Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
I would recommend you treat this as two transactions. Get a cheap flight to FCO or CIA, but consider flexibility in the ticketing in case you want to go a day earlier (bad weather etc). I presume this is Civitavecchia - note it is 50 km from FCO and 70 from CIA. The travel to a ship and from a ship have two separate factors and it's best not to confuse them - factors such as weather, late docking. There's a different degree of flexibility needed on both sides. If you end up in Red Hook at the NYC end, you don't want an EWR service if you can avoid it (though if it's Cunard they do put on coaches to EWR, LGA and JFK). For the USA-UK then yes use the 2-4-1 to go Club or First - I would book whatever you can now, and since it's standalone one-way it's easier to control, for example if a better flight or cabin becomes available. Consider also Iberia and Aer Lingus options if using Avios, they can sometimes be a lot cheaper for the indirect routing.
I have cruised from Civitavecchia, and separately to NYC (Red Hook) in the last year (Cunard in my case) and in addition I would add: if you aren't already, then arrive at least a day beforehand to Rome - just in case there are any delays, it really is very stressful indeed if you are worried about missing the ship - it won't wait for you. In our case we combined it with a long weekend in Rome so we were already in the vicinity of the morning of our cruise. As CWS says, Civitavecchia is a long way outside Rome, in our case about a 90 minute taxi ride (although maybe 30 minutes less from FCO whose runways we passed on our taxi journey from central Rome). As for New York, this is a tricky one, as by the time you disembark the cruise ship in the morning it is probably the worst possible time - it is too late to catch the day flights home, so you have to catch an overnight - which means at the very least a redundant 7 hours or so until the earliest overnight flights back to LHR. I don't know about Royal Caribbean but Cunard offered private transfers or a coach to all the airports but all were all much more expensive than the local taxis waiting by the terminal (unless travelling alone), although these were expensive too, but nowhere near Cunard costs. In the end, with all the hassle and stress of bags, we bag-dropped and spent around 6 hours in the Greenwich lounge and then caught the earliest overnight flight home which of course is the worst for sleeping. However, unless we were spending some days in NYC I couldn't find a 'less worse' option. Sorry if this sounds negative, I don't mean to be, you are doing a transatlantic crossing which in my mind is just amazing! I hope you have a great time.