Welcome Jim! I would agree, the main thing is having insurance. I've purchased private insurance and cruiseline insurance in the past and there are small differences which may make a difference. I find that generally, private insurnace usually has slightly better coverage (lower deductibles, higher limits, etc.) than cruiseline insurance and I try to go with private insurance whenever possible. Also, if the cruiseline goes bankrupt for whatever reason (heaven forbid!), then you can still recover money from your private insurance as opposed to your cruiseline insurance (which goes bye-bye if the cruiseline is no longer there).

However, one BIG advantage of taking cruiseline insurance is that if you end up cancelling the cruise before final payment, then you don't waste any money as opposed to taking private insurance (with the usual deals of taking the insurance within X number of days of booking the cruise) where if you cancel the cruise, you're out the money you paid for the insurance.

For our last 2 cruise, we took private insurance because we were positive that we would be taking those. For our next 2 cruises that are booked currently, we're using RSSC insurance because there's at least a theoretical possibility that we might have to cancel.

Hope this helps.

Masaki