Caribbean cruises are an excellent way to vacation, as we explained in a recent article detailing why you should take a Caribbean cruise. To bolster our argument, we also wrote an article that listed some of the celestial locations that you can visit on a Caribbean cruise. We have, in short, covered the question of “why” you should cruise to the Caribbean and are now interested in addressing the matter of “how” you should actually go about doing this. To that end, we put forward an answer to the following question: which cruise lines offer trips to the Caribbean?
The general, non-specific answer is “a lot of them,” so the cruise line you choose to sail to the Caribbean with is in some ways a secondary question. When all the major cruise lines (and several smaller cruise lines) go to the same part of the world, this isn’t the criterion you should use to pare down your options. Instead, you should first consider the broad outlines of your desired trip, such as the length of your vacation, the amount of money you are willing to spend on your trip, and the port you wish to depart from. Obviously, you will also want to consider what parts of the Caribbean you want to visit. With these and similar questions answered, you can now begin to look at specific cruise lines and their offerings.
One of the first cruise lines you might want to consider is Royal Caribbean Cruises. The very name of the cruise line suggests its relevance to the present discussion. Royal Caribbean offers literally hundreds of cruises to the Caribbean every year, cruises that depart from multiple ports in the U.S., like three found in Florida and one found in New Jersey (among others). Royal Caribbean offers trips all over the Caribbean, with ports of call in such places as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the British Virgin Islands, along with many other places.
The advantage of booking your cruise with a major cruise line like Royal Caribbean Cruises (or Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, etc.) is the variety these major companies offer. They have the resources, in the form of ships, staff, and capital, to offer a wide range cruise experiences. They all offer short and long cruises, cheap and expensive cruises, and so on. Their strength lies in their versatility. However, the huge cruise lines are by no means the only cruise lines that offer trips to the Caribbean.
Take, for example, the Caribbean vacations offered by Blount, a company that specializes in small ship adventures that “go where the big ships cannot.” Blount only offers a few different Caribbean cruises, but they are completely different than those offered by the major cruise lines. The ship that Blount uses to go on the “Galapagos Adventure,” for example, has only seven different rooms available on the ship and a single four-person jacuzzi. These are almost laughably small accommodations in the world of cruises, where the world’s largest cruise ship is a city onto itself, but Blount is obviously aiming for a differing sailing experience, one that is more intimate, where the passengers know the entire staff and each other.
Between these two extremes lie any number of other cruise lines that offer Caribbean cruises. Holland America Line, for instance, has mid-size ships that go to the Caribbean. So, the many cruise lines that have Caribbean cruises come in all sizes and offer a staggering variety of different cruise vacations. Once you figure out what you want from your Caribbean vacation, you’ll almost certainly find a cruise line that can accommodate your desires.