In recent years, the number of lines offering “World” cruises has expanded tremendously.

The lines offering these lengthy cruises has included Crystal, Regent, Silversea, Viking, Cunard, Seabourn, Azamara, Oceania, Celebrity, Holland America, Princess, Royal Caribbean, MSC, and P&O.

These cruises generally start in late December or January.  Most set out from the U.S., the U.K. or Europe and sail west, though one offered a May start in 2026 from New Zealand.

The first criteria in planning our world cruise, we felt, was to examine the various itineraries.

While some veteran cruisers have a favorite cruise line – and wouldn’t think of sailing on anything else –  we have over the years taken 138 cruises on 17 different lines.  We, too, have favorite lines and ships; but for us, itinerary was far and away the most important consideration in planning our World Cruise.    

For starters, since our goal was to begin and end a circumnavigation of the world from a port as near to our home as possible (we increasingly hate to fly), the first step was to see which ships were embarking from and returning to South Florida.

At first glance, it looked like we were in luck. 

The 2026 possibilities sailing from South Florida included the Viking Sky departing Dec. 19, 2025 from Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale); Crystal Serenity sailing Dec. 22, 2025 from Port Everglades; Holland America’s Volendam sailing January 4^th from Port Everglades; the Coral Princess sailing January 5^th from Port Everglades; Silversea’s Silver Dawn sailing January 6^th from Port Everglades; Oceania’s Vista sailing January 6^th from Miami; and Regent’s Seven Seas Mariner, sailing January 10^th. 

But not all so-called “World” cruises, it turns out, actually circumnavigate the globe. 

The Viking Sky in 2026 ends its “World” cruise in Greenwich, England – leaving a world traveler to find his or her own way back across the Atlantic to Florida; Silver Dawn ends its 2026 “World” cruise in Lisbon; Crystal Serenity ends its 2026 “World” cruise in Civitavecchia, the port near Rome; and Coral Princess puts its passengers off in Los Angeles.

We wanted to do a complete circumnavigation of the globe – a modern version of Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days” – though we anticipated that doing it largely by cruise ship would take considerably longer.

But if we hoped to do a complete circumnavigation of the globe on a single ship, that seemed to eliminate Viking Sky, Silver Dawn, Crystal Serenity and Coral Princess  from consideration.

We also quickly scratched Volendam from the list.  While we have enjoyed cruising on some of Holland America’s newer Konigsdam class vessels, we have found its older ships on longer cruises have too much of the ambience of a nursing home.  While we are getting up there in years, we are not even close to being ready for that.

This left Vista and Seven Seas Mariner.  Both at first glance looked like strong candidates, departing from and returning six months later to Miami. 

But Vista, it turned out, planned to spend the first two months of its 2026 world voyage circumnavigating Latin America: not a bad itinerary, but we had done that on Oceania two years before. 

And for us, Seven Seas Mariner posed a similar problem.  After visiting India, instead of continuing north through the Red Sea into the Mediterranean and then returning to Miami, Mariner’s itinerary showed it heading south and sailing back to Europe around the tip of Africa.

For us, that was another case of “been there recently; done that.” We’d sailed around Africa just a year ago. Another trip along the West African coast held little interest.  

While we knew the situation in the Middle East made sailing in that direction uncertain, we were still nursing hopes that a visit to Luxor and a Suez Canal passage would be possible by the time of our voyage.

So what to do. 

After considerable discussion, we revived four of the options we had put aside earlier.

Should we try go with Crystal Serenity or Silver Dawn, and try to figure out a way to get home to the U.S. from Europe with minimal flying? 

Or should we go round-the-world with Seven Seas Mariner or Oceania Vista, even though we are less enthused about the itinerary? 

We have sailed recently on Crystal, Silversea, Regent and Oceania, so we are well aware of the merits of all four.  But we also know from years of cruising that everything is not always quite as wonderful as you might believe from those glossy brochures.

Was one of these four the right ship for our trip of a lifetime?