Winning a cruise, or two! Tracy's story.

Guest post: Tracy

How I won two cruises

I’ve always entered competitions, even when I was a teenager and my Mum used to do them but I didn’t really turn it into a hobby until I was expecting my first child and had time to spare. I won the usual things, a television, a washing machine, loads of vouchers, hampers and enough electrical goodies to fill all your kitchen cupboards and more but I could never quite win a holiday.

I had a fairly serious illness back in 2013 and had to change my lifestyle so I absolutely threw myself into doing more and more comps, and the more I won the more I entered.

One Sunday, The Mail on Sunday were running a comp in conjunction with P&O and I think there were 12 cruises to win altogether, 2 to the Caribbean, 2 to the Med, 2 to the Baltics, 2 to the Canaries, 2 to Scandanavia and 2 to the Greek Islands. I got up early that day and entered for each one.This may sound a little strange but I knew I was going to win one, just knew, my husband said the usual yer , yer right. A couple of weeks after the closing date I was feeling a little miffed because I had heard nothing nor had I heard that the winners had been announced , then one Thursday lunchtime I got a call from P&O, from a lovely lady that told me I was lucky to have won a cruise and would I be able to take it ? Er yes I would, which one have I won ?

It was one of the Caribbean ones and I was walking on air, fantastic, what a feeling.

So….cruise coming up, better get some nice new swimwear , ship to shore and all that, so had a look on Swimwear 365, they had some lovely stuff which was helped by the fact that it was modelled by tanned, toned beauties so I duly planned my diet!! I looked through and ordered a couple of things, they also had a competition, a prize draw to win a Mediterranean cruise with MSC so I entered of course without a second thought. A couple of weeks later, received a call from Swimwear 365 to say I had won….gobsmacked to say the least and nobody really believed that I had won 2 cruses , including me & my husband. “do we do cruises though Trace, we don’t like people ?” Well we do now!!

They were both wonderful and I have to say that we were treated exactly the same as full fare paying passengers by both companies, P&O were especially fabulous and we wouldn’t hesitate to cruise again…..we aren’t ..that…old , just in our fifties and have become quite the cruise enthusiasts and bores at times.

Cruising does have something for everyone, I especially loved waking up in a different beautiful place every morning and as we had an inside cabin , it was exciting to get up early and take a peak at that days destination. ( take a luminous alarm clock, your phone might be dead and you won’t know whether it’s night or day) I liked having an inside cabin for that reason.

We didn’t have to participate in any publicity which was quite a relief………………………

……although we did take great delight in telling a particularly obnoxious couple at dinner that we’d won the cruise…..she nearly choked on her fillet steak .

Well, I’ve just booked for Christmas & New Year in the Caribbean on Princess Caribbean so really looking forward to that as every year I say that I’d love to be somewhere warm for Christmas. It wasn’t that expensive either.

So to sum it all up I’ve fallen for cruising , hook, line & sinker and I hope you do too.

Emma says: Thanks for sharing this one Tracy! I used to enter quite a few competitions myself which I was at university. I never managed to win a holiday though. The best thing that I won was 375 bottles of Rekorderlig cider. Yum!! Really well done on your wins, so glad that you have found a love for cruising, lovely to have you in our community. 🙂

Follow Tracy on twitter TeeTotalTrace