When you are cruising.........

[Lisa63]

We almost always stay in the port city at least one night pre-cruise. If it's a city new to us, or if we're traveling during the winter, we make it two nights.

[RNSANE]

Boy, does that make sense...I have a colleague who was coming to Reno from Zurich for a forensic conference...it took him nearly 36 hours to get there, what with winter blizzarsds - and they weren't in Switzerland, either. Fortunately, he wasn't headed for a cruise ship.

[Dan]

I like going the day before. I like getting the travel hassle out of the way, get a good night sleep before the cruise, and build in that wiggle room in case something delays us or our luggage.

Our first cruise was part of a group package, and the flight from Toronto was at 630am the day of the cruise. It's just less than a 2 hour drive to Toronto for us, so we got a hotel room near Toronto airport and stayed there the night before. Up at 330am, over to the airport, checked in, clear US immigration and security, have some breakfast and get on the plane. We land in FLL at 930am, and gather the group together. They take us over to the Galleria to kill some time before going to the port. Finally get to the ship at 2pm, and I'm beat.

Each cruise after that, I decided we should fly the day ahead. My first justification in convincing the wife we needed to do this was, if we have to pay for a hotel room to catch an early flight out of Toronto, why not take a later flight the day before, and spend the night in the warmer weather. So of course, that next cruise, I book us on the early flight the day before. My argument there was "Well, if we have to pay $90 to park at Toronto airport for the week, we might has well pay $90 to stay at a hotel that lets us park there for the week, take the early flight and have the full day in the warm weather". So, that involved 2 nights in hotels before the cruise.

We did drive once, to Boston, but that cruise, as I've said previously, had the special circumstances of 9-11 involved, and we had planned to fly to New York the day of for that cruise, with a pre-flight stay in Buffalo the night before.

[hazelson]

Always a day or two ahead - just not worth the worrying to save a few bucks!

[Suzila]

We always fly in the day of the cruise. We don't stay at a hotel the day before. We just don't have the luxury of extra time away.

If we haven't been to the city where the ship launches from, we take the excursion at the end of the trip to show us around the city and take us directly to the airport.