I've had a few people ping me asking about how to arrange an LDS cruise, or how to get an LDS tour guide. I'm happy to help, although I'm really not an expert on it. I've had enough people ask that I thought I'd post the info that I can so that others can get it more easily.
Please realize that I can only speak for my own experience. I'm sure there are many other resources out there that will have better info.
That said, here's what I can share, which I'm afraid will sound like an advertisement. (Honestly, I am not currently employed by or subsidized by this company. I'm just sharing what I know...) We booked our cruise with FunForLessTours (
http://www.funforlesstours.com/ 800-591-2432). They have been in the tour business for many years, have a lot of connections and experience, and have several LDS experts at their disposal to both host you and educate you on the areas you visit. I believe there are few places in the world which they do NOT travel to. They offer some specialized tours to LDS historic sites, etc. I've only done the one tour with them, so far, so I can only speak to that.
For the Book of Mormon cruise, they bought a block of tickets on a cruise ship (in this case it was with the Carnival Cruise Line). They made reservations on the ship for rooms in which we could meet for firesides. They had a host couple that made all of the arrangements for the shore excursions (everything from getting taxis and buses to buying tickets to admit us to the sites). The host couple was a lot of fun and kept us focused on getting to where we needed to be when we needed to be there.
FunForLess also hired an LDS scholar to accompany us on the site tours. He would let the local tour guide explain the site and then he'd give us an LDS perspective on what may have happened at or near the site, and what Book of Mormon peoples may have lived near there. He also spoke at daily fireside chats on the ship.
If you want to go on an LDS cruise, this is definitely a great way to go.
If you already have a cruise planned through a non-LDS cruise line or company, and want to try to get a local tourguide who is LDS, who might be able to give you a similar experience, I haven't tried either of these, but there are two things you could try.
1) Call FunForLess and let them know where you're going and ask if they can give you contact info for a local tour guide that you can hire. I don't know if that would be like stealing their corporate secrets, or if they'd be happy to help. I do know that they are a business and that that IS their business, so I wouldn't be surprised if that would be something they'd rather not do. You'd have to be sensitive to that. They are a fun-loving helpful bunch, but they need to preserve and continue their business, and that comes via making money as well as friends.
2) Go to http://www.LDS.org and use the "meetinghouse finder" tool to locate the contact information for the ward or branch that is nearest to the places you will be visiting. With that, you may be able to contact the local bishop or branch president and ask him if there is anyone in the ward or branch that you could hire to give you a tour at the local sites. (Our local tourguide in Tulum (near Cozumel) was named Moroni and I understand that he was the local branch president. So, we got LDS perspectives of the site from both the local tourguide and our FunForLess LDS scholar.) I would highly advise that you plan to pay the local guide and not take advantage of him or her on behalf of being a fellow LDS member. Kindess is great, but you shouldn't take advantage of wonderfully helpful people.
I will also add one more bit of opinion. I absolutely loved the cruise. Great food. Great people. And, I love not having to figure out where I'm going to eat or sleep or how to get to the next travel spot. Plus, I love snorkeling...
But, in talking with the LDS scholar, he said that if you REALLY want to see the BofM type ruins, you need to take the land tour, not the ship tours. The reason is that you spend a lot more time at each site when you do the land tours. Sometimes you can camp out or stay in cabins near the sites. You can spend an entire day or more at some of the sites, as well.
The ship tours are very fast-paced. For the Tulum tour, which looked like a very interesting place at which I wanted to linger, we spent 45 minutes cued up to get off the ship, 40 minutes on a ferry, 2 hours on a bus to the site, and then all that time in reverse on the return trip. Given all of that - that it took the full day - we spent only 35-45 minutes on the actual site. That was my biggest disappointment. It wasn't anyone's fault, it was just a reality of getting from the ship to the site and back. I would have rather spent 4 hours at the site, or more...
At any rate, I still had no regrets about going. I'm very glad we went. Very enlightening. I highly recommend it!
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