 |
| A manmade pond on the golf course in Maui created a pretty scene. |
We’ve got the bug! As much as we wanted to wait to start making new plans, Tom spent considerable time yesterday checking out cruises for 2025. When new sailings are posted, they are often at their lowest prices for some time, which has proven to be a good time for us to begin booking cruises far out.
The disadvantage is that the cruise line will have deposit(s) for so long. If something goes wrong, passengers can get the deposit back if they booked a “refundable” fare, which we don’t prefer due to the increased cost.. Before COVID-19, depending on the cruise line, passengers had 60 to 90 days before departure to cancel. But everything changed since the pandemic. It’s essential to check on cancellation policies for each cruise.
Of course, if the cruise line cancels at any point, which happened to us for eight cruises booked for 2020-2022 due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the entire deposit and/or total payments were refunded to the original credit card we used for the bookings.
Once the final payment is made, each cruise line has its refund schedule for customer-generated cancellations, depending on how close to the sailing date the cancellation has been made. There are no exceptions for illness, only for a death confirmed by a certified death certificate.
Right now, we are considering four cruises for 2025/2026. The deposits for each cruise are either $450 or $500 per passenger and non-refundable. Thus, the total deposits will be $4000 if we book these four cruises. In an earlier post, after sailing on Azamara, we made a statement in a few posts that for future cruises, we’d most likely book Azamara’s smaller ships with about 600 passengers.
However, as time has marched on and prices have changed due to losses incurred by the cruise lines during the pandemic, it makes more sense for us if we book all four cruises on Royal Caribbean. Yes, their ships are more significant, with more passengers, but we always had fun on those ships, regardless of the size.
We will report back with the information on these cruises, which we may book with Costco Travel over the weekend. It is exciting to be at this point after all this time.
Otherwise, we’re doing well. Three weeks from today, we leave for Nevada, but we won’t begin packing until a few days before we depart. Since we’re driving an SUV, we have no concerns over the weight of our bags. That will only become an issue when we leave for South Africa on March 1. Wow! Having this extended break from international travel certainly makes planning future trips exciting.
As for my workout schedule, I am up to 18 minutes on the treadmill and have recently added elevation to make climbing hills easier. Walking around the Village at Lake Las Vegas, there are numerous hills, which I struggled with a year ago when we were there. Hopefully, I’ll experience enough progress in the next three weeks to improve over last year’s hill walking struggles. We shall see.
If we book these four cruises, we’ll share pricing, itinerary, and details in posts over the next few days. Hmmm… it looks like an itinerary posting is coming soon now that we’ve started to accumulate enough international travel.
Be well.
Photo from ten years ago today, November 23, 2014:
|
|
