My wife and I are in our mid fifties and we like to travel during the mid September to mid October time frame when she is on break from year round school. Since the children are grown up we have the ability to travel when the ships and resorts are less crowded. I know this is hurricane season which makes for great last minute deals since the ships are rarely full during this time but it is also more likely to be interrupted due to weather. This is our sixth cruise in twenty five years with five of them coming in the last ten years. We have cruised the Caribbean three times and the Mexican Riviera three times. We prefer the Caribbean due to the variety of the ports and the beautiful waters in the Bermudas. We have always cruised the Caribbean during Hurricane season and have yet to be really affected by weather but this one was close.

Being from California it is far more expensive for us to travel to the Caribbean than Mexico but it is worth the extra money. We usually fly Southwest Airlines who have pretty cheap rates and we use our Starwood member points to book a hotel in Florida. This helps us keep the costs in check so we have more money to spend on the cruise. This trip we flew into Ft. Lauderdale the day before the cruise and took a shuttle to the Sheraton fly and port hotel. This was only about ten minutes away from both the airport and the cruise terminal. This is a really nice Sheraton with a great location and a very helpful staff. The rooms are nice and the beds are comfy. I received a text message from Carnival that night that said our itinerary was being changed due to Tropical storm Matthew. I checked the web site and found that we were being redirected to some Eastern Caribbean ports due to the weather. We were initially disappointed because we had been to all these places before. The next day after we boarded the ship we learned that the storm had disapated over our area and we were back onto our original itinerary.

We booked this 8 day cruise to Cozumel, Costa Rica, and Panama about fifty days in advance through Carnival's website. We originally booked a Premium Balcony room. About three weeks before sailing I received a call from Carnival offering us an upgrade due to a last minute cancellation, I think it was an Balcony Suite. I declined the offer but after reconsidering I called back the next day to see if it was still available. It had been sold but they had just received a cancellation on a Grand Suite. Their offer was very reasonable, about $450 per person upgrade so we took it. This was a very good decision on our part. We had cruised in a suite before with Holland America and once you do it is hard to go back to a regular room. Read more