Christmas Cruise

[RysMomma]

Anyone ever been on a Royal Christmas cruise? My family and I want the heck out of dodge this year for the holidays and are over the whole family gathering. We decided to take a family cruise, just the four of us. Anyone ever done one? Any info you can give me? We're really excited about it!

 

[Sleepy425]

We have done Thanksgiving 3 times, this year will be our first Christmas cruise. We booked Adventure when they were first released and only paid $3800 for 6 of us in two balconies, I was shocked at the price (got the same price for NYE next year).
For Thanksgiving week 2022 they had a tree lighting as well as Santa and the Grinch taking pics with passengers. On Thanksgiving we were at CocoCay and they had someone dressed as a turkey and someone dressed as a chef and they ran around the port all morning, it was entertaining. Then the ship captain pardoned the turkey that night. It was cute!
We are planning on bringing some solar Christmas lights and a tiny tree to decorate one of our rooms for Christmas, as well as some door decorations.

 

[RysMomma]

We have done Thanksgiving 3 times, this year will be our first Christmas cruise. We booked Adventure when they were first released and only paid $3800 for 6 of us in two balconies, I was shocked at the price (got the same price for NYE next year).
For Thanksgiving week 2022 they had a tree lighting as well as Santa and the Grinch taking pics with passengers. On Thanksgiving we were at CocoCay and they had someone dressed as a turkey and someone dressed as a chef and they ran around the port all morning, it was entertaining. Then the ship captain pardoned the turkey that night. It was cute!
We are planning on bringing some solar Christmas lights and a tiny tree to decorate one of our rooms for Christmas, as well as some door decorations.

Thanks for replying! What an amazing price! We didn't get an amazing price this year, but we don't care. We'll tough it out in one room for this year. I did look at what they released for next year at the same time and for the four of us, we can get two rooms for about the same price that we're paying now. So we're considering booking a refundable rooms in case we want to cancel. But any way, that sounds so fun! We can't wait to be away over the holidays and celebrate my son's birthday on it too!

 

[DonaldnDaisy5]

I am starting to look to book December of 2024 - struggling with sticker shock but also knowing high travel week - we are looking at any the week after Christmas to coordinate school breaks, college breaks, and a family commitment. Any advice or ballpark? I am thinking 2 rooms because we will be a group of 6

 

[babyruth]

I looked at RCL as DCL alternative for Christmas and also got sticker shock. Similar pricing should just stay with DCL!

 

[laceltris3]

I booked Christmas of 2024 a couple of weeks ago. We live in Houston and have sailed on DCL out of Christmas for several years, but 2023 is our first on RCL.

We are a family of 5, and prefer connecting rooms. I could only find a single pair of rooms that were next door and could accommodate 3 people. I could almost do it with Balconies, but the room with 3 could only be booked guarantee. So we got 2 park view rooms. It took me forever to find them. There were several sets of connecting rooms, but every single set was slept only 2 people per room.

Then we found out about Royal's new strategy of not releasing all the inventory at once on the earnings call. I could not believe it was that hard to find rooms on Harmony that far out.

I booked refundable deposits. We will see if we end up doing it. It will all depend on how obnoxious it is having the bed out all the time this Christmas. Having a couch we will only get to use for 3 hours on boarding day will be a deal breaker for us.

 

[RysMomma]

We found our price with Royal was substantially less than DCL. BUT, we are also NOT paying for airfare so that's a huge plus for us. We live in NJ and we're leaving out of Bayonne, so that's a huge savings for us!

 

[starvenger]

I'm curious as to what options you had going out of Bayonne?

 

[bwmjam]

We did a Christmas cruise this year on NCL. The weather is super unpredictable in the Caribbean at that time of the year, it is the rainy season after all. 3 of our 4 stops were cancelled because the squalls were too big to make dock. We wouldn't have wanted to get off any way with heavy downpours. We had 2 semi-warm days where we could actually be on deck and soak up some sun. We did get refunded for all the cancelled excursions but still disappointed. For the high pricing and bad weather, I wouldn't do a Christmas cruise again. Wait until the Spring where there are calmer seas and nicer weather.

 

[nw6675]

We did a Christmas cruise this year on NCL. The weather is super unpredictable in the Caribbean at that time of the year, it is the rainy season after all. 3 of our 4 stops were cancelled because the squalls were too big to make dock. We wouldn't have wanted to get off any way with heavy downpours. We had 2 semi-warm days where we could actually be on deck and soak up some sun. We did get refunded for all the cancelled excursions but still disappointed. For the high pricing and bad weather, I wouldn't do a Christmas cruise again. Wait until the Spring where there are calmer seas and nicer weather.

I could have typed this myself! A Nor'easter impacted our holiday cruise even in the Caribbean. Large swells, snapped mooring line, rain. Plus a packed shipped with missed ports and miserable people. This was several years ago on RCCL.

I'm sure many others have had fabulous Christmas cruises, but we would never risk that timeframe again.