Caribbean Cruises

The Caribbean is really three different cruises sold under one name. Eastern routes run out to the Virgin Islands and St. Maarten, Western routes swing south to Cozumel, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, and Southern routes reach Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao - far enough that they usually start from San Juan or run longer from Florida. Short three- and four-night Bahamas trips from Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Port Canaveral fill out the rest, and many of them now lean on line-owned private islands; Carnival added its own at Celebration Key on Grand Bahama when it opened on July 19, 2025.

Timing matters more than most people expect. Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30, and NOAA's records put almost all major-hurricane activity between August and October, peaking in early to mid September. Ships rarely get caught in a storm - they reroute - but a reroute can mean a different set of islands than the ones you booked. Sargassum seaweed is the other summer problem: it piles up on beaches roughly from spring into early fall, worst in July and August, and on Mexico's Caribbean coast Playa del Carmen and Cancun take the heaviest loads. Collections there in 2026 were on pace to challenge the 2018 record. December through April is drier and calmer, and priced like it.

Most sailings here are round trips from a U.S. port, which makes them closed-loop. On a closed-loop cruise an adult U.S. citizen can board with a certified birth certificate plus a current government photo ID, and children under 16 need only the birth certificate. The catch is getting home if something goes wrong: if you miss the ship or need to be flown out from a foreign island, you need a passport, and lines are free to set stricter rules than the legal minimum. Plenty of cruisers carry one anyway for that reason.

Sources: aoml.noaa.gov, forbes.es, egovrush.com, cruisehive.com, travelextra.ie