Gifts - Osmo Action - 惊喜礼物

We received the first gift set of World Cruise from our travel agent, Cruise Specialist.

Travel bag and vest jackets from our travel agent

On Christmas eve, we received another box in the mail from Crystal Cruise. At the time, we didn’t know it was from Crystal Cruise. Our daughter took it upstairs and wrapped it with gift paper. On Christmas day, I opened the box and found a set of packing cube from Crystal Cruise. As I unzipped the packing cube, there was another inside and another, and at the very end, there was a DJI Osmo Action Camera inside the box! I had looked at this camera at Amazon a few days ago and I wanted it for this trip. Wow, “Crystal even gives us an action camera?” I was as excited as a toddler that gets their first toy. Then I looked at my daughter next to me and she was smiling at me with a “I got you” face. It was a gift from my daughter, one of my best Christmas gifts ever.

Early Booking - 早期订票

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.