My husband and I went on our first transatlantic cruise voyage in November, 2010. While we were very excited for the many ports that we would be visiting, we were a little skeptical about spending that many days on the ship.
What is a Transatlantic Cruise Voyage?
A transatlantic cruise voyage is usually done as a re positioning cruise for the ship. The ship is often switching itineraries (for instance, going from a summer itinerary of Mediterranean cruises to a winter Caribbean itinerary). This necessitates a one way trip across the ocean to get to its new destination.
Would we get bored? Would we get seasick crossing the ocean? Were we going to wish by the end that we had taken a land vacation instead?
We LOVED our transatlantic cruise voyage! We loved it so much that we are looking into another one for next October. Here are 5 reasons why longer cruises are great!
Multiple days in a row to relax:
Often, trans Atlantic itineraries start out with a cluster of shore days (destinations dependent on which direction you are going across the atlantic) followed by a number of sea days in a row as you are crossing the ocean, followed by a couple more ports at the other end.
Honestly, it took a couple sea days before I really felt like I was in relaxation mode. When you have many sea days in a row, you don’t need to feel guilty about sleeping in (I know I usually do on shorter cruises, because I feel like I am missing out on something.) Relax, you’ve got plenty of time!
Time to enjoy all activities:
When you have multiple sea days in a row, you don’t usually need to worry about missing any activities that you want to participate in. You will have time to do everything that you want to do, and still have time to relax (see the first topic above).
If there are two activities scheduled for the same time, there is a good chance that one of them will be repeated later in the cruise, for those who missed it.
Also, the long stretch of days in the middle allowed for more depth in the activity offerings. For example, we took a line dancing class on our trans Atlantic cruise that met for 5 days in a row. We took a similar class in ballroom dancing.
Taking classes that met may times reinforced what we were learning and let us get deeper into the subject than a class that only meets once or twice (and we became stellar line dancers by the end of the cruise!)
Time to meet people and make connections with our new shipboard family:
This was a huge plus, and a benefit that I hadn’t anticipated. When you are on one ship for such a long period of time on a transatlantic cruise voyage, it really gives you time to get to know people!
Of course, you always get to know your dinner mates on a cruise (we have always preferred fixed time dining with the same people every night, though I know that the any time dining is being offered on many cruise ships now and is very popular.)
In addition to getting to know our dinner mates, we got to know many other people throughout the 16 days. It made the ship feel “homey” when we would run into people that we knew and talked about what we had done on shore, or made plans for later activities.
Great post. Very informative. I think, like you, that I might have wondered about so many days at sea, but could finally get into the hng of relaxing, which I NEVER do when I’m on shorter cruises. I always think I might miss something. But a long cruise like this sounds great. I’m going to do this someday.
Thanks! I would love to do another long cruise sometime, but getting that much time off can be hard (and the logistics of getting our cats and house taken care of for that long are complicated.) It is just too hard to be gone for that long.
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