So here I am in the Caribbean. It's beautiful blue skies. It's warm. There's gorgeous sea all around
me, and yet i'm kicking myself because I made the mistake of falling into a couple of classic
Caribbean traps, even though I've been here many times before and should know better. So I'm going
to tell you about some key Caribbean traps that you should avoid to make sure that you have an
incredible Caribbean trip. If you're new here by the way, I'm Gary Bembridge and it's my goal to
make it easy and more fun to discover plan and enjoy unforgettable cruise vacations, including
here in the Caribbean. One of the traps that many people fall into is the mistake of associating
cruising the Caribbean with the big mega ships like the Royal Caribbean one behind me, or
Carnival Dream or over there is Carnival Mardi Gras. You do not have to cruise the
Caribbean on big huge big resort ships. Although lines like Royal Caribbean, Norwegian Cruise Line
and of course Carnival really built up and created the mega cruising in the Caribbean as it is now,
you don't have to cruise that way. Those really broke the ground and made the Caribbean really
popular, however you can do the Caribbean however you want to do it. So, for example I have been on
Caribbean trips where all the passengers on board were only from the UK. I've been on
extremely formal cruise on Cunard where you were dressing up in black tie. I've been on the classic
cruise line Celebrity which is a little bit more trendy, but I've also been on a classic
cruise line Holland America where it's a little bit older, it's a little bit more refined,
it's some people argue a bit more stuffy. I've been on this trip now i'm on Oceania Marina,
1250 passengers and my very next trip is actually on one of the world's sort of most luxurious
cruise lines that I've decided to try and there's less than 500 people on that cruise. So,
don't associate the Caribbean with having to go on a big resort ship. You can do it any way you want,
with any size ship you want, and that's really important. Figure out the kind of experience you
want, don't fall into the trap of just defaulting to those big guys who control, if you like, the
Caribbean. Another big trap that people fall into is thinking that you need to sail to the Caribbean
out of Florida. Now, there are three really big ports in Florida, you've got Miami, you've got
Port Everglades and Port Canaveral, and certainly the vast bulk of Caribbean cruises do head out of
those three ports. However, it can be completely chaotic. Bear in mind I was there recently and
there was nine ships on the Friday, eight ships on the Saturday, seven ships on the Sunday. So,
there could be anything between 15 to 20 000 people getting off the ships in the morning,
and another 15 to 20 000 people trying to get on those ships in Miami in one day. So,
it can be completely chaotic, taxis, cars, buses, and it just is pretty an unpleasant experience.
Of course, the reason that Florida ports are so popular is they are the closest
major ports to get into the Caribbean. So, there is a plus side in terms of time. However
there are other considerations and options. So, if you're in the United States, for example, you can
sail from so many places. So Carnival have about 12 different ports they sail at various times of
the year. So does Norwegian. Royal Caribbean about nine different ports across the United States. One
slight downside is some of those smaller places, smaller cities, they put some of the older ships
on, so that is a bit of a watch out of course. If you're coming from Europe, you don't have to come
all the way to Miami. Many lines, whether it's P&O, whether it's some of the german lines like
Tux Mean Schiff, and so on they will charter flights into say Barbados. So you can also,
you know, charter direct into the Caribbean. Some other cruise lines, and it tends to be the mostly
more luxurious up-market ones, they will also originate and sail from St Maarten or Barbados or
places like that. The reason that the big lines don't do that is just the logistics,
getting people in and out. So, don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to go out of Florida. It
can be crazy. The hotels can get really expensive in places like Miami and now Fort Lauderdale
hotels can be quite expensive. So, look at different alternatives. And you don't even have to
go on an English-speaking cruise line. Lines like the German Mein Schiff, Aida Italian, Costa they
all head down to the Caribbean. So, if you want a multicultural experience and don't want to do an
English language experience, you can do that too. So don't just default into the American English
speaking or British English speaking lines. one of the really big traps to fall into and i've done it
on this particular trip is to keep going to the same places in the caribbean there's surprisingly
few ports that you can actually go to the caribbean and the reason for that is there's
only a couple that can deal with the volume of ships in the size many places you'll go you'll be
places like here across the iowa and today where you've got four big ships in so you've got 15 000
or more people pouring off and it does mean that ports in the caribbean have to have a key to deal
with it they have to have the infrastructure the people the tours so they just cope with these
huge numbers of crowds that you can see behind me so that does limit the amount of places you can go
but it is possible to go to places that are unique and different it just takes a bit of planning
when you're looking at planning your caribbean cruises probably about five key itineraries
that are worth knowing about one of them is the short option which is heading to places like the
bahamas they tend to be three or four nights the most popular ones of all tend to be the eastern
caribbean and the western caribbean the western caribbean is going to take you to places like
key west although there's some discussion on ships calling their cozumel costa maya roatandalis the
cayman islands a seventh eastern caribbean is going to take you to places like bahamas puerto
ricos and martin antigua dominicus and lucious and kitts and the u.s and british virgin islands also
what's important about the east and the west is many cruise lines will alternate those you could
do a two-week cruise because those other ones tend to be seven nights the other really popular cruise
is a ten nighter out of florida which will go much further south she'll go right down to barbados you
might even go as far as curacao you know right down south the other really popular option is
those cruisers that will do partial transit of the panama canal again they're about 10 nights
and they will tend to sweep right down to the south and head up through the western caribbean to
places like roatan belize and so on so when you're looking at doing a caribbean cruise bear in mind
that many of the ports are really really overrun really popular so try and look at itineraries
where you might be going to some more out of the way places more unusual places now another trap
which is a difficult one and one that i'm kind of torn on is around private lands i'm actually here
on norwegian cruise groups uh harvest key which is a very beautiful place it's very pristine my
last cruise i went to half moon key which is the america one but all of the cruise lines have its
royal caribbean has invested i think something like 250 million dollars on perfect day at coco
key princesses princess keys disney has castaway key and so on uh so they all have them now the
the thing with coming to private islands is they're very beautiful very pristine they tend
to be in the bahamas or like here in belize they're extremely well run they're very slick
however because they're cruise line owned you're not seeing the true caribbean and also importantly
you're not putting money really directly into the hands of the locals some people would argue
that it's a trap because you're basically staying within the corporate world and giving the cruise
line more money other people say it's not a trap because it's a beautiful uh curated
experience and it's a difficult one uh on both my last year trips i've had private islands i've
joined them but i'm kind of torn about whether they're a trap or not so that's something that
you do need to think about one of the traps that i have tended to avoid partly because i learned
the hard way the first time around is around the time to go now a lot of us will depend on your own
situation but the main caribbean season runs from around september october time when the ships are
redeployed from alaska and the mediterranean the caribbean and runs until about sort of april time
when the ships are then redeployed to alaska or the mediterranean so that's really a busy time
because it's great weather of course it's winter in the northern hemisphere people want to get away
if you are traveling that time period the best time to go that i go is either sort of from
the middle of november to middle of december before holiday season before school holidays
and a great time to go is sort of from the second week of january to about the middle of february
you're going to find lots of availability lots of choice and really good fares but the places
are going to be relatively quiet because it's not peak time if you possibly can avoid school
holidays because it gets really manic avoid spring break avoid the christmas break if you can because
again it gets really busy and then during the summer some is very popular because very hot but
take a look at the hurricane season because that can cause lots of disruptions to itineraries
uh maybe the seas are a bit more rough and stuff like that of course if you are traveling with
families you're driving with kids or teens or whatever you're gonna have much less flexibility
on those particular timings definitely if you possibly can try and avoid those busy times that's
one trap that people fall into it'll cost you more and it'll be much busier one of the big traps that
so many people fall into the caribbean is shopping you'll find there are chains everywhere go like
diamonds international effie del sol color changing and every single port you get off on
there will be these same chains but even more importantly you'll find that the cruise lines
are in on the game so on many of the cruise lines in fact most of the cruise lines you'll find
shopping advisors who will give talks they'll do different promotions incentives
to call on certain recommended stores it's important to understand that the cruise lines
charge people to be part of that program so if you're a diamonds international del sol or whoever
and you want to be part of that program you pay cruise lines fees and it's reported in some of the
newspapers like forbes washington post have run articles which claim it's several hundred thousand
dollars the cruise lines can be making whether the cruise lines then get various other incentives or
commissions from sales i i don't really know that but it's really important to understand
that shopping has become a huge big business and in many ways the risk is that you will be
almost manipulated so if you are going to go shopping in the caribbean approach with care make
sure you want things and you understand the prices so you don't overpay and don't get swept into it
also very importantly if you are looking at buying things like souvenirs try and hunt out local craft
markets because you'll find many of the souvenirs are the same and even made in china and they
aren't that different and unique to the islands the same applies to shopping on board cruise ships
again make sure that you are comparing prices on land which of course with wi-fi and stuff you can
do you know for example i bought some fragrance on board which cost a hundred dollars i thought it
was a good price i then realized that i could have bought it on the duty free passing through to join
the cruise for 75 in the airport shop so watch out shopping is big and it could be a really big trap
to fall into one trap that is quite hard to avoid but is one that you need to really be aware of
is when it comes to excursions now excursions can mount up and cost you an enormous amount
of money on caribbean cruise you could be spending easily as a couple a hundred dollars
together or up to 200 depending on the excursion you're doing so it can mount up a lot there's a
couple of key traps that people fall into first of all many people will kind of default to the
cruise line excursion which is obviously the easy thing to do a lot of people do in the caribbean
because they know that the ship will wait cruise lines will only wait for people that are on their
own excursions so if you are nervous then do that it's important to remember the caribbean
is very geared up to tourism and cruise ships so there's a couple of things that you should look at
as alternatives first of all there are aggregators like shoretrips.com cruiseexcursions.com what
they do is you can input your itinerary your ship and it will bring up all the excursions
as alternatives that you can do in those ports now they work a lot with local providers and
they will normally include a guarantee to get you back to the ship on time now they running these
exclusions every single day and they're really pretty astute now at getting people back to
you know to the ship in time the other thing to bear in mind is as i said these ports
and the people in the ports the population are extremely used to dealing with cruise passengers
so they you know the more informal sectors are the taxi drivers local guides they really understand
what people want to do how to get there time to get them back so also consider looking at those
because you are going to again put more money into the hands of local people rather than the
corporations or you know big providers you're going to get more into the hands of people but
when you also go in excursions the other thing i recommend is try not to do everything the same you
know i've met loads of people who will go on the catalan tour in every single place go to the beach
excursion every single place try and do a varied range of excursions to get a much better sense and
feel of the caribbean vary what you do till you get a real flavor for the feel of the caribbean
the history of the caribbean the culture of the caribbean one big tip i've got to avoid
falling in the trap of going to places that are just crazy busy on excursions is to do some
research around who's going to be important i'm in cozumel today there are two huge raw caribbean
ships there's a carnival ship there's celebrity edge and us however i knew that in cozumel today
all the ships would be here because i looked on a site called cruise timetables cruisetimetables.com
so when i went and decided what i was going to do i knew that places were going to be busy so
i avoided the obvious excursions and went for something a little bit different if you want
to find out more about cruising the caribbean watch this video where i start off by talking
about one of the things that drives me crazy about cruising the caribbean see you over there