Caribbean Travel & Life Can Travel Through Life With Me
Written: Jun 28 '02 (Updated Jun 28 '02)
Product Rating:
Pros: Beautiful pictures with some great articles.
Cons: Lots of ads except in the lengthier articles.
The Bottom Line: This is a great magazine for people who do travel to the Caribbean or want to. The articles are informative; the pictures coffee table material.
jo.com's Full Review: Caribbean Travel & Life Magazine
I have in front of me 2 issues of Caribbean Travel & Life. The January 2002 has the cover story called Dive In – Amazing Honeymoon Hideaways and the May 2002 issue has the cover story called Welcome to Paradise. I will be reviewing the May issue primarily.
About the magazine:
~Caribbean Travel & Life is a beautiful glossy magazine, not unlike Travel Holiday in style. They range in length from 100-122 pages which thick pages. These do not feel like a tabloid magazine, for sure. These are pretty enough to be coffee table magazines.
~The magazines' contents are:
~Features with several main articles such as "Beloved Bermuda" and Getting to the "Bottom of Belize." The next main section is Departments with shorter articles such as "Day Trip," "Editors Find" and "Caribbean Kitchen."
~Two pages under Departments is called "Postcards." These pages are in 2-parts; one with letters to the editor, with I was happy to see, responses from the editor when appropriate and the second part is the "Topic of the Month." June’s topic was “What keeps you coming back to the Caribbean year after year?” They ask for your letter about next month’s topic, which will be “What’s the best thing about a Caribbean cruise?” If it gets published you get a T-shirt. I might have tried that myself, but the deadline was May 6 so maybe another issue!
~Peeking into some of the articles in the Department's section is "Day Trip – A Taste of History on St. John.” In spite of its length- just one page- it is an interesting and well-written easy to read article with pictures about the Virgin Islands National Park. If they had tried to tackle St. John briefly I would have not enjoyed this, but the look at the park and the cooking demonstrations were interesting. The shortness of the article was fine in this case. There are 10 articles in the Department's section that are very similar in length and although written by different people, the writing styles are similar. It gives the magazine a feeling for me of being neat, tidy and well done. I do not like chaotic magazines and this one is not. It is right to the point. I never had to fight to find the rest of the article or read 20 small paragraphs on one page.
~There are a couple of very brief 1/2-page articles here also such as “Cruise News” with short summaries of a few of the most well-known cruise lines. This article focuses on additions to several lines of kid-friendly amenities.
~"Spring Values" is also a 1/2-page featuring several islands with specials you can find. If you are wondering what is on the other 1/2 of these pages – I’ll tell you – ads and a lot of them everywhere. Not unlike Travel Holiday, which I called “Travel With Me Through A Sea of Ads” this magazine is also filled with ads for various travel clubs, agents and specials. Comparing these two magazines the ads in Caribbean Travel & Life aren’t quite as overwhelming, but like many magazine with many ads, there are times that I can’t tell what is an ad and what is an article.
~In spite of that, the material is well presented. Going into Features and lengthier articles such as “Luxury Included: When Too Much is Just Right” you’ll find a 10-page article featuring some great sounding all inclusives that you can be sure I will read over a few more times! The pictures are beautiful as well. Seven islands are featured and I want to go to them all. I have been to several of the islands including Biras Creek in the British Virgin Islands but never went to these resorts so a few of them have gone on my to do list!
~Belize is already on my to do list and the 12-page article with once again gorgeous photography didn’t disappoint me. The story was written and photographed by the same person, Bob Friel. He covers ceremonial caves in the Maya’s Mountain and marine formations which are among the hemispheres only true coral atolls, this is a terrific article. If you have never been interested in Belize you will be after reading this one!
~The lengthy feature articles, by the way, do not have advertising on the pages. That is really a very nice feature in this magazine which could have ads in the corner of a page but don’t and I appreciate that a lot!
Price:
The cover price for this magazine published by World Publications is $4.99. That is a hefty cover price and I wouldn’t be buying this on a regular basis at that amount. Nine issues are published yearly at a subscription rate of $23.95 bringing the price down to $2.66 plus you get a free vacation planner with your subscription. The website is www.CaribbeanTravelmag.com where you can get one free issue and if you don’t like it write cancel on the bill. That is always appealing. I have found that I get an older issue but it gives you and me a chance to look at the magazine more closely to see if you do want to subscribe.
My final thoughts:
In my opinion, even $2.66 is a lot to pay for a magazine unless I were traveling to the Caribbean several times a year. In the last few years I have been there several times, but not enough to subscribe. I would buy it off the newsstand if the articles looked interesting to me and I do recommend it to those of you who do travel extensively. If you do, then it is worth the subscription rate. If you don’t travel at all, are afraid to or hate to, unless you just want to window shop or are a glutton for punishment you won’t want to read about these gorgeous islands and see the beautiful pictures.
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