Do cruise lines allow one way passengers?

General Questions
#1

I live outside of Washington D.C. on the East Coast of the U.S. and I absolutely will not fly no matter what.

Well, I want to move to Hawaii with my buddy in about a year and planned on driving out to California because I’ve always wanted to go cross country anyways and then taking a one way trip out to Hawaii from a port out there.

Was wondering if cruises allow this sort of thing? I checked a few cruise line ticket purchasing systems and couldn’t find anything on them. Of course I would use some sort of freight service for any furniture, or just buy something cheap out there if need be.

Maybe I just looked in the wrong spot.

#2

If you just want to get from point A to point B, don’t waste the money on a cruise ticket. You can book passage on a freighter instead. The accommodation and meals are usually comparable to what you get in a nice hotel.

#3

You won’t find anything cheap in Hawaii. I love it and would move back in a heartbeat, but it is not a cheap place to live.

#4

I was just going to mention looking into freighters; while I’ve never done it myself I’ve heard very good things and hope to do so someday.

Since you’ll be staying within the US, I can’t imagine a cruiseline having any real objection to your plan, though who knows, it’s possible they absolutely must return with the same number of passangers that they left with. A larger obstacle may be that there may not have a system to book tickets for partial trips, and your room would be empty and unfillable for the return. I doubt you’d have any problems if you wanted to pay for the whole trip and only used half (and maybe they’d cut you a deal if you called), but again, it’s possible there’s even a rule against that.

#5

I wouldn’t be surprised if a request to take a cruise ship for only half the journey would trigger all sorts of security concerns.

#6

There are at least some cruise lines that allow one-way passage, among them what are known as “repositioning cruises” where the cruise line simply needs the ship moved from Port A to Port B, for whatever reason.

Hawaii, I dunno.

#7

Thanks guys. I have lots of friends out there that will put me up in Aiea, true, it’s an expensive place to live. But as a music teacher, I’ll fair pretty well out there I hope. I’ll check into the Freight. It’s not imperative that it’s a cruise line, just as long as some sort of large boat will get me there within a week. lol

#8

It really depends of the cruise, and the cruise line. Caribbean Cruises tend to start and end at the same place. Some cruise lines send the the ships around the world with stops to take on and drop off passengers every so often.

I took a cruise from Lisbon to Rome. There are cruises through the panama canal that go from LA to Miami or Galveston. I did a quick search and saw a Hawaii to Vancouver cruise. But most of them seemed to start and end in LA or San Diego.

#9

Yeah, this is what you need to search on. Especially because there aren’t that many cruises to Hawaii in the sense you’re thinking of. There are plenty of cruises around the Hawaiian Islands, but they don’t go to the mainland because that’s five or six straight days at sea and most people don’t want that in a cruise.

Here is the list of repositioning cruises for Norwegian Cruise Lines, which includes some to Hawaii. The timing is very sensitive, since they might move a given ship to Hawaii only once a year.

(Another thing to consider in this plan is that everyone uses airplanes to get from island to island. There aren’t ferries.)

#10

I took the QE2 one way to Europe.

But lots of cruises go one way, since coming back may be a bore, and many people would rather fly back. Alaskan cruises typically either drop you off or pick you up in Seward, and then buses you to Anchorage.

I doubt security would be much of a concern. Your baggage is X-rayed. If you were planning something, all you’d have to do is disappear when the ship docks. No one planning something would call attention to going one way.

#11

Sweet ! Checking it out now.

#12

On a Caribbean cruise, I was told that people sometimes do not make it back to the ship before it departs from an island. If that person wished to continue on the cruise, they would have to arrange private transportation to the next island.