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

I'm your host Matt Hodgeberg, and this is episode number 45.

If you're considering a Royal Caribbean cruise to the Caribbean, the summer, or fall, it may sound like a great idea, but you should be very aware of hurricane season and how it can impact or not impact your cruise vacation.

Lots of our listeners struggle with this decision to chance a cruise this time of year.

So this week, we're going to discuss the pros and cons of taking a cruise during hurricane season.

Here we go.

This week's subject is actually brought up by one of our listeners.

It's Stephanie Ozin.

And Stephanie writes,

Hi, Matt, I'm considering a Caribbean cruise and wondering about hurricane season.

How often do cruises get disrupted or canceled?

Can you cover yourself with trip insurance?

What happens if the cruise isn't canceled but has to divert for a storm?

How much should I worry?

Thanks again for the great info and inspiration. Stephanie, it's a great question, and you know what? It's something I think a lot of people come up with because they're looking at cruises and, you know, it's easy enough when you're looking during other times of the year. But you look at certain cruises in the months when, you know, you have off from school, kids especially, right?

That's the summer.

And even in the fall, when you get fall breaks and there are lots of holidays that go on in the fall, and you look for an opportunity to go cruising there and there's some great prices, but there is risk. So what is hurricane season? Hurricane season began actually just a couple weeks ago, in fact, on June 1st, and it runs all the way through November 30th of the year.

It's the typical time where storms occur.

Most hurricanes, especially storms that really impact cruisers and are of significance, don't usually happen until later in the season, like August through October. And September and October are, in fact, the worst months for hurricanes, or the prime

month, as it were.

But they can occur at any point.

And again, the June 1 and November 30th dates, those are, you know, obviously floating.

...