Our 1st Cruise Experience - Total Vacation Costs

My wife and I just got back from our 5 day Carnival cruise to the Bahamas last week. We bought the cruise back in May for $661 and we really enjoyed it. It was great for the two of us to get away and unplug for a few days. I'll be following up with several post on our cruise experience along with the good and the bad. Here is a breakdown of our total vacation costs:

Breakdown of Cruise Vacation Expenses

Vacation Expenses
(2) 5 Day Carnival Cruise Tickets		$ 661.00
Hotel Night Before Departure		$ 145.13
(1) Soda Card		$ 36.75
(2) Cruise Auto-Gratuity ($10/day/pp)		$ 100.00
Misc Tips (luggage, excursion, etc)		$ 7.00
Souveniors, Gifts		$ 50.50
Wife's hair braids in Freeport		$ 10.00
Transportation in Nassau (taxis, ferry boat)		$ 14.00
Food/Drinks while in ports		$ 23.21
Transporation in Freeport (taxis)		$ 20.00
(2) Snorkleing excursion in Freeport		$ 90.00
Estimated gas to drive rt to Charleston		$ 55.00
Total		$1,212.59

As you can see the cruise tickets ended up almost less than 1/2 of the total cost of the vacation, but we still found tremendous value in the cruise and well worth the money we spent.

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Comments (8)

Glad you enjoyed your cruise. I'm assuming your baby did not go with you? Must be nice to get away from things and just relax. Next time, will you try a different destination?

Posted by Steve | November 2, 2010 5:00 PM

Steve - yes kid and dog stayed at my inlaws and that worked out well. Certainly if we did it again we'd prefer a different destination - we like to travel to new places.

Posted by 2million | November 2, 2010 5:26 PM

Cool, where do you think you'd go next time? A family member took an Alaskan cruise, which sounded really neat though I think I'd like to be hot rather than cold!

Posted by Steve | November 3, 2010 3:20 PM

Glad the cruise was fun for you! My wife and I were also there last week--we went on the Carnival Glory. It was a great trip. You got a much better deal on the tickets though. We should have planned ahead!

Posted by Ken | November 3, 2010 7:23 PM

the stock market is on a tear. 2million you're gonna make it well this month! Hopefully I didn't jinx everybody.

Posted by Steve | November 5, 2010 5:37 PM

That is a great price for the two tickets for the cruise. I was curious, did you budget for the other costs of the trip? Also, I have never been on a cruise, so are some of the charges pretty typical? I am just so surprised that the tickets were half the cost of your total trip. Unbelievable!

Posted by Lisa | November 8, 2010 1:25 AM

Lisa,
I had a rough idea of the other costs (excursions, auto-tipping, hotel) before we went. Certainly they ended up making the bulk of the expenses though. I believe we did pretty good on our other expenses associated with the cruise. Perhaps more typical cruise expenses would include more for drinks on board, roundtrip airfare to cruise instead of hotel, and additional excursions.

Posted by 2million | November 16, 2010 10:12 AM

You did a great job getting an economical cruise. One of the ways you really lucked out was not having to fly into the port of embarkation. Unfortunately for people like myself in the Northeast our choices for driving to the ship are very limited.

Posted by T.I. Cruiser | February 21, 2011 11:24 AM