My son and his bride want to cruise the Med in the Spring. I am only familiar with Carnival and it looks like they do not cruise the Med in the Spring. What option do they have? What ships and ports can you suggest for newlyweds

Hello CruiseDad;

Princess has lots of great Mediterranean itineraries starting in early May. One I would suggest for a first Med cruise would be the classic Grand Meditereranean, 12 days Barcelona to Venice (or the reverse) on the brand new Ruby Princess.

Here is a link to princess.com that gives you ports, prices, everything!

http://www.princess.com/pb/priceDetails.do?voyageCode=R...e=C&definition_name=

You do have some homework to do since there are many cruise lines in the Med. Carnival is actually a pretty small player and you also have RCI, HA, Celebrity, Princess, etc. Since you are interested in the spring you might want to consider doing a transatlantic cruise (they generally go from Florida to Europe) which also covers part of the Med. These cruises are usually great bargains, a bit longer, and great for those that love to be on a ship. Most of the major cruise lines do these repositioning transatlantic cruises from mid March into May.
As an example, the brand new Ruby Princess does a 16 day cruise starting on April 9, 2009 that goes to Portugal, Gibraltar, Spain, Italy, and Monte Carlo. Inside cabins on this cruise start at about $100 per passenger day and you only have to deal with a long flight one-way from Europe. You can check on any decent TA web site to find these cruises or simply go to Princess, RCI, HA, and Celebrities web sites and look at their offerings.

Hank

quote:

Originally posted by Hank:
You do have some homework to do since there are many cruise lines in the Med. Carnival is actually a pretty small player and you also have RCI, HA, Celebrity, Princess, etc. Since you are interested in the spring you might want to consider doing a transatlantic cruise (they generally go from Florida to Europe) which also covers part of the Med. These cruises are usually great bargains, a bit longer, and great for those that love to be on a ship. Most of the major cruise lines do these repositioning transatlantic cruises from mid March into May.
As an example, the brand new Ruby Princess does a 16 day cruise starting on April 9, 2009 that goes to Portugal, Gibraltar, Spain, Italy, and Monte Carlo. Inside cabins on this cruise start at about $100 per passenger day and you only have to deal with a long flight one-way from Europe. You can check on any decent TA web site to find these cruises or simply go to Princess, RCI, HA, and Celebrities web sites and look at their offerings.

Hank

Trans atlantic is an interesting idea. How many days to cross and does the cast entertain you all the way or is it mostly sit in the sun?
Anyone have first hand experience with this?

Another thought, since Princess is somehow associated with Carnival would I qualify for past guest discount?

quote:

since Princess is somehow associated with Carnival would I qualify for past guest discount?

Carnival Corporation owns Princess. Look here for info about past guest discounts.

A trans-Atlantic cruise is still a cruise, so the cruise staff does shows and all the other stuff associated with the particular cruise line. A crossing is going to be at least 4-5 days. It depends on the itinerary.

I guess you could say we have a bit of experience with transatlantics since we do two a year (for the past several years) in the fall and spring. In fact, out of a lot more than 50 cruises all over the world, the transatlantics are our favorite. As Dave says, they are real cruises, have the usual entertainment, formal nights, etc. They also tend to have an older passenger clientele (many retirees), few children, even fewer teens, and generally you will find the passengers to be a very well traveled crowd. In fact, although we have traveled in 74 countries, this pales by comparison with many we have met on these cruises. The days to cross vary from 5 to about 8, but this is often interupted with stops at various islands such as Bermuda, The Azores, etc. On our recent Grand Princess crossing they cut down on the consecutive sea days by going south to Devils Island and than across to Dakar, Senegal. Since there are so many different itineraries you must spend some time looking at each cruise line's offerings. Personally, we think these cruises are for those that simply love to be on ships, as opposed to those that like to do more port intensive trips. For us, we love the lazy days and the chance to catch-up on our reading. If you are the more active type and want lots of activities, you should probably limit your search to larger ships (80,000 tons +).

Hank