My family of four takes a vacation every summer. Last year, it was a trip to San Diego, its beaches and the San Diego Zoo. This summer, we would like to take a family cruise for the very first time. A vacation of this magnitude will require a lot of planning. I have six months to decide where to go, how to get there and how to pay for it all.
I will be using the Carnival website to research cruise destinations because I have heard great things about this cruise line. Our final decision will likely be based on the departure port. Since we live in the Southwest, we would like to depart from California. It would be easy and fairly inexpensive to drive down there rather than book a plane for all four of us. It would easily be a savings of $500 if we drove over the border to California instead of flying to another state to depart for our cruise.
Since we want to leave from California, we will likely have to choose between Hawaii and Mexico. I plan to research online about the different attractions each port-of-call offers for those locations. We would like plenty of off-ship time to explore the stops along the way. A longer cruise would give us this advantage, so I also need to research how many days the cruises are running before making my decision. I don’t think a 3-day cruise would cut it for us.
Taking a family cruise will be pretty expensive, so we are planning to start saving money right away. A big chunk of our tax refund will be put up to fund the trip, and we will supplement the rest with our paychecks. I will plan the entire trip myself rather than go through a travel agency because they tend to add on service fees to vacation packages. Additionally, booking interior cabins over ocean-view cabins will reduce our costs by a couple hundred dollars. I will also do my research on their beverage policy because some cruises only supply certain beverages for free. If that’s the case, we will have to set aside a beverage fund as well.
My family always has a blast on our summer trips, and we can’t wait for this one. With a lot of planning and plenty of saving, we can get the most out of our cruise to ensure our children have a trip to remember.