As you know, we love to travel.  For this month, my posts are going to be about how we plan the day to day details of our upcoming cruise.

Yes, we are arriving a few days early for this cruise.  We try never to arrive the morning of the cruise.  You never know if you run into a delay and miss the ship.

In my opinion it all comes down to planning ahead.  I spend time online and reading travel books to determine what we want to do, see and experience.  With this in mind, we plan out our time, research admissions, tickets, etc – sometimes there is a discount to purchasing in advance / online vs buying (it definitely saves you the time of waiting on line to purchase entry).

For our upcoming cruise, we determined what things we wanted to do and have been making the advanced purchases as our budget allows – that way much is pre-paid and we’ll have minimal expenses on the trip.

Because it’s peak flower season, we needed to make a reservation in advance.  This will probably sell out if we didn’t. We also have let our friends know our travel plans as we try to meet up with them when we are in town.

As you know, we love to travel.  For this month, my posts are going to be about how we plan the day to day details of our upcoming cruise.

We have our airfare, hotel and cruise all purchased.  Now it’s time to do the research on the cruise itinerary.  Personally, I create a sheet with the date, city, information and money columns.

This is what my sheet looks like – date (Monday, January 1), the city – this includes the time in port (Miami 7 to 8). The information section- this is all the details on what we are planning to do and that can be anything as simple as walking around to a tour and all the information including a confirmation number and contact info) and the money column – is it paid or what do we need to pay and in what currency.

This is not something that is compiled in one day – this takes us more than a month.  We do our research on the area:

What do we want to see or do?

How can we do that – on our own, a tour, does it need to be reserved in advance, what is the cancellation policy – are some of the information we need to make a decision.

From the simplest – use the shore excursion from the cruise line.

But what if the cruise line doesn’t offer what you want to do?  That’s where the research starts.  Here are some of my favorite trip planning websites:

Guide books for the area you’ll be visiting

TripAdvisor / Viator websites and the companies that are recommended in their information

Cruise Critic to register for the board for your specific cruise (cruise line, ship and sailing date). You can chat with other cruisers on your cruise to make plans.  We have done many things both on board (lunch dates, sail away party, cabin crawls and more) as well as shared taxi service and tours.  We have made some great friendships through here.

We typically do a mixture of exploring on our own, cruise line shore excursions and private excursions.  But all this take research and time to make our choices and then find the best deal.  Remember that if you tour on your own or with an outside company, you need to make sure you arrive back at the ship in plenty of time so the ship doesn’t sail without you.  Look for a cruise guarantee policy.

We are still in the middle of our research.  As we find what we want to do, we reserve and purchase these so that they are paid in advance as we have the cash.  That way we don’t have a big bill at the end of the vacation waiting for us.

As you know, we love to travel.  For this month, my posts are going to be about how we plan the day to day details of our upcoming cruise.

Now that we know the exact dates we’ll be traveling, it’s time to look at hotels.

For us, we are a member of three different hotel loyalty programs, so that’s what we look at first.  We always fly in early, so as not to miss the ship.

Here are some tips to figure out where you want to stay:

Does the city have easily accessible public transportation?

Can we get from the airport to the city easily?

Can we get around to do the things we want to do?

If the answer is “yes” to all three, then we look for a central location that has access to all.  In this case, we wanted to be by the train station.  This was our central point.  We could get to the airport, the cruise pier and all areas we wanted to visit from this train station area.

Next, what hotels are located there?  That’s the question.  We settled on one in one of our loyalty programs.  we didn’t have enough points for a free night, but we could combine our points with cash to reduce the cost.  we chose an executive room (that includes breakfast, non-alcoholic beverages, early evening light fare with drinks).  This was our choice.

With the executive room, we save substantially on meals and the loyalty rewards program gives us free early check in and late check out as well as WiFi.  Great choice for this trip

As you know, we love to travel.  For this month, my posts are going to be about how we plan the day to day details of our upcoming cruise.

I spend a lot of time in the details ahead of the trip to get the best. That’s everything from airfare, hotel, attraction admissions, tours and more.

Once we decide on a vacation, then come the major components – airfare and hotel.  Today, I’ll talk about airfare.  I do my research and check airfares.  For this trip, it means looking at direct flights and connecting flights over a series of weeks (sometimes months) to find the best flight (route, day of the week and price).  Typically, I find the best day to book the flight is a Tuesday.

That’s the day we actually made the purchase and made the reservation to fly out one day earlier than we planned because the price was that good.

Don’t forget to use the best credit card for the perks.  We use our airline credit card, so that checked luggage is free and we get priority boarding – all this by choosing the best credit card.  And we earn additional miles for the purchase too.

As you get ready for the upcoming holiday travel season, here’s a great article on saving money on airfare.

We specifically buy our airline tickets on a Tuesday, as it seems the prices are lowest on that day.  We recently purchased airfare for almost $200 less per person, as we watched the pricing for a specific flight go up and down.

Read here and see if you can save money.

For more financial tips, visit my website.

Last week we were looking at a destination that we have wanted to travel to.  This is how we got the best deal for us.

First we started at the cruise line’s website to come up with the cruise information.  If you are first time cruiser, I wouldn’t suggest your try this.  We determined the specific cruise / itinerary we wanted.  Next, we look at sailing dates – which ones worked with our schedule and had the lowest pricing.  Now, we have a base price.

We checked with our airline’s cruise vacation planner.  Yes, they offered the cruise.  But, they had a processing fee and were a little more than booking with the cruise line directly.  We had an email that was saying they were having a great sale, so we called them.  There price was higher than the cruise website.

Next, we set up a post to get bids on this specific cruise – cruise line, itinerary, sailing date, cabin category and waited.  Several offers came in.  We contacted one.  They were able to match the cruise website price to the penny and offered us an on-board credit of $250.

In our experience, pricing is very similar among many options.  The perks are what is different and they can be a great reason to use one vacation planner versus another.

How do you plan your cruise vacation?