This year we are spending the winter months, January through March, in Florida and the Caribbean. We have dear family and friends in Florida and it is always wonderful to visit them every few years. In recent times, we have started to add a cruise there and even back into the mix as a way of achieving a long stay away from winter in the UK at a reasonable cost into the mix.

So, we booked the first and and last legs of an amazing Circle South America 78 night cruise that Cunard Queen Victoria is offering this winter. We will cruise out from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale on her, get off and spend our winter there and then pick her up again mid March in Fort Lauderdale to cruise back to Southampton. We have also booked a two week Caribbean cruise from Fort Lauderdale on Majestic Princess. 6 weeks of cruising on Cunard and Princess has cost us £3000 each but when you factor in that this includes all food, a certain amount of drinks, all transport around the Caribbean, accommodation for 42 nights, daily activities, nightly entertainment, laundry, etc we think it is very good value. We certainly couldn’t replicate it by booking flights and staying in a 4 or 5 star all inclusive for 6 weeks. We also love the fact that we will arrive in Florida and more importantly back in the UK without any jetlag at all or run the risk of a dvt being cramped into economy seats.

So, there are 4 sections to this winter’s blog. The first is the cruise on Queen Victoria from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale. The second is the 14 Night Circle Caribbean Cruise on Majestic Princess, starting and ending in Fort Lauderdale. Third section is 5 weeks multi-centre around Florida. Finally, we cruise home on Queen Victoria again. Each section will have it’s own blog.

We have economised where we can, so for example we booked our rental car early with rentalcars.com and got an amazing deal with Hertz for a small/midsize Hyundai with 0 excess and all the insurances for around £840 for the 5 weeks we are in Florida. This compares very favourably to when we were there in 2022. Clearly the rental agencies are recovering from the pandemic effects. We have also purchased a special UK only Disney ticket for 2 of our Orlando weeks which gives us 2 weeks unlimited access for the price of 1. It includes the 4 theme parks, the 2 water parks, unlimited pro photographs, crazy golf, unlimited golf for Bob at Oak Trails course. That takes care of a lot of our entertainments in Orlando. Our accommodation in Florida is 99% using our timeshares and is all self catering so we can eat in mostly which will be good.

Another economy, is that like when we went to Stansted in September, we are doing a Del-Boy to get to Southampton Docks and back from home. Taxis were nearly £200 each way but we discovered we could rent a small van from Enterprise in Dover for £70 each way and we can leave it at Enterprise at Southampton Docks. It will take all our luggage easily. On the luggage front, we are taking Bob’s golf clubs, 2 very large suitcases, 2 cabin bags and a large suit carrier. It’s great not to have to worry about how much baggage we have.

Got a little worried on Wednesday night when it started pouring with snow just after we picked up the van! It’s a really nice big van too. Much better than the one they gave us for going to Stansted and no Enterprise ads all over it. Thankfully the snow had cleared by this morning and we had an uneventful trip down to Southampton, getting in about 1pm. Bob dropped me at the QE2 Terminal and went off and took the car to Enterprise. Sadly they no longer offer a shuttle back to the terminal but even so the cab was only £12. It’s definitely all worth doing.

We got checked in easily enough. There were quite a lot of worried looking people sitting in the terminal. For some reason they had omitted to apply for the ESTA visa waiver for the USA and were having to apply there and then and hope the approval came through before sailing time! I chatted to one couple who were booked for the entire 78 days and they were really worried. If they missed the ship, their next choice would be to fly to the Azores and pick it up there. I wonder what happened….

Our cabin is really big, we are impressed. Our luggage didn’t arrive until about 4pm but it went away ok. Had a bit of an explore and went to see the military band perform in the Queen’s Room (the ballroom) at 3pm. They normally perform on the quayside but it was deemed too cold for that.

At 515 there was an amazing firework display for us from a barge. They often do this for the sailaway of a long cruise. It was pretty spectacular.