Contact Celebrity Cruises at 800-CELEBRITY and its Web site www.celebrity-cruises.com or through a travel agent. The dozens of ships plying the Caribbean in the winter months offer a wide range of fares that are often discounted from those in the brochure. A good travel agent with ties to various cruise lines can help you through the thicket of costs and accommodations. The newest ships all offer a number of staterooms with verandas, which fortunate occupants agree are worth the additional price. My private balcony on the Galaxy was one of the great pleasures of the trip.

To learn more about the personalities of the various lines, and their strengths and weaknesses, consult the guides published by Berlitz, Fielding, Fodor’s, et cetera. With the popularity of cruising has come a subcategory, books specializing in Caribbean ports of call. For passengers with only a day in port, these can be very useful. I particularly like Cruising the Caribbean by Laura and Diane Rapp (Hunter Publishing, Inc., 1998).

Web sites about ships, such as CruiseOpinion.com, reveal passengers’ evaluations of their cruises in blunt reviews that make for entertaining reading. One Ohio couple I met chose to mark their tenth anniversary on the Galaxy after a major research effort. In an unexpected dividend the husband discovered from an Internet chat room that the ship’s master was very fond of baklava. Carrying the pastry aboard, he appeared at the front desk, asked to see the captain, and was waved into his office. Next thing the pair knew, a bottle of champagne was delivered to their cabin along with an invitation to the captain’s table for a gala dinner. This was followed by another invitation to join a select few on the bridge the next evening for the sail-away from St. Lucia. Never underestimate the power of the Internet.