Advice sought on best way to search for a cruise fitting certain criteria.
 

I'm looking for the most efficient way to search online to find all of my available options for a cruise that fits the following criteria:

1. Cruise must depart from a city served by Southwest Airlines that is NOT located on the West Coast.

2. Cruise must be between 3 and 7 nights in length.

3. Cruise cannot be on Carnival.

Is there a website better than others in helping me locate all the available options, without making me scroll through pages of irrelevant information? For example, if I search cruises departing from New Orleans, I find pages of Carnival departures, and information about departures on other lines but NOT in June. If I can get a list of cities that have cruise departures that fit my other criteria, I can check to see which ones are SWA cities.

Southwest has a map on their website, you can print it and check the port cities maybe on Expedia - this is my favorite website. You can check one port at a time, the length I don't remember exactly, maybe 3-6 nights and 7-10 nights, or you can pull up all of them and sort by length.

There is another website Cruise.com (don't confuse with CruiseS.com) that has a map to see sails by port.

Of course, it will take time and patience.

Once you find out (through Southwest) what cities are in play for you, go to the Vacations To Go (dot com) website (free registration) and use their "Custom Search" feature. Good luck.

Cruisecritic website also has a "search for a cruise" feature - again, you have to do separate search for each departure city - but there really are not that many meeting your criteria. You can also narrow it down by length of cruise, departure dates. List appears alphabetically by cruiseline, so just skip Carnival.

Priceline.com currently best prices filters

you need to co-ordinate with your southwest.com

destinations.

vacationstogo is so easy. You can plug in your exact criteria (including departure port, length of cruise, cruise line, etc.) and get everything you want. I've booked with them a couple of times and got great service too.

Try cruisesonly.com It will let you search by date, departure point and cruise line.

Have you try talking to a local travel agent?

Bakerstreet-I'm just curious. Why is Carnival off the table?

Thanks all, found my options!

1965: Just my impression that Carnival is the least-best (trying not to say "worst") cruiseline. Admittedly based on no personal experience and very little cruising experience -- twice on the Disney Magic and one Alaska cruise on RCCL. This trip will be either not with children, or with a 17-year-old, so not looking either for a party-hearty atmosphere OR a lot of children atmosphere.

I'd like to hear your opinion of Carnival if you have a different one!

Agree bakerstreet, Carnival is off our list of lines for similar reasons.

Bakerstreet-We've cruised with Princess, Grand Circle, Orient, Louis, and Carnival. Will take our 5th cruise with Carnival in Oct.,16 day transAtlantic from Barcelona to Galveston,TX. Absolutely don't want to be a Carnival cheerleader, but we do like them a lot. Unless you cruise during spring break to a tropical destination, party hearty no longer applies to them. I think most cruises during spring break tend to be a little wilder than at other times on just about all the lines. Anyway, we're 63 and 66, retired teachers, don't drink or gamble, pretty conservative, and we find Carnival to be to our liking. And they usually have the best prices. If you have the flexibility to cruise during times when kids are in school, and can take weeklong or longer cruises, you will find very few kids or college party people. Whatever you choose, have a wonderful time.

I agree with Sassafrass. The very best search engine for narrowing down cruise options at the moment is vacationstogo.com. Use it all the time to drill down to most expedient options for specific cruises. Their rates are usually good too though I do recommend shopping around if you have the time.