So, you’re debating a long Repositioning cruise for your family…but you’re debating the details?  Here are some our experiences in choosing and enjoying our 18-day Transpacific Cruise through the South Pacific. Choosing a Room When booking our Royal Caribbean Repositioning Cruise through the South Pacific, we had the choice of either a Family Oceanview Stateroom with a porthole that would accommodate all 5 of us in a single room...

We arrived in the Southernmost territory of the United States on a beautiful morning in May. American Samoa already had our hearts—it was covered in lush, beautiful green mountains!  It is slightly larger than Washington D.C. (76.1 square miles) and consists of 5 volcanic islands and two coral atolls (reefs). We started our day by wandering Southeast from the cruise ship parking, and found ourselves at the a beautiful building run by the...

On Day 11 of our South Pacific Repositioning Cruise we arrived in Apia, Samoa. It was a beautiful day and we decided to hit the town! We walked off the ship and immediately found eager taxi drivers awaiting our business. We were hoping for a killer deal, but quickly found they were quoting fairly high prices to take us on a tour of the island. We agreed upon $110 with one taxi driver, and while he ran off to get his vehicle another came...

We decided to do one formal shore excursion on our cruise through the South Pacific Islands. On Day 9 we were in Suva, Fiji and we purchased the “Countryside Drive and Fire Walking Spectacular” tour. At $99/adult, it didn’t break the bank, but still allowed us a long half-day off the cruise ship. Our cruise ship parked at a commercial barge, as per usual in the South Pacific, and we could see some of the hopping downtown from the...

Day 6 of our Transpacific Repositioning Cruise was another bust—we missed our Mystery Island port (another beach day gone!) due to high seas and our inability to tender. After a very rough day at sea, and me losing my breakfast (while still in the dining area) we arrived at Vila, Vanuatu on Day 7 and were able to walk on dry ground. This time we took only 2 year old Ethan (the girls didn’t want to leave the kid’s club) and while...

Our first port of call on our 18 day Transpacific Cruise was supposed to be Isle of Pines, New Caledonia. Isle of Pines is a beach destination, and it was something we had been looking forward to since we’d left the beaches of Southern Thailand over a month earlier. Sadly, it was windy and the seas were too rough to tender us in to Isle of Pines (since a large enough dock wasn’t available), and we therefore arrived a day early in our...