The December trip for this year has been even more difficult to pin down. Shortly after Graham vetoed to the original plan, I found out that a good friend of mine had a cruise booked on the Magic for December. This is essentially the same cruise we all did in 2013, just that it substitutes Castaway Cay for Grand Cayman. I was all over this. Normally December is a good month for Interline rates so this sounded like this would be happening. One drawback was that the cruise only lasts 5 days. So to make is worth our while, we had to combine it with something else.
Very early on, we looked at other cruise lines and I was actually ready to commit ourselves to a Eastern Caribbean cruise on Carnival, which also sails out of Miami and is due back into port the same day they Magic sets sail. So this would have been perfect. People we know did try to warn us off, but we decided to make our own assessment. So I called the Interline agent that was offering this cruise and my enthusiasm was soon curbed. After all kinds of surcharges were applied, the cruise suddenly cost twice as much and this was more than I was willing to pay. By then our September trips were creeping up on us and we decided that we would enjoy them first and then worry about December afterwards.
In the meantime, I kept looking though. I noticed that there were a lot of Interline rates available on the Dream and there was a sailing that would work perfectly well with our plans on 7th December. This would mean that we would have a day and a bit to explore Miami from getting back into Port Canaveral. At that point there were only rates out until early November, but we were not going to book anything until we got back from Florida anyway.
To complicate matters, while I was enjoying myself at Disneyland, they changed the
DCL website and now you can no longer retrieve the Interline rates on there, but have to call them. So call them I did and all they had on offer were cruises out of Galveston including the one we had originally discussed. I tried once more, but Graham still was not keen. So I monitored Cruise Fish and a few Interline sites that I am a member of and hoped for the best.
Not long after it was time for my trip to Disneyland Paris and while I was there, I noticed two things. The cruise on the Dream had almost sold out by then and some Interline rates had been released for January, but no further ones for December. I had to admit that this was not going to happen. I have just over 3 weeks leave booked in December and as our year for leave runs consecutively with the calendar year, I could not move it. So I got used to the idea that I may spent those three weeks sitting at home.
Once I went back to work after the Paris trip, one of my colleagues mentioned that he had seen a really good Interline deal on Royal Caribbean out of Dubai just before Christmas. The problem for him was the lack of leave and he was also concerned that the flights would be full. This was during the time I was on leave anyway and more or less for fun, I checked what the flights looked like and they looked very promising indeed. Still, at that point I did not do anything about this. It was not until a couple of days later that I decided to have a closer look at this. I actually quite liked what I saw and sent Graham an email with the prices. He sent me an email back that he was up for it if I was. By then I was at work and could not do anything about this until the following day.
The next morning I rang one of the UK Interline agents and was told that the rate had expired and what they quoted me was significantly higher than the rates that are open to everybody on the Royal Caribbean website. So I politely declined. The same rate was still available via a Canadian agent and I decided to book through their website. What I had forgotten as it was so long that I had actually booked a cruise through an Interline agent is that they do not work with a life system, but have to request the booking from the cruise line. I got and acknowledgement email stating that I would hear back within 24 to 48 hours. So I was a little worried that they would turn around, too and say the rate is no longer available. Fortunately when I was on my way home that evening, I had my cruise documents in my inbox.
So now we are booked on an Arabian Gulf cruise on the Splendour of the Seas from 14th to 21st December. The cruise sails from Dubai and calls a Khasab in Oman, Muscat in Oman (overnight stop), Abu Dhabi and then makes an overnight stop in Dubai. Dubai we are of course well familiar with to the point that we are thinking of just staying on the ship during the port day there as we have already been to Dubai this year, but the other ports are all new to us. I have also found out that they have spinner dolphins in Oman. We have started to look at shore excursions, but are feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. There is just so much that we would like to do in Oman. Abu Dhabi does not quite capture my imagination as much. I am sure that at one point or the other during the cruise snorkeling, history, culture and scenery will feature. We just have to sort out what to do where.
Corinna
I'm glad Graham was with you and you weren't there alone.
