Welcome to the Royal Caribbean podcast, a weekly look into the world of Royal Caribbean cruising.

I'm your host Matt Hodgeburg, and this is episode number 35.

How do you figure out the best cruise for yourself?

That's a question everyone goes through when picking a Royal Caribbean cruise, and so this week

we're going to look at how to tackle the prospect of comparing cruises, itineraries,

and ships to help you find the best one for you.

Let's go through the process and offer some insight in helping you pick out the next Royal Caribbean cruise that's perfect for you and your family.

Here we go.

One of our podcast listeners, David Gonzalez, emailed us last week with a question that inspired this week's podcast episode.

David writes, I'd love to

hear a show about how to best go about researching and estimating a cruise. I've been to the

rural Caribbean website and the sheer number of ships and itineries is daunting to say the least.

Let's say I wanted to figure out whether to do Alaska, Mediterranean, or the Caribbean,

and wanted a comparison shop. Any suggestions or expert tips on how to approach this?

I thought this is a great question to tackle this week because whether you're a veteran

real Caribbean cruiser or a first-timer, you're going to be going through this exact process.

Now, as you probably know, Royal Caribbean operates 21 ships these days, so there's a lot to

choose from.

So when you look at things from blank slate standpoint

of, yes, I want to take a Royal Caribbean cruise, where do I start? I think there are three main

factors to consider at the very beginning of the cruise selection process. Time of the year of your

cruise, budget, and how many nights you're roughly interested in taking. Starting with the time

...