When we started planning our route back home to Canada from Australia, we faced a big question: How do we make this massive jump across the Pacific without turning it into just another expensive long-haul flight? That’s when we started really digging into repositioning cruises.
What Is a Repositioning Cruise?
Cruise ships typically operate in different regions depending on the season. For example:
- Winter: Caribbean or South Pacific itineraries.
- Summer: Alaska or Mediterranean routes.
When the seasons change, cruise lines need to move their ships from one region to another. These moves are called repositioning cruises. Instead of sailing empty, cruise lines offer these voyages to travelers—often at significantly discounted rates compared to regular itineraries.
Key Features of Repositioning Cruises
- One-Way Journeys: Unlike typical round-trip cruises, repositioning cruises start in one port and end in another—often on different continents.
- Longer Duration: They usually last 10–20 days, with quite a few sea days and fewer port stops.
- Lower Cost per Day: Because they’re less in demand, prices are often much lower than standard cruises.
- Unique Routes: You’ll cross oceans, visit off-the-beaten-path ports, and experience rare itineraries.
Why We Chose a Repositioning Cruise
Flying from Sydney to Vancouver is a 14-hour flight—efficient, but not exactly memorable. We wanted something that felt like part of the adventure, not just a means to an end. Here’s why a repositioning cruise checked all the boxes:
- Turn Transit into an Experience: Instead of spending a day in airports, we’ll spend 30 days at sea, visiting islands and enjoying the journey itself. It’s slow travel at its best.
- Incredible Value: Repositioning cruises are a pretty great deal especially when you factor in replacing the need for 4 transpacific flights, accommodation, meals, entertainment, kids club, and transportation to and from remote islands and unique destinations along the way.
- Unique Itinerary: Our cruise includes stops in places like Tahiti, Hawaii, LA and San Francisco —destinations we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
- Built-In Downtime: After months of active travel, a cruise gives us time to reset, recharge, and reflect before landing back in Canada for the final leg of our travel.
- Decrease jet-lag: Instead of having to immediately deal with a 19 hour time change between Sydney and Vancouver, we get to slowly adjust an hour every few days as we sail back.
Things to Consider
- Plan Ahead: Repositioning cruises can sell out quickly. This cruise was actually the first thing we booked for Sabbatical, 2 years before the sail date.
- Be Flexible: Repositioning cruises only happen once a year for a given location and direction, so we actually had to adjust our overall travel plans to make these specific dates work.
- Get cozy: Cruise rooms aren’t typically very big and 30 days is a long time to share a small space with your family! We booked a larger room with a balcony, for the sake of our sanity and we are looking forward to the kids club, but its still going to be a lot of togetherness.
For us, a repositioning cruise isn’t just transportation—it’s part of the adventure. It turns a long-haul flight into a floating journey, adds new destinations to our trip, and gives us time to savor the transition between continents.
