This site lists repositioning cruises among other things. Trans-Atlantic repositionings can be found but trans-Pacific (what I’d like) are pretty rare.
The cost per day is pretty reasonable but the longer transit times can push the total pretty high. Finding one that caters to an interest of yours, like N9IWP’s board gaming cruise would be ideal.
Not so much a cruise but a crossing - 45 days to getting on the Queen Mary 2 and going from NYC to Hamburg. Nine days at sea. This is my second time on her and I’m really looking forward to this. The first time was with my sister, going the opposite direction. When we boarded and went to the top deck, they blew the whistles (horns). I pointed to them and mentioned that our mom had heard one of those whistles 80 years prior when she took the original Queen Mary to come to the US. Very sentimental.
There are indeed, and I’ve said what I have say about my aversion to crowds of any size, socializing, parties, and most of the other cruise stuff. To each their own; call me anti-social, but that’s me.
But there’s one type of cruise I greatly enjoy, and I’ve been on many. That’s when the passenger count is around 4, consisting of two couples who know each other well, and one of them owns the boat. Alternatively, a passenger count of just two good friends. The boat doesn’t have to be big – anywhere from about 27 to 32 feet, and with a few stops for supplies, you can live on it for weeks while cruising the Great Lakes, Georgian Bay, and the North Channel. Now that’s for me – getting away from civilization rather than immersing myself in it!
Two thoughts:
Sounds like the you two plus 10 paid-for guests is really just too heavy a lift for your budget. You can pull it off, but you’re straining at the seams. Which calls into question the wisdom of the whole idea. At least for me. I’m admittedly not real great at the idea of family obligations though. Many folks’ mileage may differ from mine.
Fancily folded towels on the bed is a near universal of cruise lines. Not a Carnival-only thing. Might have been at one time, but not today. Last cruise I took was a small line out of Germany. They didn’t do the towels thing. Instead at their turndown cabin visit every evening they made sculptures out of the duvets on the beds.
If you want a vacation where you spend a week or two visiting multiple places, a cruise is pretty convenient. It saves all of the packing. Getting back to the ship is a lot easier than getting to airports.
The Viking Rhine cruise seems to be their introductory cruise, and it is affordable. It wouldn’t work for you, since Viking does not take kids. We did it and liked it. Small is good, and they don’t try to upsell you things.
Absolutely not! My wife and I threw in the towel (animal) on Whale Tail in 2024, after 19 sailings. We were literally just a few days away from their (highest) Diamond level loyalty status when we bailed. I too received almost daily offers for past guests, including 6-8 offers a month from the Carnival casino for everything from super-reduced pricing, free cabins, and even free cabins with free drinks for both of us anywhere on the ship. Initially it seemed hard to give up the freebies, but now that we’ve done it, so worth it.
I think for the most part we just “aged out” for the Carnival demographic entering our 60s. The perpetual din on the lido deck and almost constant ear-splitting, “thumpa-thumpa-thumpa” of the rap and techno music was just not relaxing. The product also grew stale with us. I could recite the 2nd day main dining room dinner menu from memory; we knew all the answers to the trivia games; the production shows haven’t been changed in years.
Don’t limit yourselves to just Royal and NCL if you want to move away from Carnival Cruise Lines. Consider the other “mainstream” lines in the Carnival Corporation family.
Wanting to stay in the Carnival Corporation family since I own some CCL stock and can receive on-board credit for ownership, we migrated to Princess in 2024 and couldn’t be happier. There are still plenty of activities, it doesn’t feel like go-go-go all day. Plenty of various music and other entertainment on the Lido deck but you can still carry on a conversation. Better food, hands down! More intimate music venues throughout the ship. Generally a more “polite” passenger population. Fewer, but generally better behaved children (no kids doing cannonballs over our heads into the hot tubs!). I got plenty or discount offers after our first sailing, and even some from the casino, but not nearly as many as Carnival.
Cost-wise, Princess seems to run about 10% higher than Carnival, but it depends on the sailing. I checked a random 7-day Caribbean sailing in a balcony for October 2027 without any drink packages or wi-fi add-ons , and found both lines between $850-950 with Princess at the upper end. Watch for sales. . .Princess does seem to run a lot of 3rd and 4th passengers sail free offers, you just need to watch for them. They’re actually running some 3rd/4th sail free promotions now with sailings in 2026 and 2027.
We don’t regret our decision one bit.
CB
Another sort of. . .We sailed to Hawaii from Vancouver in September 2018. . .5 sea days until we reached Maui. After 5 days around the Islands, we had to disembark, but the ship then continued for another 17 days to Australia, repositioning for the winter season. I think the whole voyage was 30± days, Vancouver to Sydney. About half the passengers we met on board were staying for the journey down under.
By coincidence I just got back from a two week cruise to the fjords of Norway and Iceland. It was spectacular! I’m not a huge cruise person, though I’ve been on a few and generally enjoyed them. But this was for our 20th wedding anniversary so we wanted to do something special. It was on Princess, which I’ve sailed before and like.
Good to hear! I will check out Princess as an option. Thanks!
I did a repositioning cruise from Santiago to Fort Lauderdale. We ended up with an unscheduled stop due to rwo medical situations that the ship’s infirmary couldn’t handle. Stuff like that can happen anytime, but in this case there was some wave/ swell activity going into the port. The ship was listing quite a bit, enough that it started sloshing out water from the top deck swimming pools, which started running down the side of the ship.
A few years later, this same ship ended up bumping into the pier at Ketchikan AK. 
Never done it, but I think I would enjoy expedition cruising. I’d like to see Alaska, and the Antarctic. Smaller expedition cruises seem like the best way to do that.
I am also attracted to the Viking river cruises and some of the even smaller canal boat offerings throughout Europe. Most likely I would treat them like an introductory course, a chance to dip a toe in certain cities and see which ones I’d like to spend a couple of weeks in later on.
In general, I’m not a good traveler. The movement between home and hotel and then hotel-to-hotel is very hard on me for physical reasons. So it feels like a cruise could provide a chance to see more of the world with less packing/unpacking and recovery time.
I also tend to be the one in charge of chores like cooking and cleaning and scheduling on trips. It’s just one of those lifelong things that always seems to happen. So I like the idea of someone else being in charge of all that. It would be fun to do a poll by gender and see if women are largely the ones who prefer the cruise.
I’ve cruised on large ships and small expedition ships.
If you are mobility challenged, a large ship is as easy to get around on as is a landside hotel. That is emphatically not true about expedition ships. The various shore excursions generally offered on expedition ships are also not friendly to the mobility challenged. The shore excursions on larger ships often offer something that’s compatible with limited mobility, but your selection will be slim.
I have my first river cruise scheduled, but haven’t yet taken it, so I can’t offer any experience there.
Several 45 minute air travel connections have turned into ‘I told you so’ moments.
True, but in my experience cruise ships are not in port for only 45 minutes, they’re getting back to the same ship, know exactly where it’s tied up, and don’t make it back in time anyway.
