New years Eve Cruise
 

We are thinking about a short cruise over New years Eve with our adult children.Which itinerary would have the best weather and smoothest sailing? Also, my husband wants to go Royal Caribbean and I have heard of a brand new Carnival ship( do not know the name) which is supposed to be fabulous. Any opinions to help us with this decision? Thanks

If it is only a short cruise (3-5 days), and you want good (warm) weather, start from as far south as you can. Even leaving from Miami can be cold at that time of year. We've sailed from Miami in January with temps only in the 50's and 60's, which doesn't give you much time to get anywhere warm. I'd suggest sailing out of San Juan so that you have some nice warm (80's) sailing every day of your cruise. That will however limit your ships and schedules.
Both Carnival and RCCL will do a good job on a new years eve sailing and both lines are comparable.

A few comments:

1. If it's a short cruise (i.e., less than 1 week), you'll be looking at older ships--the newer ships tend to sail itineraries of at least a week.

2. Florida should be plenty warm for you. New Orleans or Galveston, however, would likely be a bit chilly.

3. New Year's Eve is the most expensive time of the year to cruise. Not suggesting you shouldn't go, just want you to be aware.

4. Finally, note that all passengers will need passports to go to the Bahamas and the Caribbean starting January 1 (currently, you just need a birth certificate). Short cruises that go to Key West and Cozumel (Mexico) are available--and you won't need a passport for Mexico (or Canada) until 2007.

Cheers!

Serenade of the Seas out of San Juan is a wonderful ship with a great staff and super itinerary.

IME, Carnival cannot compare to Radiance class on RCI or to RCI overall. I am just off one of their newest ships and was on Serenade late Feb. The differences are many.

Adventure is a Voyager class RCI ship that also does the southern route. She is very nice but too large for me. However, there are lots more activities on this class of ship.

For me, Serenade is one of my top three best cruises ever out of 103.

Really double check with a travel agent. I am not sure how many ships are going for 7 days at that time.

We have booked our cruise for xmas and it is an 11 day cruise due to xmas and new years falling on a sunday they have extended the cruise.

I have cruised Carnival twice over xmas and last year was RCCL and again this coming xmas.

IMO, there were things on Carnival we liked that we didn't get on RCCL and vice versa.

Good luck

We did a New Years Eve cruise a couple of years ago, it was the worst cruise we have taken. The price was very expensive but I can get over that. The ship we took was Carnival Triumph out of Miami. This cruise was sooooo crowded, it seemed that alot of the rooms I passed when they were cleaning had people sleeping on the floors. The cruise staff was very unfriendly, it seemed like they felt "I can't wait till these pepole get off this ship" kinda like we were an annoyance. If this was our first cruise we might not have tried it again.
So as my story goes New years was not a pleasant experience for us. too too crowded.
Also there was alot of teenagers/and kiddies,