Most of you may know me as one half of D & B from our YouTube channel but I will formally introduce myself. ..
My name is Brandy and I LOVE to travel! I always had a obsession with the ocean since I was a little girl. As long as I can remember, my parents always took me to Virginia Beach each summer. That is where I would spend endless hours swimming and playing in the ocean with my father, went shelling, and looked for sandcrabs at night. But this is where I got my love for the ocean.
As I got older and found my one and only true love, my husband Dave (enter the awwww’s 😉), we still continued our vacations to Virginia Beach.
Eight years ago things changed up a little bit for our vacations. Instead of the same ol’ VA Beach we decided to hop on a cruise for the very first time (thanks to Michele & Debbie… you know who you are..). In all honesty, we were apprehensive at first.
- We have never been on a cruise before… we have only been on boats for dolphin watches and sometimes I get sea sick…
- Dave has never flown on a plane before and at that time it was 20 years since I was on a plane
- What is there to do on a ship for 6 days??
- What if we hate it?
Well needless to say… despite after being in the awful Miami heat at the end of June, not having enough to eat before boarding, the uncertainty of how the boarding process goes, dealing with the crowds at lunch and not having our luggage in our room after sailing away (and missing a Miami sailaway)….it was that evening hanging out at the Red Frog bar on the Carnival Breeze watching the dive in movie we had the epiphany.. this is pretty awesome!
Since then we have been on 13 cruises all on Carnival cruise line and definitely have learned from our rookie mistakes from that first cruise. We pretty much know the ins & outs of cruising and wanted to share our adventures. It was in 2018 I had the idea of following the footsteps of the OG vloggers (Cruise Tips TV, ParoDeeJay, La Lido Loca, etc.) and start sharing our own cruising adventures. I have shared videos in the past when the YT was just in my name and it was mainly picture slides, but never really “vlogged”. This is when Dave & Brandy’s Excursions began and our first true vlog was on the Carnival Horizon July 2018. We received positive feedback on it and the rest is history 😄.
Then 2020 hit… there is no need for me to explain here…
Since we couldn’t cruise we took a few land trips (safely I might add!) and shared those adventures on our channel. But we can both honestly say it wasn’t the same. We even went back to the place where my love of the ocean began September 2020. Even though we both know the VA Beach area inside out and it is like a second home…it wasn’t cruising… We would drive in traffic going to a destination and we always said “this is why we cruise”. When we would go to a local brewery and then having the worry not to have too much..”this is why we cruise”. When we would try to figure out where to eat…”this is why we cruise”…
Cruising eliminated up these points of frustration.
When you pay for a cruise, there is no added expenses unless you have some drinks (unless you have the drink package), specialty restaurants and souvenirs. That’s it…
No worry about having that little extra “fun” on a ship since you don’t have to drive…the captain has your back on that!
And where to eat since you have the MDR and buffet (the Mardi Gras will make that hard now but that’s besides the point 🤣) but what I am saying is cruising makes our type of vacation relaxing!
So with all of this in mind I decided since we have the channel and already show our adventures and give advice…why not make our knowledge useful and become a travel agent? When the pandemic hit I was thinking about it, but never followed through until this past June. I signed up to be a TA through Cruise Brothers and finsihed the courses with the big three lines (Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Lines & Royal Caribbean) and will still continue my education to other lines and other means of vacationing to help others to have them the best vacation .
I will put this out there….this is not a full time job for me (I still have my 9 to 5) but I will most certainly help my clients as soon as I can with their travel needs 😀
Thank you for taking the time to get to know me and my background and hope to get to work with you in the future!
Sincerely,
Brandy Whiting
Dave & Brandy's Excursions Travel 
My wife and I are taking our first Carnival cruise in September. We are booked on the Carnival Paradise out of Tampa going to grand cayman and Cozumel. We have previously twice sailed with RC before the pandemic, but looking at apples to oranges, it seems like you get more bang for your buck with Carnival. Just wanted to say we have really enjoyed watching your videos from all the different ships, and have already learned a lot about Carnival, the ships,, and the different ports of call just from watching. We have already picked our next itinerary on the Carnival Magic next March. Thanks for all the great information and keep cruising.
Phillip and Angela Brown
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Thank you so much for the kind words! We personally have never sailed any other line other than Carnival so we have nothing to compare it to but we are happy with the product that they have. You will love the Paradise (we sailed her back in September 2018) and hope you have a great cruise!! – Brandy
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