November 1st, 2024
This is the first entry for our world cruise in 2025. If all goes well, it will be the first of 100 or more entries. As many of you know, we attempted to do the world cruise in 2024. Unfortunately, Mary's hip did not agree with that plan. She ended up having her right hip replaced in December of 2023. When we cancelled the 2024 trip, we immediately looked for a 2025 trip. We looked at a couple of different options. Holland America had a nice one, but it had too many tendering spots. When they ship tenders at a port I cannot get on land at that port. Beyond the number of tendering spots, we had to pay attention to where does the ship actually go. Obviously, it goes around the world but there are countless ways to get this accomplished. We did have to pay some attention to how much it costs. As it turns out, we found one on Princess. Initially, we were looking at a smaller cabin but after thinking it through we decided that 100 some days in a smaller cabin was not a good idea. Of course, there was an option for a bigger cabin which meant more money, which is obviously what we went with. It is a once in a lifetime trip. We are working with a lady named Gillian. We told her to book the following trip.
Booking Details
From Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Jan 05, 2025 to May 02, 2025
116 Days
Island Princess, Caribe deck
Stateroom C727
It is a bigger cabin. Beyond that we get certain amenities like free Wi-Fi, photo package and the drinks package. We also get some amount of money for on board credit. That will help us pay for things like poker and bingo. One nice thing is because it's Princess, we get a bump up in Princess status. We go from Platinum to Elite. I'm not exactly sure what all these benefits are, but everything helps. I think we will get free laundry service right away also. That will be huge for Mary. I'm sure as these notes progress you will see more information on some of these benefits.
Because we did a fair amount of work in preparation for the world cruise in 2024 some of it could be reused for 2025, but unfortunately, a lot of it needed to be unwound. All the money we sent to Holland America needed to be recouped. We needed to figure out if we could extend the insurance policy. There were other things that took some time.
The first third of the year was focused on getting Mary healthy. There was a down payment we had to pay in April, I think. I did some initial looking at excursions, but I knew that I couldn't do much too soon. Many of the excursion companies would not have any information on 2025 until later in 2024. We spent the spring and summer completing two trips up north. I won't detail them because I'm sure I will detail them in the Welti Holiday letter that I have yet to write. (I just added that to my To Do List. I'm not sure I'm going to get it all done by the time we leave.)
For more than 30 years Mary and I have been a team. We each have our tasks that we need to accomplish. I tend to oversee anything financial. I'm also in charge of getting the excursions figured out. I'm in charge of the website and much of the content writing. Mary has a say in all of these things, but I’m the lead. Mary oversees packing. I am using packing in a very generic sense. This includes the easy things like clothes. But it also includes figuring out things like how we are going to get pills for six months. In my mind she has the tougher job. I know she's been countless hours on the phone with united healthcare to figure out how we can get our drugs for the six months. There is a plan in place which we will know will work 100% after December 7th. Something to do with we get a 90 day supply and then we can get another 90 day supply with an override. I'm not even going to pretend to understand what that means but Mary's got it figured out. I trust her. She also has to give thought to things like how many catheters? How many gloves? These are things most people don't have to consider. Once we figure out how many we have to obtain them. Once we obtain them, we have to put them in boxes so we can take them on the trip. We've agreed that we're going to put most of our stuff in plastic moving boxes. With these we can duct tape the lids and they should be pretty safe. When we empty a box, we can put one box inside the other. At least we think this plan will work. Mary still wants to put clothes in suitcases. As I mentioned, this is her department, so we go with her plan.
There are other things like who's going to watch the house while we're gone? Who's going to get the mail? How are we getting to Fort Lauderdale. The ship leaves on the 5th, but there's a party on the night of the fourth. Mary found a local driver who will take us down on the 4th. On paper, there will be transportation for me to get from the hotel to the ship on the fifth. This is one of those things where we have to take it on faith. One thing that we haven't talked about, but we will need to figure out, is how are we going to pay taxes. Obviously, this comes after we figure out what the taxes are. I will have to figure out how to make sure that things are paid for while we're gone. This should not be an issue because we have Internet access. We pay for everything via the Internet now. There are other things that need to be figured out before we go. I won't list them here mostly because I haven't thought about them yet. I just remembered that we need to get Apple air tags updated. The other day Mary mentioned she wanted to upgrade her iPhone because it's got a better camera. Our phones are three years old, so I guess it's time. Hopefully reading these paragraphs you get the idea that you just don't book a cruise and pack a bag. For us, especially, there are lots of extra steps. Before we leave on the 4th, we have to have everything known and figured out. We can't have any late-in-the-gameshow stoppers.