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
