Why I Haven’t Booked a Cruise Yet

It seems that every time I hop online there is someone within my wider network of people that has booked a cruise. In fact, UK cruises are only one month out from starting and people are very excited. Passengers have been waiting for over a year to get back out and explore and now that the opportunity is here they are going for it. There are lots of cruises scheduled this summer that seem like they will actually happen – but I have yet to book one. I am most certainly a cruise lover. Despite not being from the UK (this summers absolute hub of cruising), there are cruises that my good ole’ fashioned US passport could get me on – plus I will be fully vaccinated in only a matter of weeks. So, if I’m such a cruise lover, and there are cruises I could go on – why haven’t I booked a cruise yet?

Now, I must admit I have been tempted. Over the last two days spring has completely left us and we’ve gotten a few inches of snow. It looks like sometime in February instead of late April outside of my window right now. How nice would it be to have a cruise to look forward to? Book some plane tickets to Bermuda, St. Maarten, or Nassau and hop on a cruise for a week. Or, perhaps enjoy one of Seabourn’s recently announced cruises out of Barbados? What bliss! But yet, I haven’t.

It Has Nothing To Do With Being Pandemic-Safe Onboard the Ship

Let’s go ahead and get this little elephant out of the room – it has nothing to do with onboard health worries. Why?

1. Cruise Ships are Clean
   • Cruise ships are so massively sanitized. It’s wild how much time and effort goes into keeping a ship clean. Ships are cleaned a lot, and they’re inspected for their cleanliness regularly. I’ve participated in more United States Public Health and Canadian Public Health inspections, in addition to random audits to make sure that the ship is keeping up with it’s sanitization protocols than I can count. Ships are clean.
   • Cruise ships have been mitigating and dealing with infectious disease onboard for a long time. Most often the risk is norovirus, but for anyone that has had to super-sanitize an entire kids club every single night during a transatlantic crossing because the ship was in “code red” for norovirus I can tell you they don’t take the spread of disease lightly. Seriously, cruise ships had “clean pen” and “dirty pen” containers long before a pandemic hit.
2. Vaccinated Cruises
   • There are some unvaccinated cruising going this summer out of the UK and parts of Europe that will use the same testing protocols that were used with lines such as MSC previously in this pandemic.
   • However, the cruises I am eligible for out of various Caribbean ports and Bermuda all require all adult passengers to be vaccinated. This means that the percent chance not just of getting it, but of developing symptoms and of it passing amongst passengers onboard is incredibly low. Tell me one land based situation that is committing to having everyone using its facility be fully vaccinated?
3. Limited Onboard Capacity
   • Most of the cruises sailing this summer will sail on reduced capacity. That means less people onboard and more space to spread out.

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So, Why Haven’t I Booked a Cruise Yet?:

Schedule Unknown

By far the biggest reason that I won’t be cruising any time soon is due to a slightly unknown schedule – and the schedule of my most common and favorite travel companions. I am not against traveling by myself, but on a cruise where mixed social interactions will be more limited thanks to continued social distancing requirements, cruising by myself just doesn’t sound like something that I (a very social person), would enjoy much.

So, right now my schedule as well as much travel companions schedule ends up being rather important when planning. My husband is currently away at work and my mom’s (my other most common cruise companion) schedule would lean towards fall being a better time to cruise.

And, while my husband will be disembarking the ship he is currently working on right around the time these cruises start up, we don’t currently know how long his leave will be. We have a good guess as what it might be, but until we have his contract we don’t really want to book anything. Plus, his disembarkation date from this contract could be delayed. Basically – life is way too up in the air and unpredictable right now.

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Vaccinations

Unless the cruise line is able to secure vaccines for their onboard crew my husband won’t be able to get vaccinated until he gets off the ship at the end of June and returns to the UK. This means that from when he disembarks the ship he would at minimum be 5 weeks away from being fully vaccinated. As this is still up in the air and a lot of cruise lines are requiring vaccinations, it’s hard for us to make a plan on a ship that requires them. Obviously not the end of the world, but definitely delays our ability to make definitive plans

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We Would Have to Fly Somewhere

Flying is not a big deal. As someone that has flown a lot during this pandemic (thank you international marriage and having to fly home from the Philippines last year), flying is fine. It’s not the most fun, during a pandemic it’s a bit less fun. The real challenge for us is that we’re from different countries. For us to cruise together we would have to fly to Greece or one of the other European cruise ports allowing US cruisers or to one of the Caribbean destinations. Unfortunately the UK cruises are not really an option for me, and as different countries have different restrictions depending on which country you’re from (red, amber, green countries, etc), that whole part just adds an extra level of complication.

While none of those complications are insurmountable, life is already complicated enough. So, we’ll wait a bit and see if some quarantine and country restrictions are lessened for our respective countries.

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Disclosure: The Hubby Will Need a Break from Ships This Summer

As a passenger I have never minded sea days. I enjoy exploring the ship, having a leisurely day onboard, taking in the entertainment, maybe participating in an activity or two. Honestly, sea days were good for me.

As a crew member sea days (for me, it’s different depending on what job you do), were far more challenging and long. When all the passengers are onboard it means more work for the crew that are there to entertain and/or take care of those passengers.

Then, last year I got a whole different perspective for sea days – like 100 of them as spouse on board, with a ship making it’s may to minimum manning and an unknown future (when the ship eventually got sold). It was a lot of sitting and looking at the ocean, and it wasn’t bad, per-se. For the situation that was happening I was very lucky to be safe and with my husband. Months of not having any idea what’s happening is not “fun” though.

And, for those that get my weekly emails (you can sign up here) or follow me on Twitter or Instagram you somewhat regularly see the pictures that my husband sends me from his time at sea. He’s currently onboard a ship that is at anchor between Florida and the Bahamas. He is in essence on a passenger-less three month cruise to nowhere.

So, after spending three months sitting on a cruise ship in minimum manning – would you really want to go on a cruise (that is limited by pandemic restrictions such as mask wearing and social distancing) during your vacation? Gonna go ahead and answer this for you – no, you don’t.

Now, being on a ship – even if it’s a cruise to nowhere – can be incredibly interesting. I love exploring new ships, getting to know the architecture. And, I know that the experience of being onboard a cruise to nowhere as a passenger would be different than being with only crew at minimum manning levels. I know that.

During normal times we like going on a cruise during his vacation from the ship. That surprises some people that he works with onboard, but he likes to cruise, I like to cruise. We like to cruise. We find it to be a relaxing and enjoyable way to vacation. We love sitting on the balcony together, enjoy going to dinner, waking up without an alarm and blending in with the crowd. But, this year just isn’t the year for that for us (though it might be for my mom and I).

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Exciting Travel is a Matter of Perspective

Even though we haven’t booked a cruise doesn’t mean that we aren’t planning some fun for the summer! Our summer vacation plans have centered around road-trips. We are both from beautiful parts of our respective countries and haven’t explored those as much as we would like. So, this summer when he is off the ship we will be doing some lovely staycation-ing and road-tripping. We get a bit more flexibility with road trip plans as they do not require extra flying for us, and plans can be a bit more easily adjusted should we need to change our plans.

And remember, our lives aren’t sedentary or stationary. Our normal lives typically involve exploring the whole world (it’s wild to think our “normal” date nights were in places like Bali, Tahiti, Syndey, Honolulu…) – we travel back and forth across the Atlantic at least a few times a year – a staycation for us can be as much of a treat as an around the world adventure.

I Am A “Book-Last Minute” Kind of Person

Do I think I could reasonably book a cruise for myself and my mother (with some solid travel insurance for whatever happens in between) for the fall? Yes. I think I could. This summer has some other priorities but the fall seems totally possible.

In the current cruise situation knowing that I am looking at the fall to potentially cruise means that the cruises currently advertised could be entirely different by then. Maybe the US will have opened up to cruising? Maybe the ships that are still listed as sailing out of the US will be joining Royal Caribbean out of Bermuda? I don’t know. So, rather than joining the absolute masses that continually get disappointed when cruises are cancelled, I’m really okay giving it a few more months before booking, and then scooping a cruise up and flying out two weeks later. I am a-okay with that.

There are times I wish my life was a bit more planned than that, but, well, it’s not. Between my husbands previously mentioned schedule at sea and some projects I am in the midst of on land, my life definitely has a requisite component of last-minute planning to it. Honestly, could I have survived last year without the ability to go-with the flow and make plans last minute?

Also read this as: just because I don’t have a cruise booked now, doesn’t mean I won’t be cruising before the year is up. 🙂

What Do You Think About Why I Haven’t Booked a Cruise Yet?

Everyone travels for different reasons. While right now booking a cruise doesn’t make the most sense for myself, it will again soon. I am so excited for both the passengers and crew that cruising is resuming this summer. Hopefully it will provide some much needed fun for the passengers and much needed financial stability for the crew.

One thing I have loved about seeing everyone book their cruises is how excited they are! While I have always loved to cruise at some point after working onboard cruising lost some of it’s excitement to me. It felt more like a place that I either worked or lived, and I didn’t really want to vacation in a place where I would still have to think about what time all-aboard was. Seeing everyone’s excitement for their summer holidays has really helped to remind me of how exciting cruising is and can be and why I have loved it for so long. I can’t wait to feel the thrill of walking down the gangway again, on some new ship to explore, new friends to make, with new places to go.