew. On a port morning about two thirds of them want to be ashore in the same ninety minutes, so the gangway holds a line of four hundred at nine in the morning and none at eleven; the shore trips with small vehicles sell out weeks before sailing, and the ones left when you board are the coach trips carrying fifty.
- What it does not include
- Airfare to the departure port and the night before sailing; drinks of every kind, including bottled water and coffee outside the buffet hours; the daily service charge added to your onboard account; shore trips, all of them, booked separately; specialty restaurants; laundry, internet and anything in the spa; gratuities to guides ashore; anything at all to do with insurance, visas or passports, which sit outside what this office does.
- Who should not book this
- Anyone who eats dinner when they feel like it, anyone who cannot stand in a line, and anyone who wants a quiet beach: the ship puts several hundred people on the same sand at the same hour, and there is no version of this trip where that does not happen.
Three thousand people and one gangway
The ship holds between eighteen hundred and three thousand two hundred passengers depending on which hull the route uses that season, plus roughly eight hundred crew. Add it up and you have a town the size of a small county seat, floating, with one road out.
That road is the gangway, and it opens at eight or half past on a port morning. Two thirds of the ship wants to use it inside the first ninety minutes, because the ship sails again at five and everybody has done the same arithmetic. So the line at nine runs four hundred deep down two flights of stairs. At eleven there is no line at all. The people who go at eleven get four hours ashore instead of seven, and they get them without standing. Which of those you prefer is a real question, and it is worth answering before you go.
Inside, the same shape repeats. The buffet at half past seven in the morning has no free table on the windward side. At nine it is half empty. The pool on a sea day is full by ten and stays full. Two dining rooms serve about two thousand covers in two sittings, which is why the sitting is assigned rather than chosen: the kitchen cannot cook three thousand dinners at once, so it cooks fifteen hundred twice. If you are given the late sitting and you want the early one, ask at the desk on the first afternoon. Sometimes it moves. Often it does not.
from $1,120per person
- Where it comes from
- The lowest figure this office has actually booked this trip at inside the last twelve months.
- Read as
- Two people sharing one room, unless the rows above this say otherwise for your case.
- What lifts it
- A smaller party than the size this trip is filed under, a better grade of room, a peak week, and a late decision.
- When it stops moving
- When an operator puts its own name under it in writing. Until then treat it as the floor of a range this office has seen.
Whatever you settle is settled with that operator, on whatever system it runs. No part of it passes through this office and no card is ever seen here.
Hurricane season is not a marketing term
The eastern Caribbean cruises year round, and the price moves by a factor of two across the year for one reason. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from the first of June to the end of November, and it concentrates hard in the second half. Ships do not sail into weather; they sail around it, which in practice means the route changes. A September sailing can leave with four islands printed and arrive back having called at two of them and spent an extra day at sea. That is not a fault and there is no refund for it, and this office will say so in writing before you put money down.
- January to March
- Dry, high seventies, the busiest and dearest weeks of the year; book six months out or take what is left
- April to early June
- The best value against the weather; warm, dry enough, the crowd thins after Easter
- Late June to August
- Hot, humid, afternoon rain most days; school holidays fill every cabin with families
- September and October
- The statistical peak of the season and the lowest figures on this page; route changes are ordinary, not rare
- November
- Season ends the thirtieth; the last two weeks often sail clean and cheap
- Christmas and New Year
- Every cabin sold, figures roughly double, and the ship is at its fullest
What is settled before the deposit leaves your hand
Almost everything about a large ship is decided at confirmation rather than aboard, and that is the honest difference between this and a small trip. The cabin, the deck, the dining sitting and the shore trips are all allocated from a finite pool, and the pool empties in that order. Once the deposit is in, the cabin number is yours and the rest is queueing.
- Message to this deskYou say which month, how many of you, and whether you want a window. Read the same working day, with a figure back in two to four working days
- Written quoteRoute, ship class, cabin grade, deck, what the figure includes and what it does not, and the port fees as a separate number rather than folded in
- Deposit and allocationThe cabin number and the dining sitting are assigned and confirmed to you in writing. This is the point where the trip stops being flexible
- Shore tripsBooked separately, and the small vehicle trips go first. Six to eight weeks before sailing is late. Four months is not too early
Ask before you decide, not after
If the fixed dinner hour is a problem, or if you want to know honestly which of the four ports has the walk into town and which needs a taxi, write and ask. This desk books the sailing; other companies own the ship, run the kitchen and guide the shore trips, and it is worth knowing which of them is answerable for what before you hand anyone a deposit.