Do I need specialist cruise insurance for my cruise holiday?

Travel insurance is NOT a waste of money if it includes medical coverage and medical evacuation. If you get sick or injured in a foreign country, you want to be able to get treatment and, if necessary, be medevac'd home. Your regular health insurance will most likely not cover any of this. You can book one travel insurance policy to cover your entire trip - the cruise and anything you do before or after it. As someone else mentioned, insuremytrip.com is a good place to compare cost and features of various policies. If you are using a travel agent, ask him/her for advice as well.

Cover you for what? What is the insurance covering you for? There are many types of travel insurance that cover a varrity of things. Most of them are just a waste of money. I travel all the time on vacations, cruises, etc. I have never bought any kind of travel insurance.

1stoptravel, do insurance for cruises. The travel ins you will already have for flying/travel to the cruise won't cover your time on the cruise. If you have an accident and have to be airlifted off the ship, you'll spend the rest of your life paying for that cost

Assuming you are from the UK you must take out travel insurance! If for any reason you ended up needing medical attention in the US it would cost an arm and a leg! You do not need specific cruise insurance but you must specify it includes the USA as it is a higher premium than the rest of the world. DON'T try and save a few pounds by insuring for "Rest of the World", if you had a claim it would be rejected and you would end having to pay the total! Use the comparison sites to get various quotes but read the conditions and small print as a cheap one may have a huge excess for USA insurance! If you hire a car in LA or Las Vegas organise before you go as the hire companies rook "walk ups" from overseas with high rates! Also take out the extra car insurance so if you have an accident (your fault of not) you just walk away from any costs! I n Las Vegas a few years ago I had a stupid woman reverse her giant 4X4 into my hire car 20 minutes after leaving the airport rental car office! Due to the height it rammed into my front and up and over the bonnet - a huge amount of damge for a minor shunt! I took the car back to the airport and they just swapped it saying "good job you had insurance otherwise we would have deducted $1000 from your c/card just in case we couldn't get compensation from the other drivers insurance!". They said would have paid it back later but who wants that sort of worry and possibly trying to claim once back in the UK months later!

If you are a member of AAA- the automobile club of America, look into their travel insurance, and compare it with others. I have found them the cheapest. I have used the insurance twice over the years, when I had to cancel because of my or a family member's illness. Like any other insurance, you hope to never use it, and hopefully you wont. But life has so many uncertainties, that I wouldn't take the chance.