We’ve done three cruises now so clearly we are experts and you should get your info from this post instead of the endless barrage of other internet content on this topic. Kidding of course, but here are three things that I think are helpful when planning a cruise, especially your first cruise:
- Understand the differences between the cruise lines. There is a cruise line for everyone, but not every cruise line is for you. If, for example, you pick the cruise with the lowest price that you can find, you might leave wondering why people like cruises. There are a variety of pages to help you decipher the pack, but here’s one example. We’ve done two cruises with Royal Caribbean and one with Celebrity. The Royal Caribbean ships had a lot more activities and were more focused on families with kids while Celebrity was a little fancier and had an older clientele.
- Get a balcony. There are generally four categories of rooms: interior, exterior view, balcony, and suite. We have always sprung for the balcony rooms and honestly, I think I’d probably rather skip a cruise than not have a balcony. I suppose there are exceptions to that, but I spend a lot of time reading and napping on the balcony. There are a lot of people on a cruise ship and this is a fairly private place where I can be outside, have a great view, and enjoy myself. For this reason, we also generally get a room as high up on the ship as we can since it usually equates to a better view, especially in ports.
- Skip the packages. The base fare for a cruise is a pretty good deal. You get the room and access to a bunch of free food 24 hours a day. It’s impossible to beat it if you’re staying in hotels and eating at restaurants. That being said, you can easily spend way more than the base fare. For example:
- Each ship has restaurants that cost extra money. Are they good? I’m sure! But will you be disappointed if you only eat in the main dining room, the buffet, and the other free snack food places around he ship? No way! The food is one of our favorite parts of a cruise and we’ve only ever eaten the included food options.
- While the idea of unlimited alcohol seems enticing, it’s shocking to see how many people opt for the drink package. On our latest cruise it was $95/day! Individual beers were around $8 and mixed drinks were about $15. Are you really going to drink 6 mixed drinks a day or a dozen beers just to break even? And are you going to do that for each of the seven days of your cruise? We have never gotten that package and just say that we’ll buy them individually, but we never end up getting anything at all because we’re so full from the amazing food.
- There’s free WiFi on board that lets you use their app to see activities, reserve things like laser tag, see the food menus, etc, but if you want to access the internet, get ready to pay a bunch of money. On our cruise it was $26/day for a single device and that’s only if you pay for the entire cruise (so that’s $182 for a 7 day cruise to access the internet from one device.) You can also buy a 24 hour pass but you’ll pay in the mid-30’s for that. I love unplugging on a cruise, but on this latest cruise, I didn’t do a good job of that. Since we were going to be in Alaska and Canada, I knew we could use our cell phones in the ports and had planned to connect with people to share info about when we’d be getting back, etc. Seeing the flood of email and texts ended up being a shot of unwelcome stress during the trip and I wish I had just left my phone off the whole time.
There is a cruise to fit just about everyone and you can customize each cruise in a lot of ways, but those choices can have a big impact on your experience and your bank account!