So, I always thought it would be cool to take off from one coast of the US and show up on the other side…..by circumnavigating the entire world. If you read my last post, you may of picked up that I was beginning to think about that for early 2025. Well this week we laid the ground work for pulling this together.
In this post, I intend to lay out the concept and the costs as the pieces begin to fall into place. I also intend to do this well…..but cost effectively.
We will do a mixture of cruising and flying and maybe a tour or two along the way. In the last blog, I explained how we price cruises and told you that we booked a Transatlantic Cruise from Ft Lauderdale to Barcelona, Spain. We have a Porthole Balcony Cabin on the Celebrity Apex departing March 8th for $4,048.62 with Drinks, Internet and $600 On-Board credit (OBC).
Since that blog, we added two cruises on the Anthem of the Seas. The first one departs from Singapore on the 13th of April. That sailing will visit Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong and South Korea, before arriving in Tokyo. This cost for a Balcony Guarantee cabin on this 12 night cruise with a $200 non-refundable deposit was $2,650.44. We booked on board and transferred the cruise to Crucon. We were provided a total of $400 OBC, $300 from Crucon and an additional $100 shareholder bonus from RCL.
The second sailing on the Anthem of the seas, continues from Tokyo and has three additional stops in Japan before sailing on to Seattle. In this case, we have an obstructed view balcony. Crucon had a group rate but we saved an additional $200 by booking on board. This 15 day cruise cost a total of $2,018.18 and we will get $475 in OBC, $225 from Crucon and an additional $250 from the RCL Shareholder program. We did need to place a $1,000 refundable deposit.
Our total cost for these 40 days on cruise ships is $8,917.24 with $1,525 OBC (more than enough to cover all tips and incidental expenses.) This comes out to being approximately $223 per night total for the two of us.
We will be gone a total of 62 days, unless we add something before or after the cruise. This gives us 22 days to fill in between Barcelona and Singapore. These cruises will take us 12, 654 miles of our journey around the world, basically 2/3rds of the total distance. That just leaves us 6,764 miles to make up, plus whatever flights we do in the US. So what should we do? African Safari, Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, Ferrari World Abu Dhabi? All of it? Something else? Stay tuned, I will update this blog as we fill in the gaps!
Waddle on Ducks!