Pre & Post Cruise Expenses

Before you ever set foot on the ship, you will spend some money on a variety of expenses that are part of your world cruise. Here is a rundown of those expenses.

Baggage Shipment

You will likely be taking more baggage on a world cruise than you would on a shorter cruise, so you will probably spend more in either airline baggage fees or a baggage forwarding service. Checking two bags on an airline costs about $60 with a big jump for the third bag. Most baggage forwarding services charge about $100 per bag to ship within the USA. Shipping costs from Europe and Australia to Florida are about $275 to $300 a bag. The prices from Canada are about $125 per bag. Holland America offers this service for all passengers for a fee, and for those in category F and higher can ship 2 bags for free and those category B and higher have an unlimited allowance. This applies to residents of Canada and the USA only. Passengers for other countries will receive $100 to $200 in OBC.

Airfare

If you live too far away to drive, you will most likely be flying to Fort Lauderdale. HAL will sell you airfare or you can buy it yourself. There are many ways to shop for the best airfare flights, but just keep in mind that this is another cost of your world cruise. Don’t forget to calculate the price of your transfer from home to your nearest airport and include that in your world cruise total.

Pre/Post Cruise Hotel

Plan on $150 to $250 a night for your pre or post cruise hotel. I recommend hotels near Fort Lauderdale’s Southport Shopping Center: Renaissance, Extended Stay, Embassy Suites, Holiday Inn Express. These hotels are within easy walking distance of the Southport Shopping Center which has many stores if you need to pick up any last minute supplies.

Transfers

Taking a Taxi or Uber is my recommendation for your transfer from the airport and from your hotel to the cruise terminal. The cost for a taxi should be around $25 for each transfer. We arranged for a larger SUV since we had so many bags and paid $50 for each transfer. If you go with the cruise line transfer, you will wait until the bus fills and it will take longer than going solo. But the cruise line transfer will be simpler in that you simply find the HAL person with the sign in the airport baggage claim and follow instructions. UBER can take you from your hotel to your departure cruise terminal if you want to use them instead of a taxi.

Travel Insurance

I recommend that you look at the website insuremytrip.com to get some fast price comparisons for travel insurance. The cost varies by age, but I learned a few things from my research.

• The price goes up with age but stops going up after age 85 for some policy’s – 80 for most.
• New York Residents may pay more – don’t know why
• California Residents may pay less – don’t know why

Here is a helpful table with a range of prices for a standard policy with trip cancellation coverage. There are many more variables in play then I was able to research, but this should give you a ball park range to help with planning your trip cost. The insurance cost will be the percentage shown below multiplied by the insured trip cost.

If all you need is medical or evacuation coverage, you can enter zero for trip cost or a token amount ($250).   Doing this may change the effective date of your policy to the cruise start date which may impact pre-existing condition waivers and look back periods. Read the policies carefully.

Prepaying Expenses

Many of your world cruise expenses can be paid for in advance if you choose. About 1 month before the cruise you will receive a World Cruise booklet which lists many of the items you can pay for in advance, and in many cases, receive a discount. These include, wine packages, photo packages etc. Here is a table with all of these options from our 2016 Cruise:

There was not an option to prepay for any internet packages. However, there was an opportunity to get a 10% increase to the standard internet package minutes if you bought them in the first few days of the cruise.

If you really want to avoid any bill at the end of cruise, you can always purchase additional On Board Credit for yourself.

When you book excursions before you leave, you pay for those excursions immediately. This is another way to prepay some expenses.

Coming Next – Onboard Expenses

I will address the question – Do you spend less per day on a longer cruise than on a shorter cruise?