December Cruise Options in Mediterranean

I haven't seriously considered river cruises but that is something that I will look into. Thank you for your reply!

Frank, I've seen several other posts from you while I was researching this. You seem to help a lot of people! I will look into your suggestions.

There are at least a few dozen Mediterranean choices in December. Two things I like to do to choose a cruise. First, visit cruisecritic.com to read reviews of lines, ships and ports. Although the posters there don't always share my viewpoints (e.g. many use cruise ship sponsored excursions), they will give you a remarkably good idea of what to expect from each ship and possible activities at different ports. I've never been disappointed with a line I've booked, but I knew exactly what to expect before I boarded. Some ports lend themselves well to a one day visit, while others (Berlin and Rome come to mind) don't. I try to book an itinerary that works for cruising. After that, or referring back and forth, I really like vacationstogo.com for their search engine. So far it's the best I've seen. They are a travel agent that specializes in cruises. I've compared their prices to the other online travel agencies out there, and they are identical. I've booked three cruises through them and never had a problem - so I'll continue to use them until I have a reason not to.

We have been on several cruises. "Good Cruise Lines" is subjective. We like Holland America and Celebrity. Royal Caribbean was great when we took our kids and grandkids, but as seniors we probably would not use them on our own. Cruise Critic is where you should go for details on just about everything - http://boards.cruisecritic.com. Our Mediterranean cruising experience was in summer and fall, not December, I am not sure what is available then, as you rightly point out, most ships cross the Atlantic to winter in the Caribbean. P&O is a British line which may have winter cruises. Rick has a book on Mediterranean cruising which is also helpful. Have you considered river cruises? They operate Christmas market cruises in November/December.

I think it safe to say you will not find Med cruises in December. It is too cold further north and the Atlantic can be pretty rough at time of year. Cruisecritic.com is a good starting point. We have used Holland American as a good value line. Check their web site.

Michael, since you've never done a cruise before, I suggest when you are looking at them and comparing, look closely at how much time you actually have in each port.

There are lots of Mediterranean cruises in December. 1. vacationstogo.com has the best search engine I have seen. 2. They frequently have the best prices, too.
3 P&O and Fred Olson cater to British tastes. Costa and MSC cater to Italian/European tastes with announcements in many languages. Norwegian and Holland America are the most North American of the lines with December cruises in the Mediterranean, but at that time of year there will be many Europeans.

Thanks for your help everyone! We ended up selecting the Holland America Iberian cruise as it met the needs of our schedule.

You will like H America. We are doing our fourth cruise with them in Europe this October.

I think you made a good choice,, HAL is a good choice for North Americans,, Costa is a popular line but may NAs do not like it for various reasons.. Ps Cruising Europe is a great way to get a taste of ports you may wish to return to and spend more time on a land holiday.

I think you made a good choice,, HAL is a good choice for North Americans,, Costa is a popular line but may NAs do not like it for various reasons.. Ps Cruising Europe is a great way to get a taste of ports you may wish to return to and spend more time on a land holiday.

As an example of what you can learn from cruisecritic.com I thought Costa sounded ideal, "Cruising Italian Style". I love visiting Italy, so what could be better? Cruise critic helped me recall that Italian style means people in the lobby who completely ignore your problems, billing errors, complaints (the purser on a cruise) and fat, middle-aged men in speedos ogling your wife at the pool. Once I realized that, yes, that's also part of "Italian Style", I decided Costa probably wasn't the line for me.

I don't anyone has suggested that Costa is a quality cruise line or desirable. It is rare for the approval rating of Costa to exceed 50%.

There's plenty of choices for cruises in December. Costa and MSC are the majority. Southern France is a popular departure port, but Barcelona and Venice are popular also. Many of the cruises you can chose which port you want to get on/off at (making the cruise 4, 5, or 7 days as you like). I know dozens of families who have gone on both and MSC wins because of how they package it, like kids go free with an adult, drinks packages, etc. See if you can get one before winter break for Department of Defense and European schools, those get full fast.