Repositioning Cruises: A Good Value with Lots of Sea Days

A repositioning cruise traditionally is when a cruise company needs to move ships from one seasonal location to another. Winter is cruising season in the Caribbean while Europe is a Summer market. For that reason dozens of cruise ships head out across the Atlantic every Spring and Fall. These Atlantic crossing occur twice a year and are by-far the most common repositioning cruises you’ll find. There are also other repositioning cruises that include Fall Alaska cruises taking ships back to the Caribbean through the Panama Canal or out to Hawaii or across the Pacific. Another opportunity is a late Summer repositioning movement down to South America and back north in the Spring.

In the past, many of these cruises have been tremendous bargains. A number of years ago these 12 to 15 night cruises could be had for four or five hundred dollars per passenger, but with the growing demand those days are gone. There were times when those repositioning cruise could even be less expensive than airfare. The down side was that you would have seven to nine straight days at sea. The up side for us was seven to nine straight days at sea and the ships provided the same entertainment, the same great cuisine and the same attentive service. Additionally, often these cruises provided a port call or two at each end of the crossing.

Lately, as cruising gets more popular and more people become frequent cruisers the ships have less trouble filling those cruise cabins and the pricing has regularly adjusted upward as a result. Even so, if your looking for a longer cruise these cruises are still a good value considering their length.

To decide if these cruises are for you, consider a number of questions about what particularly appeals to you about cruising. In our case we really like the port visits and getting an introduction to exotic locations, but we also enjoy the down time provided by “sea days”. We actually look forward to opportunities to catch up on our reading and each of us will go thru a number of books on a crossing. We also appreciate the time to organize our writing and photography. In our case we usually find it easy to stay busy but we know people that claim they would go crazy being stuck on a ship for a week or more.

In addition to the value these cruises often offer additional enrichment programs for passengers. They range from painting and craft classes to lectures on numerous topics. We’ve listened to lectures from a former director of the Kennedy Space Center, an archaeologist discuss their digs in the Eastern Mediterranean and a young lady talking about her adventures solo-sailing across the Atlantic.

Years ago we took a number of trans-Atlantics and the ships were mostly full of Brits. Staterooms often had tea assortments and electric kettles added as it seemed that a lot of Brits went to America for the Winter and returned to England in the Fall and repositioning fit their needs perfectly.

So, the next time you start looking at cruise destinations you might consider a repositioning cruise as an option.