To many Americans, “Mexico” is practically synonymous with “vacation destination,” and while this is obviously a problematically narrow view of large and culturally rich nation, this doesn’t change the fact that millions of tourist from the U.S. funnel into Mexico every year. Given the volume of tourism, it makes sense that there are lots of cruises to Mexico, and also that Costco Travel offers plenty of these cruises. (Costco Travel, at least at this point, only caters to their U.S. members, so obviously Mexico is a focus of their operations.) To give you an idea of what Costco cruises to Mexico are available, we’ve compiled a guide that spells out the range of possibilities, as well as touch on booking Mexican cruises with Costco as we conclude.
As a cruise destination, we would place Mexico somewhere between Hawaii and the Caribbean. Mexico is like Hawaii in that it is a major vacation destination independent of any cruises that go there, but it is like the Caribbean in that it is nevertheless seen as a popular place to take a cruise to. However, in contrast to Hawaii, there are a lot more than a handful of cruises that go to Mexico throughout the year, but there also aren’t hundreds of Mexican cruises every two or three months, as is the case with Caribbean. We offer this somewhat extended comparison not only to situate Mexico in the broader cruise industry, but also to give you an idea of the variety you can expect when researching Costco cruises to Mexico. There are plenty of cruises to pick from, but you also aren’t overwhelmed with results.
Mexico is generally regarded as a place to escape cold weather by their northern neighbors, so there are very few cruises to Mexico in the summer, when the weather in most of the U.S. is plenty warm and Mexico is scorching hot. There are no cruises offered by Costco in August, and there are only five in July and June combined. For the rest of the year, though, there are about 20 cruises per month. (Somewhat strangely, cruises to Mexico decrease and ramp up fairly abruptly. To many destinations, cruises will gradually taper off as the shoulder season approaches, but this is largely not the case in Mexico. There are 16 cruises in May, for instance, and then there are only three cruises in June.) So, unless your schedule demands that you visit Mexico during the summer, there is every reason to prefer a trip during any other part of the year.
With very few exceptions, cruises to Mexico are offered out of California and Florida. (There are occasionally cruises form Seattle and Vancouver, but not many.) So, you’ll likely have to go to California or Florida for a Mexican cruise, and which state you go to will depend on what cruise you want to take (naturally) and the part of Mexico you want to visit. For obvious reasons, cruises from California visit Mexican ports on the west side of the country and cruises from Florida visit ports on the east side. If you are sailing from Florida, you’ll likely be cruising out of Fort Lauderdale or Miami, and if you are cruising from California, you’ll probably be going out of Los Angeles, San Diego, or San Francisco. Unless you are on a repositioning cruise that sails through the Panama Canal, which is a Mexican cruise only in the sense that the ship stops by Mexico, your cruise will likely be a week to two weeks long.
Of course, we could dig into the specifics in much greater detail, but the variety of offerings is too much for a single article. It is better to look at all these details yourself as you research your options. We recommend starting on the Costco page dedicated to Mexico cruises, which has some “featured deals” that may be of interest. On this same page, there is the Costco Travel search tool, which will allow you to fill in your vacation criteria and search for matching cruises. The only thing worth noting about the search tool is that you have to list your destination as “Mexico and Central America.” (There is no way to search for Mexico by itself.) However, this essentially doesn’t matter because the cruises that go to Central America tend to stop in Mexico, and thus you might want to consider them as well. So, it is not as if you have to search through two sets of cruises – cruises to Mexico and cruises to Central America – when you only want to look at one set. The two overlap, and in any case there are more cruises to Mexico anyway.
If you are interested in more general information, you might consider checking out our guide and overview of Costco Cruises.
