As we go on bigger adventures, we have started to plan our trips well in advance. Once we make a decision on a particular trip, we usually would book it as early as possible. We booked our last trip, the Antarctica cruise, one year in advance. This trip is no exception. Once Crystal made the booking available to the public, we immediately jumped on it - a full 18 months before the cruise departs. We booked it through a Cruise Specialist in Seattle. Since we booked it earlier and it is a world cruise, we also received more than $10,000 of onboard credit through our travel agent, Cruise Specialist and Crystal Cruise. We bought travel insurance from Berkshire Hathaway Travel for this trip. Crystal Cruise also provides some discount for early booking. We put down the deposit for Cabin C3 (the lowest class with big window) on the waiting list 18 months ago. A week or two later, we were confirmed for Guaranteed C3 cabin. At the time our travel agent told us we might have a good opportunity to get a nice upgrade. We didn’t believe him. We thought it was just a marketing trick. However, to our surprise, we found we were upgraded to A2 Cabin with balcony in Deck 9 a few months ago. We thought it might be a website mistake so we called our travel agent. He did confirm it. This trip has a very good start.