Top 10 Reasons Why We Prefer to Repositioning Cruises Over Round Trip Journeys
By answering that question, many other issues can soon be answered as it will limit where you can visit, especially if you have a favourite port to sail from, limit the ships you can sail on and limit the lines you can sail with.
Whilst sounding negative, that can actually be a good thing as for many cruisers there are just too many options when you first sit down to plan your next adventure.
It is likely the case that most cruisers will choose a round-trip journey, especially if you are driving to your embarkation port but for me and my wife, we prefer repositioning cruises.
In this list, I take a look at the top 10 reasons why I prefer repositioning cruises over round trip itineraries.
Our Top 10 Reasons Why We Prefer to Repositioning Cruises Over Round Trip Journeys
Often Better Value For Money
Some people, like me and my wife, love repositioning cruises whilst some hate them and that does limit the market that they often have, which helps to keep the cost down.
As itineraries are often developed around ships needing to move to their next home port, they are a journey the ship needs to make no matter if it is a busy time of the year to be doing the route or if it is the ‘off-season’ for that part of the world.
Again, that helps to keep the cost down but aside from often been cheaper than similar round-trip itineraries, something that often makes these journeys better value is that you often get more for your money as well.
Repositioning cruises tends to be slightly longer than round trip itineraries and you often get more port visits and more variety of ports to make for a much better value holiday that we love.
Chance For Pre-Cruise Stays
One thing I love about flying out to start a cruise is spending a few days in the departure city exploring all that it has to offer.
Although the ease of simply heading to your nearest major cruise port prove a popular option for many, the limitations that offers just outweighs the ease of getting there over having to deal with airports but the benefits of heading to a new destination, exploring it and having a holiday before you even start your cruise, just makes this a better option for me.
It does lead to that strange feeling when you set sail on your cruise, a time usually full of excitement the sense of your adventure starting, been one of sadness and feeling like your holiday is ending- although that quickly changes, and you are soon back to the excitement of setting off on a cruise.
When you couple that with the chance to explore another great destination post cruise and you have 3 holidays for the price of one.
Chance For Post-Cruise Stays
Normally when you cruise holiday ends, you either get into your car and head for home or you go straight to the airport to start your next ordeal of getting back to your home airport but on a repositioning cruise, your final port will likely be somewhere you have never visited.
If you are short of time, you can often choose a excursion that takes you around the main sights of your arrival port before taking you on to the airport but to really make the most of been there, we often add on a post cruise minibreak.
This allows you to really experience the final port, see all of the main tourist attractions it has to offer and maybe even explore the wider region but best of all, it helps take away that sadness of leaving your cruise as whilst that part of your holiday is over, another one is starting and there is still plenty to look forward to.
Port or Seaday Heavy
Not too long ago, repositioning cruises were just a necessity and mostly came down to trans-Atlantic cruises, Panama Canal cruises and the need for ships to move between their winter regions and their summer regions.
Nowadays, cruise lines know that repositioning cruises can offers incredible adventures and the chance to have special holidays that can only be experienced on a cruise.
Repositioning cruises now happen year around, with some ships only offering one-way itineraries and that just helps create more and more itineraries for those wanting to take a cruise to choose from.
With all of those options, it means you can have the sort of itinerary that you want to have, so if you prefer port heavy itineraries where you visit a different port everyday of your cruise, you can do that but if you prefer plenty of sea days and maybe a break between every day ashore, you can do just that.
Perhaps the best option, for me anywhere, is where you have a few port intensive days in one region, before setting off across an ocean and then exploring another region.
More Countries
I love to visit new countries and experience what they have to offer and one of the things that I love about cruising is that you often get to visit many countries on one holiday.
When you take a round-trip holiday, you are often a bit more limited into where you can visit as you will have to make the same trip back and forth to your departure port and often that can be 4 days of your holiday gone.
When on a repositioning cruise, you just keep heading further and further from where you started and that often allows you to continue hopping from one country to the next.
Wider Range of Cultures
The restrictions of a round-trip cruise tends to mean you only visit one small area, for example Iberia, Norway or Northern Europe for cruises out of Southampton or the Mediterranean for cruises out of Barcelona.
Whilst each port you visit will have its own uniqueness, in all honesty, there will be more similarities than differences and that includes the culture of the ports you visit.
That can be of comfort to many and a major plus for others but for somebody like myself, I love to experience different cultures and ways of life on holiday and a repositioning cruise offers that in spades.
A great example of that was a repositioning cruise I did between Iceland and Boston, where we also visited small communities in Greenland and Canada before heading to huge city of Boston.
Aside from the Icelandic ports perhaps, every port was different and had a different way of life in them which made for an incredible adventure.
Hot and Cold
For some, the thought of a repositioning cruise conjures visions of rough seadays in poor weather as it was often out of season when ships made these journeys but that just doesn’t need to be the case anymore.
Repo cruises now operate all year around and you can experience where you want to when you want to, including during the best weather periods.
That includes cruising in cold weather parts of the world such as the Arctic or Patagonia and warm weather places such as the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.
For me, the best option can actually be to choose an option where you get the best of both worlds where you spend some of your adventure in a warm weather region before sailing onto a cold one, or vice versa.
Imagine starting somewhere like Miami, sailing down the Atlantic coast to Patagonia before ending somewhere like Buenos Aires.
You can walk around cities in warm and hopefully dry weather before sailing past the mountains and glaciers of the Chilean fjords all on the same holiday.
Less Crowded Ports
Most round-trip itineraries will be offered over and over by the same ship, by a number of ships in the same line and of course by many other ships of other lines.
In regions such as the Med, the Caribbean and the Norwegian Fjords, you can have the same 6-7 ships offering the same itineraries and all going to same ports over and over again.
That often means every day you are in port is full of the same people you saw before and every where you go is crowded as 1000’s and 1000’s of tourists swamp the same tourist attractions.
It can be the case that when you are on a repositioning cruise, you also visit them ports but you more often than not visit more out of the ways ports that ships on round trip journeys just cannot get to.
That often leaves you as the only ship in port and having the space and lack of queues to really enjoy the port you are in.
Sense of Community
This one is a great thing about repo cruises for me, but it really does depend on where you are cruising and the ship you are cruising on and that is why it only ranks relatively lowly.
As you are often on longer cruises, in more remote places and ships offering repositioning routes tend to be smaller, you get a really sense of community onboard these journeys.
This has been the case on all of our repositioning cruises and has been helped by the fact that ships don’t tend to be sold out for these itineraries.
Warm Welcomes
On round trips where ships from multiple lines tend to visit the same ports over and over, week in week out, it isn’t really anything special for those living at the port for a ship to be in.
In some ports, the locals can be less than welcoming as the huge crowds of tourist’s impact on their everyday life but when on a repositioning cruise, when you can often be amongst only a handful of ships to visit a port each year, you tend to get a much warmer welcome.
We have been welcomed by newfoundland dogs in Canada, by local dancers in India and a water cannon salute in Lisboa and no matter how many times it happens, it always puts you in a good mood for the day ahead.
These special welcomes don’t always happens and it really does depend on the ports you visit but they are something we have only ever had on a repositioning cruise.
