Cruise during school holidays

greengirl999

Hey everyone!

My OH is a teacher, so we are limited to travelling during the school holidays (gggrrrrr). We are a couple (27 & 33) with no kids.

I have a found a 2 weeks cruise with Ocean Village in July 09 that we would love to do, visiting many places we have been wanting to go for ages. Even tho the cost is almost £1500 each for the cheapest room (that's a real lot for us!) I figure that we would save money by not having to do short weekend trips to these places.

I have done a lot of reseach & found a number of websites who I am going to go through to try & drive the price down(!). Am I better to book ASAP, or wait? I know it is school holidays, but I am wondering if the cruise ships will be desperate for business with the whole credit crunh thing happening?

I am aware there will be extra charges for tours (planning on doing most off-ship trips on our own) & drinks (we are not big drinkers).

My main question is regarding when to book, but 2 other concerns I do have are
- 2 pools for 2000 people doenst sound like much swimming space...?!
- can we bring our own bottled water on board?

Thanks for any comments!

gg

Kez100

greengirl999 wrote: »

Hey everyone!

My OH is a teacher, so we are limited to travelling during the school holidays (gggrrrrr). We are a couple (27 & 33) with no kids.

I have a found a 2 weeks cruise with Ocean Village in July 09 that we would love to do, visiting many places we have been wanting to go for ages. Even tho the cost is almost £1500 each for the cheapest room (that's a real lot for us!) I figure that we would save money by not having to do short weekend trips to these places.

I have done a lot of reseach & found a number of websites who I am going to go through to try & drive the price down(!). Am I better to book ASAP, or wait? I know it is school holidays, but I am wondering if the cruise ships will be desperate for business with the whole credit crunh thing happening?

I am aware there will be extra charges for tours (planning on doing most off-ship trips on our own) & drinks (we are not big drinkers).

My main question is regarding when to book, but 2 other concerns I do have are
- 2 pools for 2000 people doenst sound like much swimming space...?!
- can we bring our own bottled water on board?

Thanks for any comments!

gg

We also travel in school holidays because we have children.

We cruised last year and picked up a fantastic deal half of your price per adult, but we went North to the Arctic Circle. There was another to the Baltic and St Petersburg which we didn;t do, but looked a good deal. Expanding your horizons may bring in a deal that is cheaper. Is a sun holiday in the med all you would want to do? Also are you prepared to wait to see if a deal comes up (and perhaps lose out if it doesn't) or do you really want to book soon?

I would agree about the pools. We had two (nicely heated) between 1200 passengers. Many older passengers didn't bother as they weren't going north for the pool experience. Also, we had few children on board who tend to love swimming. We, therefore, enjoyed the pools a lot but I would think on a med cruise there would be far more use of pools/loungers generally.

I would also be intrested in what others find the summer med pool experience to be like.

getmore4less

You can find better deals looking at the other holiday windows like easter.

also if you can be flexable durin tge summer break then last minutes are possible, families have problems then because there are no 3-4berth cabins left.

Look beyond OV there are better cruise lines for less money

RCI,NCL would both fit the profile

Kez100

I am looking at Easter 2009 and am failing at the moment to find any cruise for 'my price'. Mind you I am a miser and probably have to look ex-uk having got a family of four cabin for £1800 last year in summer (FO)

I would have been happy with the recent Ventura balcony bonanza but I really don't want to go on Ventura.

greengirl999

Thanks for all your comments. I am going to look into some of the cruise companys yout mentioned.

Unfortunately we can't be very flexible on this one, we need to depart on the cruise between 18-31 July, in order to be back in the UK for family commitments for the rest of the school holidays.

We really like the route this OV cruise takes, as it covers all the places we have always wanted to go to (Venice, Croatia, Istanbul, Greek Islands) - all in one go! This trip sounded like a much more relaxing way to travel around & see all these places at once (& get them out of our system!!)

Any other comments on this topic woule be reatly appreciated. Particularly with regard to others experience in travelling the Med at this time of year, cruising on a budget & (of course!) where to find the best bargain for our tickets!!

Thanks again

gg

JJ7

Hi, you might want to try this site
http://www.holidaytruths.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=35&sid=4080bf56acd13ceef5b3866ca318783b
it's very informative.
Hth

egyptiangirl

greengirl999 wrote: »

We really like the route this OV cruise takes, as it covers all the places we have always wanted to go to (Venice, Croatia, Istanbul, Greek Islands) - all in one go! This trip sounded like a much more relaxing way to travel around & see all these places at once (& get them out of our system!!)

Any other comments on this topic woule be reatly appreciated. Particularly with regard to others experience in travelling the Med at this time of year, cruising on a budget & (of course!) where to find the best bargain for our tickets!!

Thanks again

gg

Have you got any tesco clubcard vouchers? You can get 4x on these for Ocean Village Cruises