Can you cruise with your pet?
What are your options?
I'm Gary Bembridge, this is another
of my cruising tips for travellers.
I'm asked a surprisingly large amount of times
how you can or if you can cruise with your pet.
So I'm going to tell you six options that you have
if that's something that you want to do.
The first and easiest way to go cruising with your pet
is to go on a Cunard Queen Mary 2 transatlantic crossing.
It's the only ship in the world today
that actually has kennels onboard.
They have 22 kennels, they can take dogs
and they can take cats,
no birds or any other type of animals.
However, there is quite a cost associated with that.
If you want to hire a lower kennel,
that costs $1,000 for a crossing,
and a crossing takes around about seven days.
If you want an upper kennel, it costs $800.
Dogs are not allowed to share the kennels,
so you'd have to buy one for each dog.
Cats can share kennels, however, if you take a cat,
you actually have to buy two kennels anyway,
two kennels next to each other
so that's gonna cost you at least $1,600 anyway,
because one has to have the litter tray, one has the cat,
but you can have two cats in there.
There is a kennel master, they will also make sure
that animals are walked, they do their business,
and then at set times of the day, you can actually go up
and then interact with your dog or your cats.
There is quite a bit of restrictions, though,
on just the area that you can take them out and about.
It's extremely popular, and you have to book at least
12 months to 18 months in advance.
Also, it's very important, is the kennels only operate
on the transatlantic served between Hamburg,
Southampton, and New York,
New York, Southampton, and Hamburg.
You can't go with pets any other time on Queen Mary 2.
Your second key option is really in Europe
where there are a number of themed or certain cruise types
where you're allowed to take pets.
You can pretty much take pets on canal cruises,
particularly in the UK and in France.
So if you hire, for example, in the UK,
you hire one of those canal longboats, you can normally
take dogs, and even a couple of dogs on those,
and the same is true in France,
if you're chartering or hiring your own canal boat.
So that's a key option particularly if you're in Europe,
or perhaps you brought your dog over on the Queen Mary 2.
So that's one of the easiest ways of cruising with pets.
The other thing that you could do is
there is on a river cruise boat called the MS Normandie,
they do at certain times of the year,
cruises where they allow pets.
So they do some Rhine cruises, they do some on the Moselle,
so you can cruise and see some of the beautiful sights
on the Rhine, the castles, et cetera,
you can also experience some parts of Amsterdam.
So that is your two key options in Europe.
The MS Normandie, where they run certain cruises
from four to eight days, or go on a canal barge,
where you're chartering it and you can take
up to four dogs on some of them.
The third easiest way to take a dog with you
is if it's a service animal, so I guess in these cases
that's not really a pet.
Now very important there are some very key restrictions.
A service animal has to be one that has been specifically
trained to perform some kind of task.
So, for example, if it's a guide dog for people
who are visually impaired, is an example.
So it normally has to be a physical disability.
Emotional support animals are no longer allowed.
Royal Caribbean was one of the very last,
but last year they scrapped that
and banned emotional support animals
because it felt like people were just using it as an excuse
to bring pets on board.
There are slightly different rules and regulations
for service animals by cruise line.
So once you've chosen your cruise,
you need to just double check.
Some of them have varying degrees on how much notice
you have to give, but normally you're going
to have to provide some sort of documentation
to show that they're a service animal,
but not always, either register this animal,
you're going to have to get all the inoculations,
you're going to have to get all
of the various port clearances
to enable them to come on board.
Also, very importantly, many of the cruise lines
will only allow service animals that will embark
and disembark at the same port,
so for example, at the United States,
and in Europe, there are capacity
to bring on service animals,
but it's slightly more complicated, but you can get
things like what's known as a pet passport,
you know, to be able to move pets around.
What the cruise lines also provide for service dogs
does vary in what they will provide.
So, for example, on Holland America, Royal Caribbean,
they'll create specific areas
where you can go and walk your dog,
and also the dog can do their business,
etcetera, they'll set that up.
Many of them have regulations around,
they have to stay on the leash, for example,
when they're allowed out, not allowed out,
which parts of the ship they're allowed out on,
and all those kind of complications.
Very, very importantly, though, emotional support animals
are not allowed, and generally speaking,
most cruise lines are only looking at dogs.
If you do have a service dog, so perhaps you have epilepsy
or some kind of medication needs, blood sugar levels,
where dogs have been trained, it's very important
you also check whether the cruise lines will allow them.
Many of them will allow them
if they are registered as service dogs
and they're very specifically trained for that.
I mentioned earlier that many of the cruise lines require
some sort of documentation to prove
that they are a registered service animal.
That's not true of all cruise lines.
So you do find certainly on some cruises,
that people are basically either they've acquired
a service licence, or they just claim the dog
is a service dog, but it's not always true,
so I've been on cruises where it's questionable
whether a dog really is a service dog or not.
But certainly a service dog is one way
that you can cruise with your pet.
Another way that you can cruise with pets,
perhaps that are not dogs and cats,
is to be the captain of a cruise ship.
There's two probably best known examples.
One of the best documented of all is Captain Kate
who works for Celebrity.
She has a very unusual-looking cat,
which is called Bug Naked.
This cat has become really famous in the cruising industry.
In fact, she even runs for Bug Naked
their own Instagram account.
And certainly people get very excited about
if Captain Kate is on board,
and if Bug Naked is on board as well.
- [Kate] Bug's tough life, living on the bridge,
on the Celebrity Edge.
- The other pet example that I've seen is on Saga Cruises.
Now Captain Kim Tanner actually has a parrot called Perla,
who normally stays up in the bridge,
but will occasionally come out and see the public areas
to meet and greet.
So you do find that some captains do bring pets on board.
It's not very common, and you do need a very forgiving
and open-minded, I guess, head office,
but certainly it definitely proves
that if you are the captain of a cruise ship,
you're probably going to find a way
of bringing your pet on board.
Another pretty easy way of going cruising,
although as you'll see in a minute,
it's not really true cruising,
is to look at regional ferry services.
So this really applies much more in Europe,
but many of the big regional ferry lines
are pet-friendly, and they do actually have,
particularly for the overnight services,
pet-friendly cabins.
And you could actually go on a mini-cruise
where you could actually cruise somewhere,
spend the day in a place, reboard the ferry,
and head back, so you could do two or three nights
or adjoining nights.
So a couple of examples of those is in the Baltics,
you've got the Tallink Silja Line,
and they cruise, like, from Stockholm to Helsinki,
they go to Tallinn, they go to Riga,
and I've seen many examples online of people
that have put back-to-back ferry trips
in what's a rather nice part of the world,
and created a little cruise where they can take
their pets onboard.
They do have a certain amount of pet-friendly cabins,
and they do have various restrictions,
so booking those in advance is important.
A couple of other examples is the Viking Line,
not to be confused with Viking Cruises,
Viking River Cruises, but Viking Line is another
regional ferry service, and the Viking Line
that they operate between Finland and Sweden,
and Finland and Estonia, so again Viking Line
have a number of pet-friendly cabins,
and so again you can create little cruises
by bouncing around those different places.
If you want to go, sort of, between the UK
and the Continent, there is many, many examples
of Brittany Ferries, for example,
you could go from Portsmouth in the UK to Bilbao in Spain.
You could go from Portsmouth to Le Havre in France.
You could go from Portsmouth
to other parts of Spain as well, like Santander.
So there are ways that you can go cruising with a pet.
It's more of a ferry service but many
of these overnight ferries operate like a cruise.
They have restaurants, they have shows,
they have entertainment and lots going on,
so you could create a little cruise around your pet,
if that's what you wanted to do.
Of course, you could then combine that
with a land-based tour where, of course,
you could take your pet with you.
Another way that you could find
without breaking all those rules is to be a celebrity
or certainly to have a celebrity pet.
So, for example, one of the winners
of "Britain's Got Talent" was a dog called Pudsey.
Pudsey was renowned for heading off on a tour
in the United States of America on Cunard Queen Mary 2,
and certainly the dog was seen all around the ship,
did various shows on the ship,
so clearly if you are a celebrity and you have a pet,
you're probably going to find a way
of getting your pet onboard.
So can you cruise with a pet?
It's very difficult.
The only easiest traditional cruising way of doing it
is on the Queen Mary 2 on a transatlantic
or, of course, if you have some kind of service dog.
If you found this helpful and interesting,
why don't you watch another one of my many cruising videos
full of tips and advice right now?