Land-lubbers vs Cruisers - an analysis

A year or so ago my beloved & I determined that we were fresh out of cruising ideas & really craved a land-based experience. We also felt that as we were spending about $500/pp/pd on Azamara we might - just might! - have a rather large budget on our hands if we decided to do a land tour.

Six years of French language 40 years ago, enlivened by Rosetta Stone, & we set off on a three weeks self-drive tour of France that took us from Brussels to (1) Verdun & thence through the Alsace region, (2) Burgundy, (3) Avignon, (4) Carcassonne, (5) Sarlat-la-Caneda, (6) the Loire, (7) Champagne & back to the Brussels airport. We did our own research & drove the equivalent of Boston to Denver. What did we learn????

Well, we learned that you can have a heckuva good time for a lot less than you spend on a cruise, & you see a lot more doing things by driving than you do by cruising. AND we learned that we will look forward to the next cruise we take - which will be more in the future than we would have imagined when we set out on this adventure as we realized just how much we can do on our own.

How much less does it cost to be land based? It's hard to say as rooms in Sarlat-la-Caneda aren't the same as your cruise ship room, but for a room 1.5 times the size of our butler-appointed room on Azamara we spent about $150/night. We drove ourselves from point to point in that area of France (the Dordogne) & whiled away the time between tours eating ice cream & walking through tiny towns....If we'd been on a ship's tour we'd have been whisked from point of interest to point of interest...both approaches are great, just different.

Which is better? That is impossible to say!!!! Suffice it to say that in this wonderful year of a powerful dollar we enjoyed great discounts. I estimate that a 3-weeks vacation on Azamara in a butler-level cabin would have cost us $7,500 per person. I very much doubt that we spent that total for the two of us in our entire time in France, including tours of historic sites etc. & all restaurant meals.

Were there times that I longed for strolling from my hotel room to my restaurant table already waiting for me with a cabaret show??? You bet there were!!!! There weren't enough of those times to create a greater value for US however.

That said, we can't wait to get back to cruising but we've learned that we can do a very very rewarding tour on our own for much less money.

Both types of holiday works for me.

In fact pretty much any type of holiday works for me.

Put me on a vacation almost anywhere & I'm happy!

I did this posting because we'd struggled a year or so ago with the whole concept of cruising. At the time, we'd booked a long dreamed of cruise itinerary with Azamara & they canceled the sailing almost immediately upon announcing it - selling the time instead to a consolidator (that may not be the right term....) & cancelling our booking. At the time I was annoyed with Az...& resolved to find a vacation that would make me happy outside of cruising, which I did. It was making lemonade out of lemons & we DID IT!

As you note, ANY vacation is a good one!

Your vacation in France sounds wonderful and I agree that land based holidays offer different experiences from cruising.

I enjoy both options. Cruising introduced me to the delights of the island of Corsica and we have since enjoyed several land holidays to that beautiful spot. But for cruising I may never have discovered it as it wasn't on my list of places to visit.

Enjoy your future vacations whether at sea or on land. We are very fortunate to have the choice aren't we?

I don't know how to communicate how empowering it was for us to do this trip. MARK YOU that we are Americans & so the very idea of doing an independent tour in Europe is a little scary for us.

AND we look forward one day to collapsing back into the wonderfully comforting arms of Azamara!!! Nobody does it better....

To us, it depends what we want to do on vacation and where we want to go. We're not going to try to see Paris or London or cities like those on a cruise vacation. It doesn't make any sense. Sometimes we use cruises to learn about areas that we may want to return to later on a land vacation. Cruises give you tastes and land vacations give you more. With a strong US dollar, it's a great summer for a land vacation. We're taking our older teens to London and Paris. We'll do some bike riding, sight seeing, walking and taking in everything. Next summer, it's Venice and Croatia on a cruise. Time and a place for everything, but we spend less per day than OP, probably because we get nothing more than a balcony cabin.

We've done both, and just got back last month from a 2 month odyssey that was 24 days of cruising, London, Paris for 5 nights, a turnaround at home for a day, Washington DC, and 2 car shows!! Also, just last night I priced an all-inclusive in Costa Rica, because my neighbor said it was half the price of a cruise.

What I found is the dining is the scale-tipper. The all inclusive is break-even with Azamara, and MUCH more expensive than RCCL or Celebrity. The land travel is about the same as RCCL/Celebrity, but as my husband puts it: you have to go hunting for your food. He dislikes taking his chances with his dinner.

Our same neighbors just got back from 9 days in Curacao, and Mr. Neighbor said they ate at the hotel every night with the same menu because the taxi rates for 4 people made going elsewhere much more expensive.

So, it's not really a cost thing with us: it's where we want to go and what we want to do.

You are not alone shredridt, except that we have never been hesitant to tour on our own. Having had a couple wonderful Azamara cruises we have decided to leave further cruises such as this until we are no longer willing or able to go on our own. We like the more intensive, immersive experience of being in a place for longer.

The research I do is a huge part of the pleasure and we never have to 'hunt' for our dinner.

There are times when travel by ship is best and our long anticipated trip to Antarctia next year is one example.

Hi shedrift, this is an interesting conversation you're introduced.

Many many moons ago, when I began my career in the cruise industry in 1983, the boardroom discussion was how to position (sell) cruising v.v land vacations. That was back when only a small sliver of vacationers had even heard of, let alone considered, taking a cruise in lieu of a land vacation.

And now, 32 years later, you've indeed warmed my heart with your post. Here's an avid cruiser describing a land-based vacation as though it's something to consider.

I say to all my fellow cruise-industry and travel professionals - We've Come a Long Way! Or maybe more apt are the Beatles lyrics "it's been a long a winding road".

Either way, you have made my day :)

You are not alone shredridt, except that we have never been hesitant to tour on our own. Having had a couple wonderful Azamara cruises we have decided to leave further cruises such as this until we are no longer willing or able to go on our own. We like the more intensive, immersive experience of being in a place for longer.

 

The research I do is a huge part of the pleasure and we never have to 'hunt' for our dinner.

 

There are times when travel by ship is best and our long anticipated trip to Antarctia next year is one example.

I do lots and lots of research for our trips, too, and finding restaurants is a big part of it. But, you never know until you get there if you will like it. Breakfast is big with us, and my husband loves his American breakfast. I found two restaurants, one in Paris and one in London. Paris was Breakfast In America, and London was The Diner in Kensington.

What a great post! Thanks for sharing. We are, admittedly, cruise addicts. But we felt we were missing out on visiting places that ships can't go. So we decided a couple of years ago that we will still do two cruises a year. But we also decided to take a week on each of our birthdays to fly someplace we wouldn't get to see by ship. This year we did the Swiss Alps for one birthday and then we did Bavaria for another birthday. It's a good balance that makes us not miss out on cruising, but also not miss out on destinations that we wouldn't see otherwise. And as much as I thought we'd miss cruising by doing these miscellaneous trips, we really enjoy the "land based" vacations as well, just in a different way.

Michael

We love to cruise for the convenience of having to unpack only once and for the opportunity to see new parts of the world. But certainly there are times when we prefer a land trip (and the best is when we can combine a cruise with time on land at each end, as we are doing this Fall) We love the food on Azamara; it's predictability is reassuring. Yet we've found the best restaurants on land by accident, merely by walking around and seeing what looks interesting. I always take a pre-researched list of restaurants with me but we always seem to end up at new places. It's part of the joy of travel.

Cheaper, more expensive, none of that matters as much to me as seeing the destination as it should be experienced! If it's a water side destination, sometimes the very BEST way to see it is FROM the water! For larger cities and interior areas, there is no choice but to see it "by land". For instance there is no way to experience the US Natuonal Parks in the west on a cruise! ;)

We just returned from a land trip to Havana Cuba (today)! We had an option to cruise there, but instead chose a very cultural (jazz and art) tour based in Havana. A cruise would not have given us a very different view of Cuba than we might get in say the Dominican Republic or any other Caribbean island. But on land, interacting with locals night and day, we had a spectacular experience that expanded our knowledge of the people, place and culuture in a way cruising there could not have.

Next February we travel with AZ through the Panama Canal - I know there are land trips that take you to the canal and allow you to see the workings, but being on a ship transiting the full canal seems to be the best way to experience that!

Im glad Shedrit, that you benefitted from the falling Euro, many people will find Europe (relatively) cheap this year, it will be interesting to see the trends in European cruise pricing going forward, since people may opt for land where the pricing responds more to the currency fluctuations and market conditions!

Like the rest of you - I love it all! Just go! Cruise, land, hot air balloon, camel- whatever!;)

We love to cruise for the convenience of having to unpack only once and for the opportunity to see new parts of the world. But certainly there are times when we prefer a land trip (and the best is when we can combine a cruise with time on land at each end, as we are doing this Fall) We love the food on Azamara; it's predictability is reassuring. Yet we've found the best restaurants on land by accident, merely by walking around and seeing what looks interesting. I always take a pre-researched list of restaurants with me but we always seem to end up at new places. It's part of the joy of travel.

Agree! We are about to leave on an 8 - 10 day drive from CA to MI, and I have not even looked at restaurants. We will probably change our route on the fly, so I'll check yelp and yahoo for nearby restaurants.

A year or so ago my beloved & I determined that we were fresh out of cruising ideas & really craved a land-based experience. We also felt that as we were spending about $500/pp/pd on Azamara we might - just might! - have a rather large budget on our hands if we decided to do a land tour.

 

Six years of French language 40 years ago, enlivened by Rosetta Stone, & we set off on a three weeks self-drive tour of France that took us from Brussels to (1) Verdun & thence through the Alsace region, (2) Burgundy, (3) Avignon, (4) Carcassonne, (5) Sarlat-la-Caneda, (6) the Loire, (7) Champagne & back to the Brussels airport. We did our own research & drove the equivalent of Boston to Denver. What did we learn????

 

Well, we learned that you can have a heckuva good time for a lot less than you spend on a cruise, & you see a lot more doing things by driving than you do by cruising. AND we learned that we will look forward to the next cruise we take - which will be more in the future than we would have imagined when we set out on this adventure as we realized just how much we can do on our own.

 

How much less does it cost to be land based? It's hard to say as rooms in Sarlat-la-Caneda aren't the same as your cruise ship room, but for a room 1.5 times the size of our butler-appointed room on Azamara we spent about $150/night. We drove ourselves from point to point in that area of France (the Dordogne) & whiled away the time between tours eating ice cream & walking through tiny towns....If we'd been on a ship's tour we'd have been whisked from point of interest to point of interest...both approaches are great, just different.

 

Which is better? That is impossible to say!!!! Suffice it to say that in this wonderful year of a powerful dollar we enjoyed great discounts. I estimate that a 3-weeks vacation on Azamara in a butler-level cabin would have cost us $7,500 per person. I very much doubt that we spent that total for the two of us in our entire time in France, including tours of historic sites etc. & all restaurant meals.

 

Were there times that I longed for strolling from my hotel room to my restaurant table already waiting for me with a cabaret show??? You bet there were!!!! There weren't enough of those times to create a greater value for US however.

 

That said, we can't wait to get back to cruising but we've learned that we can do a very very rewarding tour on our own for much less money.

Sneaking in on this thread... (We cruise carnival because it sails from New Orleans and we have a bunch of kids)....

We cruise, but we have a Ford F350 diesel dually with a 37 foot toy hauler. We go back and forth between cruising and traveling with the RV. With the long bed dually we are over 50 ft long so its "a thing".

We also have a dual console motor boat.

Each type of vacation comes back around again. One of the liveliest experiences we had was tailgating with the RV at Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby-- I am a fractional owner of a horse that ran last year on the big day. Knocked that off my bucket list.

Really interesting post. We are two thirds of the way through a trip visiting U.S. cities that we hadn't previously visited. We drove from New York to Washington DC via Philadelphia, flew to Chicago and are finishing in Canada in Toronto.

We've had a really great time and it has made a great change from cruising.

The only thing we dislike on land tours is where to eat dinner at night!!! At least on Azamara we know we'll have a good meal every time.

Really interesting post. We are two thirds of the way through a trip visiting U.S. cities that we hadn't previously visited. We drove from New York to Washington DC via Philadelphia, flew to Chicago and are finishing in Canada in Toronto.

We've had a really great time and it has made a great change from cruising.

The only thing we dislike on land tours is where to eat dinner at night!!! At least on Azamara we know we'll have a good meal every time.

Speaking of food onboard our ships, we have a new video called "

Let me know what you think of it.

The best thing about a cruise is your vacation starts the minute you board.

You only unpack once.

Everything is taken care of for you.

You don't have to think too much or too hard.

(How interesting that Azamara will embark in New Orleans in 2016. We may become acquainted once my kids all get into University)

This is a lovely thread and I thank the originator for getting it started. We are big time Francophiles and have traveled to all of the towns you have mentioned, some of them more than once! I would return to a car exploration of France in a heartbeat! And we love to spend time in Paris, renting an apartment and exploring the city. It is indeed more cost-effective than a cruise, but also very different. We say that we are active seniors, in our 60s, with no serious health issues, so we prefer land-based travel at this point in our lives, but we reserve the option of choosing a cruise, if the itinerary and price are right. Otherwise, we love, love crossings to avoid the horrors of air travel and jet lag, so find us on ships enjoying the ocean and on our way to our next adventure. In fact we have booked two AZ crossing for 2015 & 16, and in both cases, the focus of our journeys will be on land in Europe. Thanks again for evoking memories and reminding me of where I fit in the cruise industry.

Interesting post, and a topic DH and I have discussed at length. Our first AZ cruise was in Europe from Copenhagen to Barcelona, and we saw a lot of places that would not have been on our agenda in a land trip (Kiel Canal, northern Spain, Gibraltar), and AZ was a great value at that time (2010).

On our trip in 2011, I had planned to a land trip in Italy for a week then a one week AZ cruise in Greece, but the land trip penciled out to be more expensive than adding a B2B on Azamara.

With those two trips, we found we missed getting a feel for places in Europe, so our next trip there was a land trip, and unless the itinerary offers something very special (South America for Carnival in 2012 and next month's golf extravaganza in the British Isles), we'll be taking land trips while we still can.

All that said, there is nothing like boarding a ship for a couple of weeks knowing the food, the crew, and the pure ease of cruising will make for a fabulous holiday!

We have only come to cruising in the last few years, but we also enjoy land based holidays.

From Melbourne, Australia, there are only a few cruises that we can embark directly and go anywhere, and anywhere tends to be New Zealand which we have both visited on land previously.

Singapore tends to be our hub, particularly for air travel and from there we have explored Asia by land, and more recently by a cruise which took us to Dubai, a great way to avaoid jetlag going to Europe. Then we spent a further 7 weeks in Europe, mainly on land but with 8 days cruising (non Azamara) around the British Isles.

I'm surprised no one has actually mentioned the pleasure of being at sea: the fresh air, the motion (even in heavy seas), the sense of voyaging.

We enjoy Azamara for all the luxuries it brings, but even more, I find I love the sea in all its moods. My father was a yachtsman and I fear this is yet another inherited trait. I don't think I could travel in anything other than a verandah (or higher) cabin, just for the joy of being outside watching the sea, enjoying the wind.

But I'm also a land traveller. I love arriving in new places, getting to know the public transport: you car travellers might gain access to hidden destinations but the scenery and people watching opportunities of public transport are priceless.

All in all, I think I'm a getaway, any which way, person, but it would be lovely to have a slave to transport the bags because with a variety of artificial joints, even 13 kg bags are heavy to haul around.

Looking forward to more travel, anywhere, any how, any time!

Cheers,

Sue

We have only come to cruising in the last few years, but we also enjoy land based holidays.

 

From Melbourne, Australia, there are only a few cruises that we can embark directly and go anywhere, and anywhere tends to be New Zealand which we have both visited on land previously.

 

Singapore tends to be our hub, particularly for air travel and from there we have explored Asia by land, and more recently by a cruise which took us to Dubai, a great way to avaoid jetlag going to Europe. Then we spent a further 7 weeks in Europe, mainly on land but with 8 days cruising (non Azamara) around the British Isles.

 

I'm surprised no one has actually mentioned the pleasure of being at sea: the fresh air, the motion (even in heavy seas), the sense of voyaging.

 

We enjoy Azamara for all the luxuries it brings, but even more, I find I love the sea in all its moods. My father was a yachtsman and I fear this is yet another inherited trait. I don't think I could travel in anything other than a verandah (or higher) cabin, just for the joy of being outside watching the sea, enjoying the wind.

 

But I'm also a land traveller. I love arriving in new places, getting to know the public transport: you car travellers might gain access to hidden destinations but the scenery and people watching opportunities of public transport are priceless.

 

All in all, I think I'm a getaway, any which way, person, but it would be lovely to have a slave to transport the bags because with a variety of artificial joints, even 13 kg bags are heavy to haul around.

 

Looking forward to more travel, anywhere, any how, any time!

 

Cheers,

 

Sue

Sue,

I loved your post. And as someone who needs her first artificial joint shortly, it's good to know that this hasn't prevented you travelling.

Enjoy your future adventures.

Your point about the pleasure of being at sea is one reason I love to cruise. There's nothing quite like being at sea with no sight of land.

I don't know how to communicate how empowering it was for us to do this trip. MARK YOU that we are Americans & so the very idea of doing an independent tour in Europe is a little scary for us.

Um.....this is one American who has been all over Europe by herself (sometimes with the DH). Also Bangkok, Australia, Dubai, Canada, Quito, walked into Mexico....

I will own up to using guides in Egypt and China.