7-Day Southern Caribbean Cruise

St. Thomas

Well we just got another cruise booked and we are excited. We are going with our good friends Ryan and Heather Johnson. It is a Southern Caribbean which departs out of Puerto Rico, San Juan on Feb 27. It will hit:

St Thomas
Dominica
Barbados
St. Lucia
St. Kitts
St. Maarten

These look to be all lush "Hawaiian like" islands.

We booked through the Carnival site directly for this one. They have a new way of booking which I hope will give us some perks. I will try and explain it.

When we called they had two different rates. Ones was for $419. This was just a regular rate. We would put a deposit down and if they price went down (which they most often do) we could submit a repricing form and they would take the difference off our total bill. The catch was you can only do this until the final payment is due, which is on Dec 14. You could also cancel this and get all of your money back before Dec 14.

The other price was the early saver price which was $429. This was a nonrefundable rate. If the price goes down you have until 48 hours before the ship leaves to get the price difference. It will come in an onboard credit. Which works out good since you still need to pay your gratuities which for a 7 day amounts to $140 for 2 people.

We chose the $429 price. And since that same room class was being offered for $419 we immediately submitted at price difference form and it knocked the rate down to $419. So we know have $20 of onboard credit!

Now for the flight. Flying to San Juan is expensive. About $600 round trip. I didn't really want to pay this amount so I started to get creative. Since Southwest doesn't fly into San Juan, we will be using our free tickets to fly into Orlando. From there we will catch a flight directly to San Juan which is $238 round trip. Much better!

LONDON on a DIME!

Leslie & Becky at the Thanksgiving Point Luau 2009

So I thought I would share with your our latest adventure/deal we got. Roger and I along with Becky and her husband are going to London/Paris next June. Becky has a time share Marriott that we were able to book in Paris on the Disney property. So we will stay there 1/2 the time and we are using Marriott points and BOGO coupons in London. But what I wanted to share is how we snagged $488 round trip tickets from SLC to Heathrow.

Last year we were going to go to Hawaii and things fell through. But, Roger and I both signed up for a United Visa Card. We never used the points since we did not go. We only had 25,000 points which usually does not get you very far. In order to keep the points from expiring, I would go to the United site buying portal and purchase something from Kohls. This kept my points active since I would still be adding points to it.

On some United flights you can use miles for part and pay for part. We found several flights that were using 25,000 points plus pay $315 for the ticket. After taxes and security fees, it came to $488 per ticket. The regular price on this ticket if paid in full was $1500.00! That is a huge savings.

Now Becky did not have any points but she signed up and within a few days they sent her the card. She called them up and asked to move her due date up as soon as possible and made the required payment to earn the points. Within about a 10 day period, she had the points deposited into her United account.

Our trip is not until June 2011 but a little advance planning has save us a ton of money!

The Knecht's and Sherwoods

Airboat Tour in the Everglades

Sydney at the Alligator Park--Yes they are real and they are not fenced in!

Well I am going to backtrack a little bit to explain were we have been this year.

In January we decided to go to Fort Lauderdale. We were ready for a break from the cold and were in search of warmer weather. We left on Jan 29 and came home Feb 5. We stayed in Pompano Beach which was about 10 minutes from Ft Lauderdale. We also drove down to Miami a few times and played at the beach, did an Airboat tour and Alligator Tour. We took the kids into Fort Lauderdale and took a water taxi to dinner one night.

Here are some of my tips we used for this trip:

Lodging:
We used my mom's timeshare. She has three weeks a year. Last year I bought a additional year and tacked it onto her time share. If you don't have a time share--there are so many that do. Go to www.homeaway.com. I have used them several times when we didn't have access to the time share. Our timeshare (Global) traded with the Wyndham in Pompano Beach which is were we stayed.

Go with friends. First off--it is just so much fun. Secondly--you get to share the cost of the condo. We rented a two bed, two bath condo for the 10 of us. It slept 8 and we brought two twin size blow up mattresses with us for the other kids to sleep on. It had a full kitchen, 3 pools, waterslide, tennis courts, volleyball court, miniature golf, kids room with games, free daily games.

We were able to cook breakfast, pack lunches for our outings and make dinner. We went out a few times but mostly cooked at the condo. This saved us a ton of money!

Total Coast for our family for the week was $200 plus about $100 in groceries.

Flights:
This is going to be your most expensive part of the travel. I highly recommend Southwest Airlines. Here is what I do to keep my prices low;

1. Get a Southwest Visa (you will get 1 free flight upon opening an account)
2. Book early--and then watch the prices. You can rebook and take the credit if the price goes down. If it does, you have 1 year from the purchase date to use it. THE PRICE ALWAYS GOES DOWN. I usually have quite a bit of credit to use on any give flight since previous ones have gone down. The passengers name does need to be the same on the credit and flight now.
3. Pay all your bills on your visa (that is if you pay everything off every month). You will be surprised at how fast you will earn free flights.

Car Rental:
Book early. Most car rental places have coupon code that you can do a search for. It can bring down the price dramatically. Also, you don't have to put a credit card down when booking so keep an eye on the prices.

Transportation

Ryan Jumping of the pier in Roatan, Hondurus!

We are getting excited and ready for our Disney cruise in October. I just looked at the Disney site to make sure the price had not gone down (yea right) before I made my final payment. Once you make your final payment--you cannot make any changes to passengers, or prices. This why you NEVER make your final payment until it is due.

We also got our transportation all sqared away. The cruise lines will offer you transportation but I have found that to be very expensive. If you are cruise out of Cape Canaveral the cheapest transportation I have found is The Happy Limo. They have great prices for large groups. We have scheduled 1 bus and 1 van which will fit all of us. They are picking us up at the hotel and taking us to the port and then they will be there once we get off to take us to the airport.

We also found a hotel (Fairfield Inn Orlando Airport) that offers free airport transportation and a free breakfast in the morning. So that is all taken care of!

Cozumel

Jodi and Aaron relaxing at Chankanaab

Our good friends Ryan and Heather at the ruins in Cozumel

I have been to Cozumel twice. The first time we had the kids with us and we went to Chankanaab which is a National Park. Very clean and very nice. We took a taxi there and I found some coupons online that got us in for cheaper. They have a nice area with chairs and a fresh water pool. You can also see the people swim with the dolphins. A great family place to go.

The second time we went we were going to go to Tulum. These are ruins on the mainland. So you have to take a hour ferry over to the mainland, 1 1/2 hour bus ride to Tulum and then back again. I have heard they are awesome, but we docked a little late and got a little spooked by our time limit. We decided to go the to ruins on Cozumel and went to take a taxi. The taxi was $100 round trip. I noticed that there were car rental companies across from the taxi's so we checked them out first. We were able to rent a Jeep for the day for $60! We were able to go to the ruins--which were small and hot, but interesting and then we found a beach for the rest of the day. The funnest part was the jeep which was very "rustic." It didn't always start and the seat had a hard time staying in place. But we had fun.

We rent a jeep again when we have the kids with us in Oct 2010!

Belize

By far this is one of may favorite excursions. We booked this on our own after some online research. We booked through cavetubing.com. We had to take a tender to the city once we arrived in Belize. We then met our bus at a certain pier. We took about a 45 minute bus ride to the caves. We hiked up to the caves through a rain forest which was incredible. They then hooked about 10 of us together and took us through caves which were sometime pitch dark. (which is why we have head lights on) Water was cool but if felt good. They then drove us back to a picnic area where they fed us lunch. They entertained us the entire time.

Some are probably fearful of booking outside the ship. I was too at first. But this is their job. They know what time they have to have you back to the ship. I have never had a problem with an outside excursion.

Freeport, Bahamas

Lucayan National Park

Roger and David walking to the Beach

Ben's Cave

I have been to Freeport Twice. Once you dock, you either have to rent a car or take a taxi. There is nothing at the port. The first time we took a taxi to the main part of town, did a little shopping and played on the beach. It was okay.

The second time, we did a little more research and found a place called Lucayan National Park. It was quite aways from the ship so we decided to rent a car. It is always good to travel with someone so we could share the expense. The are was bout $100 for the day but we were able to split it. The rental company picked us up from the port and took us to our car. We drove about 45 minutes out to the Park. The first thing we saw were the bat caves. They are closed at time when the bats are in them.

We then took a little hike to get to the beach. It was a trail about a mile long through pine trees, mangrove swamps and caves which opened up onto to the most beautiful beach. Not many people there since you really had to know about it before you left. Water was crystal clear and warm! We stayed there for a few hours and then headed back. We ate at the local burger king before getting back on the ship.

A funny note--in Freeport they drive on the opposite side so it took all of us to keep our car on track! Be prepared for that if you rent a car!