How to plan a back to back

I'm interested in doing a back to back cruise next year. Where do I start?

I pick a cruise I want to take and then look to see what is before and after it. For instance, new year, I want to take a Transatlantic (east bound), so I have made a list of the following cruise and which ports they visit. Next I will go thru and see how long we want to stay on.

When booking, I look to see if the b2b can be booked as one cruise. If so, I then compare the price and OBC for the different ways of booking.

I see that you sail mostly on Carnival, so I can't help with specifics, but for us on Royal Caribbean, we look for "repositioning" cruises. This is when the ship is moved to a different home part for a variety of reasons. Twice we have taken repo cruises and in themselves, they were fantastic (little bit longer cruise, very relaxing), and then can add the cruise either before or after to it, as Paul said.

Perhaps you might want to post this on the Carnival board if that is your cruise line of choice.

Have fun! B2B's are amazing. :)

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Where do you want to go and see?

We did the repo of the Conquest, NOLA-San Juan. Decided to do the cruise before that also thinking we'd not get back to the Caribbean in s long time.

Know people that are doing a 15 day HI cruise B2B with a 13 day Mexican Riviera cruise.

A few years ago Princess fire sales their 3/4 day cruises. People were doing B2B2B2B to get to Elite.

As posted above pick a cruise then just add the one before or after it

Hopefully not the same routing but we have done the Panama as a B2B

We have done several b2b cruises. On Liberty last fall they had a sheet in the Next Cruise office showing all the repositioning cruises, with the cruises before and after. It made it really easier to see what was available. I'd not seen that before. You need a good travel agent or a good telephone representative or lots of computer time looking for ideas. If you come back here with some ideas, such as where you want to go, we can offer more specifics

Margee

I've mainly done back to backs with different itineraries so we pick both at once and do it sooner rather than later as ideally we would like to keep the same room.

Keith

Couldn't be easier. We have done b-to-b's on Princess, Celebrity and a very large number of them on HAL.

Choose the segments you want, check availability and try for same cabin for both segments. Why move if you don't have to?

We have also done quite a few back-to-backs on several different cruise lines.

Follow what Paul suggested -- that is the way we have found what we wanted.

We also book these cruises far enough in advance that we have the same cabin for both segments.

HAL started a few years ago setting up what is called "Collector Cruises" which already combines two cruises which used to be called back-to-back cruises. Booking cruises as a Collector Cruise does save a person a little money.

We booked a B2B in December on Silhouette because we want to sail on this ship and she only does 7 days, which is not long enough. Itineraries are different on each cruise. We are ok with the dining room menu repeating because we will also have unlimited specialty dining.

I'm interested in doing a back to back cruise next year. Where do I start?

Find two consecutive cruises that you like.

Book them.

In addition to back to back (b2b) you can also do b2b2b, b2b2b2b, etc. :)

We embark on a RCL cruise in May that we are staying on for 5 individual cruises, each are different, and all are in the same cabin.

This is where some of the big online sites are a good starting point. One if particular (wish I could name it), allows you to search by any criteria you like. If I were looking for a B2B, I'd pick a general area I want to see (such as Europe or Alaska, etc.), then pick a ship. The search will bring up every cruise for that particular ship & area, showing the length of each cruise and the start date. It's then pretty easy to look at consecutive cruises and compare itineraries.

You can do the same thing on may cruise line booking sites. First pick a general area (or you can specify 'repositioning' cruises), then a ship and see what comes up. Princess, and probably some other cruise lines, does the work for you - often combining 2 shorter cruises into one longer one on their listings.

If you don't find anything that suits what you want and don't mind getting a little more complicated, you can look at cruises on 2 different ships, where one sails from a particular port the same day (or a day or so later if you choose) the other one ends. These aren't considered B2B's, just consecutive cruises. They can be useful if you run into limitations caused by PVSA laws which prohibit sailing on the same ship from one US port to another US port without visiting a 'far distant' port in-between.

I'm interested in doing a back to back cruise next year. Where do I start?

Like others I find a cruise I like, then look to see what's before and after it.

We prefer long cruises so usually we see what is before or after a transatlantic.

Sometime we stay on for a third cruise if the price is right.

On our B2Bs we only do one if the ship is going to different ports for each cruise. Then we try to book the same cabin for both. On Carnival we had to book two cabins but they were right next to each other. We spoke to customer service about this and they kept us in the same cabin. They just moved the new passengers to our 2nd cabin- next door to where they had booked. No problem!

But we have had to move to a different cabin and that's no big deal.

I'm interested in doing a back to back cruise next year. Where do I start?

Cruise Critic is the right place to start. :)

Your off to a good start already . :D

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is back to back cheaper than just booking a longer cruise?

is back to back cheaper than just booking a longer cruise?

Depends on how the cruises are selling.

Sometimes it costs less sometimes more.

Example

Our lat cruise was sold as 33 nights 15 nights and 18 nights.

The 33 cost about $1000 less (for 2) than the 15 and 18 added together, I guess Princess saved that (or a large part of it) on not having to do a number of things twice.

Turn around the room

Two accounts

Two check ins

(maybe even two lots of commission on a sale)

Plus the fact they have sold both legs of the cruise.

Being just a few

I wouldn't be keen on changing cabins half way through, so that's something else o think about.

is back to back cheaper than just booking a longer cruise?

sometimes

depends on the cruise line

We've changed rooms on a B2B once, and it was no big issue. Took us about half an hour to throw stuff from the drawers into suitcases, and our room steward took care of everything else. They'll take all the hanging stuff from your closet and transfer it on carts. I've even heard of cases where, if the room layout is identical, they'll simply switch out the drawers from one room to the other, so you wouldn't even have to pack up much at all. In our particular case, our room for the 1st leg of the trip was a pretty standard room, but for the 2nd leg an aft corner balcony was available, so it was an easy decision to do the move.

My first question to the OP is "why back to back." So start your thinking about how long you want to be away, where in the world, and you budget. Then look at the options. One long cruise is usually more desirable then a back to back for multiple reasons including no hassles with a turn around day, no repeat of menus, entertainment, etc. If it does turn out that a back to back meets your requirements, then shop around and see if you can get some kind of discount or additional OBC.

Personally, we hate back to backs where the turn around day is in any US Port. The US Authorities (CBP) require a ship to be "zeroed out" which means all passengers must be off the ship and accounted for....before anyone can reboard. To us it is simply a pain in the behind since if we do a back to back with turn around in Miami or Ft Lauderdale we would simply prefer to never leave the ship. This is not an issue in Europe or Asia, but the US authorities are anal about the issue and make lots of lives miserable with their silly procedures (why would they care if somebody simply stayed on the ship).

Hank

We've changed rooms on a B2B once, and it was no big issue. Took us about half an hour to throw stuff from the drawers into suitcases, and our room steward took care of everything else. They'll take all the hanging stuff from your closet and transfer it on carts. I've even heard of cases where, if the room layout is identical, they'll simply switch out the drawers from one room to the other, so you wouldn't even have to pack up much at all. In our particular case, our room for the 1st leg of the trip was a pretty standard room, but for the 2nd leg an aft corner balcony was available, so it was an easy decision to do the move.

I know they make it easy, but I also KNOW that I'd head back to the first cabin, more often than I care to admit whil on auto pilot.