KPLU travel expert Matthew Brumley tends toward independent travel in his own life – the kind where you can break with your itinerary for an afternoon, or decide spontaneously to spend an extra day in a city you like.
But this week, he’s talking about cruise travel – which often comes with a very specific itinerary.
“It’s a great way to travel if you have multiple generations with you,” he said. “It’s a turnkey solution to a big family trip. And often times it’s super cheap.”
Repositioning Cruises
The spring and fall often bring heavily discounted cruises, thanks to something called “repositioning.”
“A ship has to reposition itself from Alaska where it spent the summer touring fjords and watching whales to get itself down to Mexico,” he said.
Cruise lines will discount the ship heavily to get people aboard, so the ship doesn’t travel empty.
Brumley says the best way to find one of these cruises is to just visit the cruise line website of your choice and search for “repositioning.”
Long Or Short
Sometimes a repositioning cruise can take you from here to Mexico, or from here to Alaska. Sometimes it can go from the east coast of the United States to the Mediterranean Sea.
“It’s not just the big ships that are doing this,” he said. “It’s also the small ships that are doing this. Every ship has to be repositioned around the planet.”
That means you might also find short repositioning cruises for what amounts to a long weekend, or just a few days. Brumley says you should look for opportunities like taking the train to Vancouver, and coming back to Seattle in just a day or two. Or try taking the train to San Francisco, and coming back up to Seattle on a ship moving from Mexico to Alaska.
“You’ve seen the countryside by train, you’ve spent some time in San Francisco; you’ve tasted some great wines in Napa, and then you’ve cruised up to Seattle,” he said. “What could be more fun?”
