We recently returned from a 6-night cruise with our family of 8. We’ve been planning and saving for this trip for about 18 months. We’ve never taken a trip like this before, so we were super excited!
As always, I’m reporting back to share all of our spending with you.
Of course I don’t expect you to do the exact same trip as we did, but I hope that seeing how we plan, budget for, and spend on our vacations will help you in planning yours. Prioritize spending on the things that are important to you and skimp on the parts that don’t matter to you as much. You do you!
Before we made our savings plan, I did some research to find out how much we would need to save. We came up with an estimate of $8,600 to save for the total cost of our trip. You can see the complete cost estimate breakdown (and the creative ways we saved) in this post. I aimed high, figuring we might spend less, but I wanted the estimate to be sure to cover everything so there wouldn’t be surprise additional costs afterward.
Here is how our spending for our family cruise breaks down:
Cruise– $6,400
We had a specific week we were aiming for (Spring Break 2025), so that helped narrow things down. We chose a Mexican Riviera Cruise on the Carnival Panorama, a huge ship with lots of fun family activities.
When choosing our cabins, we decided to go with two balconies. Even though inside cabins are cheaper and would have been fine, we knew that our kids would love being able to step out and see the ocean any time they wanted. Not knowing if we would ever go on another cruise, we decided to get the full experience, rather than just spend as little as possible.
We also chose cabins in the “Family Harbor” where we would have access to a family lounge that had breakfast every morning (no need to go up to the Lido deck to eat in the morning), snacks in the afternoon, and soft serve ice cream nearly around the clock. The Family Harbor Lounge also has couches, TVs, video game consoles, and space to spread out and play board games. We loved having this extra amenity.
The cost listed includes the initial deposit of $400 ($200 per cabin), as well as the gratuities ($16 per person per day).
Gas to Long Beach– $300
We drove our 15-passenger van down to Long Beach, CA for our cruise as it’s our only vehicle that fits all eight of us. This was the longest trip that we have taken in it with just our family (for other trips we have had the Ukrainian family that we sponsor with us). We took the bench in the back out to make room for our luggage, which left three other benches. Having two kids per row was glorious! Everyone had space and no one had to touch anyone else, which made for a pretty peaceful 7-hour drive.
I estimated our gas spending based on the distance, average cost of gas, and our fuel effenciency. We started out the trip with some gas and came home with nearly a full tank, so looking just at receipts on the road isn’t very acurate.
Lodging the night before the cruise– $244
I wanted to go down to Long Beach with some time to spare just in case we ran into bad traffic or had car trouble. Once the ship sails, it’s gone, and we didn’t want to risk missing the boat! We decided to leave early the day before the cruise and spend some time at the beach on our way down, then spend the night somewhere in the vicinity of Long Beach.
With eight of us, we need two motel rooms, so it’s often about the same price to get an Airbnb instead. For a longer stay, having a kitchen is a major plus, too, though we didn’t have that in this case. We stayed in Orange county, a pretty expensive area, but found a small, simple Airbnb (a house divided into multiple apartment units), that was worked well for what we needed and was inexpensive.
Parking– $74
What started as a headache ended up saving us money. About a week before the trip we got an email saying that the normal cruise terminal parking garage would be out of space for our cruise. Carnival had secured another location and would have shuttles, but they encouraged us to look at alternate parking locations. As I did some research about long-term parking in Long Beach, I found that our 15-passenger van is too tall for the Carnival garage anyway. Unsure about Carnival’s backup location, I decided to find my own parking.
I initally booked parking at a hotel through a third party, but a day later they “upgraded” my reservation to a place much way further away (and less expensive, clearly not an upgrade). I cancelled that and let them know I wasn’t fooled by their claiming it was an upgrade. Ultimately I found a garage through SpotHero that cost us a total of $74. It was 2-miles away from the port. Parking and traffic in Long Beach were crazy that day because the Acura Grand Prix was going on that morning. The weather was beautiful, so our excited and energetic bunch didn’t mind walking. We arrived exactly within our 30 minute assigned boarding window, so we basically just walked onto the boat.
Parking with Carnival would have cost $184, so we saved $110!
Internet– $28
We decided to forego the expensive internet packages offered on the cruise (starting at $18 per day and you have to pay for the entire length of the cruise). Instead we paid $5 each for the four of us who have phones to be able to send messages to each other via the Carnival app.
We also paid $8 to upgrade my Visible cell phone plan for the month from the $25 plan to the $35 plan so that I would have service (talk, text, unlimited roaming) for the 3 days we were in Mexico. My parents had drama with AT&T when they got over $100 of roaming charges in seconds when my mom’s phone disconnected from the ship’s WiFi while we were in port and all her apps updated and texts streamed in. Thankfully with Visible that is never an issue! There are never any extra charges.
Onboard Spending– $0
If you’ve been on a cruise before, you know there is no shortage of opportunities to spend money. From shopping and drinking, to art, jewelry, and specialty restaurants, it’s easy to rack up quite a tab.
For us though, these weren’t even a temptation. We don’t drink or gamble. There was plenty of great food that was included in the cruise. Shopping for expensive watches, jewelry, and art wasn’t something we were interested in. Some people pay extra to put their kids in the childcare on the ship, but we took our kids on vacation to spend time with them, so that wasn’t up our alley.
Excursions– $0
We didn’t plan to purchase any excursions from Carnival (they cost anywhere from $50-$150 per person), but I had planned to pay for some excursions once we were on shore. With my parents we had a group of 10, so I figured it would be pretty easy to get a good price on a glass bottom boat out to El Arco in Cabo San Lucas (negotiating is easy since my husband and I are fluent in Spanish). The kids, however, were most interested in going straight to the beach. We spent our time at Playa Coral Negro, a beach only a few minutes from the port that is free and is mostly visited by locals rather than tourists.
We brought two picnic blankets with us along with our towels from the ship and goggles for everyone. In addition to playing in the sand and the water, everyone loved watching all of the colorful tropical fish that call the coral home.
Other– $39
I spent $15 at Goodwill on a medium-sized suitcase. When we took our epic family trip to Washington DC, I had great luck buying our luggage at thrift stores. For this trip, I wanted enough suitcases so that everyone had their own to pack and carry.
I bought a few cruise essentials on Amazon before we left. I got a pack of different color lanyards so that everyone could keep track of and distinguish their key cards. I got some waterproof cell phone cases that made our phones into underwater cameras. They were very inexpensive and were so fun to have. Mike got some great videos of the fish in the coral. I also got some magnetic hooks for hanging things around our cabin (cabin walls are metal so magnets work great!).
Passports– $780
Mike and I already had passports, but we needed passports for all 6 kids. At $130 each, passports definitely aren’t cheap! While this cost isn’t specific to this trip, we budgeted to pay for them in the planning for this trip. We got them not long after planning the trip, which worked out great since we took the three older kids to Guatemala last summer. The kids’ passports are good for 5-10 years, so hopefully we will get in some other international trips before they need to be renewed.
You can use birth certificates for kids when you cruise to Mexico, but a passport is less cumbersome and is useful for other international travel, so we decided to bite the bullet and get passports for everyone all at once.
Total Cost of Cruise Vacation (including passports)– $7,865
Without adding in the cost of passports (since that cost is really an investment spread over the years that we’ll be using them, the cruise vacation cost us $7,085.
I like to take the total cost, divide it by the number of people to get a per person cost of the trip, so that it’s easier to compare to other trips we’ve taken. Of course all of our trips are different and special for their own reasons. It’s not a game of “the cheapest trip wins.” I just think it’s fun to see how the costs compare.
Here are some of our recent trips (click on the location to see the complete spending breakdowns):
Cruise to Mexico (this post)– 6 days– 8 people– $7,085
- $885 per person for the trip
- $147 per person per day
Belize/Guatemala— 14 days– 5 people — $9,190
- $1,838 per person for the trip
- $131 per person per day
Washington DC— 10 days– 8 people– $5,335
- $667 per person for the trip
- $67 per person per day
San Diego— 7 days– 8 people– $4,260
- $533 per person for the trip
- $76 per person per day
Cross Country Road Trip— 3 weeks– 8 people– $3,048
- $381 per person for the trip
- $18 per person per day
Yellowstone— 5 days– 8 people– $1,114
- $139 per person for the trip
- $28 per person per day
As I talked about in this post, we had a goal to save as much as we could for this trip without using “our own” money. I broke all the details of that down in this post that I wrote back in October of last year, but I plan to do an update to show you how much we saved in total and how we did it. (Spoiler: Over half the cost was paid without pulling money from our income!)
It’s your turn!
- What have your favorite family trips been?
- Have you ever compared the cost per person per day?
