Itinerary ideas on circumnavigating the world but not on a world cruise

My wife and I are interested in circumnavigating the world but not wanting to spend 100+ days on the same ship (and not having the money, to be honest). We are interested in doing a number of cruises on different lines, combined with a few flights, ideally with a transpacific and a transatlantic cruise segments to avoid those really long transoceanic flights, but keeping the entire voyage to about 50-60 days.

Anyone have any ideas and have plans that they wouldn't mind sharing? Therefore, this is perhaps a good opportunity to start a new thread, or can someone direct me to an existing board as the one on special interest cruising/world cruises is not really applicable.

Departure would be from and back to North America.

Thank you.

Seattle/Vancouver to Newark (r v-v)? 60 days. Same ship, very large (300 s.f.+) cabin. CMA CGMs Columbus Loop. Sails just about every week but not all ships carry passengers. Calls at various east Asian ports (including Hong Kong), Port Klang, Malaysia, and either Malta or straight to Newark.

Otherwise trans-Pacific will be limited to westbound in the boreal autumn and eastbound in the boreal spring/austral autumn. Asia-Europe, whenever?

Go to http://www.cruisetimetables.com and choose a starting point and time, and see what you can get from the end ports. Play around with it. You are going to need to put a lot of time into it. Maybe even involve a travel agent face to face. Any ship travel you manage to patch together will be as long or longer than a traditional world cruise, so I expect you will have to have some flights there. EM

have a look at the TA's from Florida to Europe or NYC to Europe then the cruises from say Australia to LA or to other west coast ports

Then work out other cruises & flights that would fit your schedule & pocket book

You can use the link at the top of the page FIND A CRUISE to get you started

Don't want to put a downer on your plans but, bearing in mind that part of your reason for avoiding a World Cruise is the cost, you may find that............

- You save money on the number of days aboard a ship

But

- Longer cruises are usually better value than short cruises, so by switching from one long voyage to a series of shorter ones you jack up the cost.

- you'll be adding flights left, right & centre, jacking up your costs. And adding transfers between airports & ports.

- it'll be a major logistical exercise to put together an itinerary. And to fit that itinerary together is likely to involve a number of hotel nights between cruises (possibly in unworthy ports), and cruises on ships that may not suit your style or your budget.

Add in the problem & expense of playing catch-up if an aircraft or ship is delayed & you miss your next connection. :eek:

So I suspect that what you're considering will be significantly more expensive than a world cruise.

And by halving the total vacation time yet flying only the shorter distances & cruising long ocean segments, you'll see precious little of the world. :confused:

We've never cruised longer than about 30 days at a time. Part of our reasoning is the same as yours - want to experience different ships & shipmates (though also we don't like too many sea-days). Your plans to switch ships & build in flights overcomes that objection, but not our other reasons for avoiding a world cruise...........

- If something like accident or illness or problems at home forced us to abandon our cruise part-way through, it'd screw-up that cruise. I wouldn't want it to screw-up the mega-cruise of a lifetime. Especially if the abandonment were for some uninsured reason - and you can bet your bottom dollar insurers would in any case look for a way to wiggle-out of paying-up.

- Your world experience will be a whirlwind of ships & airports & suitcases. You'll not have had time to savour the first few weeks because you'll be immersed in what's to come. When you get home you'll look at your photos & have to check the date or some other method (photo of the daily ship's newsletter, photos of city or airport names etc) to even remember where you took some of them, cos they'll all run into a blur. Yikes, that even happens to us on 30-day cruises & road-trips.

If you're an experienced cruiser, you can make up your own mind.

But if you've only sailed a couple of shorter cruises I'd suggest you significantly modify your plans.

By all means fly to, say, Japan or Hong Kong for a cruise to Singapore & tie that in with one which goes to Australia, then fly home. And add a few days ashore in those turnaround ports. But put the rest of the world on the back-burner.

Mebbe a few months later fly or cruise to Europe & put together two or even three cruises around the Med & the Baltic. Or combine a cruise or two with a road or rail trip, giving you more destinations - and the flexibility to spend a few days in worthy places - rather than have to jam it all into a single foreshortened port of-call day.

And you can look forward to planning your next foray.:)

Just MHO, as always

JB :)

Here is our plan...

We will fly to St. Martin and join the Windstar Wind Surf for a TA. This will take us to Portugal. From there we will visit Portugal, Spain (taking the ferry to Tangiers for a few days in Morocco) then onward to France and working our way north through Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and stay up along the Atlantic and Baltic exploring the northern and north central areas during the hotter months.

Currently our plan is to fly home from Germany (?) after eight weeks on a round trip ticket, returning to the same airport around late August and then working our way to Poland and then relatively south eventually landing in Bulgaria. We will then head to Greece and eventually Albania where we will being using the ferry system to visit the Balkans before returning to land in Italy. From there we will take a route along the Med to get back to Lisbon for a westbound TA back to St. Martin then home.

We have a similar plan for Asia--we will take a TP to Australia or New Zealand and then work our way around those two countries. After that we will pick up a second cruise to see some of the islands and end in Dubai before flying home from there.

Maybe consider our plan for Europe and expand on it to see other areas as well. Your limitation will be the number of days you wish to spend--that will be a lot of drive bys as opposed to really seeing the world.

We are pretty much doing the same thing you describe.

At this point when I look at a world cruise we have been to way more than 3/4 of the way around the world over the past three years. This is traveling by cruise ship and traveling by plane at times.

Just so I am correct in understanding, do you want to do all of this in 50-60 days, or is that the longest you would want any one portion to be?

We want to do something similar, around the world, a few weeks in some locations, no flights, it's harder than it sounds.

Besides the costs John Bull mentioned is the fact that it would be very hard to get all of that done in two months.

I would suggest that you do segments of a world cruise in different years (and save your money in between). Many people do a segment or two on a world cruise and then fly home. Over the course of as many years as you wish to stretch it, you could eventually get all the way around the world on different ships and not be gone from home for too long. You also would not have to spend the amount of a world cruise all at once.

My wife and I are interested in circumnavigating the world but not wanting to spend 100+ days on the same ship (and not having the money, to be honest). We are interested in doing a number of cruises on different lines, combined with a few flights, ideally with a transpacific and a transatlantic cruise segments to avoid those really long transoceanic flights, but keeping the entire voyage to about 50-60 days.

 

Anyone have any ideas and have plans that they wouldn't mind sharing? Therefore, this is perhaps a good opportunity to start a new thread, or can someone direct me to an existing board as the one on special interest cruising/world cruises is not really applicable.

 

Departure would be from and back to North America.

 

Thank you.

You want to travel by ship, a segment at a time, obviously avoiding slower cargo vessels, most likely spending days (or weeks) in hotels here or there waiting for connections, to circumnavigate the globe in less than 60 days - ON THE CHEAP?

Quick answer: you cannot do it.

Make sure you investigate round the world airfares (eg Oneworld) and perhaps take cruises at various points. Rather than trying to 'fill in airfares' in the gaps between your cruises. I've been around the world at least 6 times (as it is a cheap way to travel from Australia) with these airfares - often cheaper than point to point. Another option is the 'circle pacific' airfares.

Two suggestions. You might want to consider breaking your travel into two or three segments of 2-3 months each. We started with the top items on our respective bucket lists. DW wanted Africa. We did not want to fly that distance so we broke it up by spending time in Europe.

Second suggestion would be to NOT plan everything in advance. Have a general idea of where you are going and then only plan a few weeks in advance at the most. This will provide you with flexibility and will allow you to take advantage of travel savings on late bookings. We ended up going to numerous interesting places that we had not considered prior to departing. Go with the flow, minor schedule challenges/changes to your planned itinerary can be the best part of your trip. Avoid the North American style hotel chain lodgings. Spring for local hotels, small B&B's, and family run restaurants, etc. Far better value, far better experience.

Our first involved Europe land travel, a few cruises, African safari, TA cruise to Florida and then six weeks in Costa Rica. The next was a winter in Thailand, Malaysia, flight to Australia, land travel by car, Fiji cruise, late booking Austalia/NZ cruise, the home via a few days in Hawaii. We followed up the following year with a winter trip to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. We realized after this land trip that the cruise we had considered would not have given us the flexibility to really experience and savor numerous locales on that trip.

We won't be doing another trans ocean cruise. We do not like so many sea days. We had to pass on a Singapore-Dubai cruise because the process of getting an Indian visa was too long. This has changed so we want to do this, plus return to Africa. We are willing to do a ten hour flight if it means avoiding seven consecutive sea days!

One thing we learned was that DW prefers to be away for about 60 days. We are now shortening our travels to reflect this plus it agrees with our out of country medical coverage. We leave for sixty days of travel around a 14 day South American cruise next month. Travel can wear you down. Stop somewhere for a week or do a short term rental for a few weeks or a month to break things up if you plan on doing 4-6 month of travel. We did this and it made a huge difference to our enjoyment of latter part of our travels.

We switched to carry on luggage. Best decision we made-especially when travelling by ferry in SE Asia.

We started with number 1 on our list in February 2013.

2013- We flew to Auckland from US, then spent the next 10 weeks DIY with land travel in New Zealand and Australia. Following was a Transpacific from Sydney to Honolulu with in between stops at several islands. We spent 10 days in Hawaii before flying home.

2014- Panama Canal 15 night full transit from San Diego to Fort Lauderdale with some stops in Central America.

2014- South to North Alaska 7 night cruise followed by 3 weeks DIY on the ground with Alaska Rail. We flew to Vancouver and flew home from Anchorage.

2015- 6 weeks circumnavigating South America which included a number of stops in SA countries, and a side trip to Iguazu Falls, followed by another full transit of Panama Canal and some stops in Central America.

2015- A TA over 2 months in Europe, some DIY, 6 weeks of that in the Mediterranean followed by a Transatlantic back to US.

2016- About 3 1/2 months in Europe, a few weeks DIY then cruise ship, Western and Northern Europe with two full days in St. Petersburg Russia, then Canary Islands and Spain. This trip began and ended with Transatlantic cruises each way. We do prefer crossing the oceans in a ship.

2016- A 6 1/2 weeks trip which included visiting South Africa and Zimbabwe, a few days in Cape Town with an African safari in Kruger. We flew to and from London to Johannesburg. We did a TA over and another TA back to US.

2017- We have a 3 1/2 month trip to Europe, this time visiting countries in the middle of Europe part DIY part cruise, and Eastern Europe. We have TAs booked for the 2 Transatlantic crossings.

To crooser888- if you have not already done so I encourage you to make a list of places you really want to visit and spend time in, and maybe prioritize

from your number 1 and so on.

Just "circumnavigating the world", without spending some time in the places you are most interested in, here and there, will quickly become a chore. This is why, in my first response, I asked about clarification on the 50-60 days.

We have also found that there have been many beautiful and wonderful places we have run across that we didn't even have on our radar.

I truly hope you come back to this thread. There are many people here who can help answer your questions and make suggestions.

I was where you are in the process 6 years ago. :)