Planning
During the summer of 2011 I decided that I would teach one more year and retire at the end of the 2011-2012 school year. So the decision was made to cruise around the world in 2014 but with which cruise line was still to be determined.
I started by researching which lines did a world voyage in 2013 since 2014 information would not be published for another year. I came up with the following list:
- Costa
- Crystal
- Cunard
- Fred Olsen
- Hapag-Lloyd
- Holland America
- P&O UK
- Princess
- Saga
- Seabourne
- Silversea
From that point I eliminated those lines that had what they called a "world" cruise but did not actually circumnavigate the world. It was very important that I went truly around the world, starting and ending in the same place. That narrowed my list down to:
- Cunard
- Fred Olsen
- Hapag-Lloyd
- Holland America
- P&O UK
- Saga
At that point I started finding prices and looking at pictures and videos of the ships. Hapag-Lloyd was the first to go because of the price (well over $100,000 for a balcony for a solo traveler). Next was Saga. The ship's were old and the price was high (they have since given up world cruises). Fred Olsen was eliminated next - the ship was old and I did not know much about the company, I then had to let HAL go. I had started out with HAL as my frontrunner but the Amsterdam (that does the world voyage) has few balcony cabins and they are high priced to start - then there is a 200% charge for solo travelers. That made HAL over $30,000 more than Cunard or P&O. So I was down to two. I started asking question on Cruise Critic and also on the P&O Community Board. I already knew some about Cunard because I had done a Transatlantic on the original Queen Mary. I received a lot of feedback and for the most part people thought I would not like P&O because it catered to the British trade - I would not like the food, entertainment, and general ambience. For the next two months I flip-flopped between Cunard and P&O. I finally decided that I would meet a nice, international mixture of people on Cunard and the first major decision was accomplished.
Smooth sailing until next time!
