What cruise line and where in the Caribbean help
 

My husband and I were thinking of a cruise to the Caribbean around next April, looks like that's a good month for weather. I'm wondering which cruise lines would be the best and what part of the Caribbean would be good to visit since this will be our first time to the Caribbeans. We would prefer a smaller ship but I can't see on the web site any small ships going to the Caribbeans.

So, does anyone have any advice on which cruise line to go on, there's so many of them. What matters most to us is the quality of the ship, and we would love open seating.

You might want to try Windjammer cruises - smaller ships and ports that the megaliners cannot dock at. If you haven't yet, check out cruisecritic.com's forums for lots of info on ships, ports, etc.

vacationstogo.com has a good search engine to help you narrow down a cruise. Think it requires registration, but then you get their great emails w/all the sales that come out - so might be handy for you now.

Have you looked into Oceania? All their ships are on th small side, around 600 ft. long, and have maybe 600 or so passengers. Ther are several smaller Princess hips too which are identical to Oceanias fleet as they were purchased from the now defunct Renaissance cruise line whic had one size of ship. The Princess ships of that size include the Royal, Pacific and the Tahitian which after a refit will be renamde the Ocean.

You might consider a Panama Canal cruise out of Fort Lauderdale or Miami. The bigger ships do not go through the canal. Maybe a cruise with the ship going into the canal, staying on the lake, then turning around and going back to your original port. There are ports of call along the way on these 10-11 night cruises. We did MSC once but didn't care for the food or service; the ship was nice but not exquisite. We loved Princess Sun--not brand new but formal, pretty, British crew, wonderful shows, not the Las Vegas type. We liked the ports of call. Yes, vacationstogo.com is a wonderful easy-to-use site for this as is cruisecritic.com. They both have ship descriptions & ratings.

We love Oceania; the Azamara line ships are the same size.