If You Are Considering a Cruise for your Next Vacation

As pandemic restrictions lift and people begin traveling again, it will be interesting to see how much travelers will feel safe on cruise ships.  Will some travelers avoid cruising because a ship contains too many passengers and carries too much risk of infection?  Will the die-hard cruise lovers consider the risks to be worth it?  Cruise lines suffered heavy losses in the pandemic and will do whatever it takes to attract passengers.  Will my readers succumb to the ploys?  

I thought I would offer my own perspective on (non-pandemic) cruising.  What are some of the advantages and what are some of the harsh realities?

When it comes to vacations, it seems there is no more divisive topic than cruises.  Some travelers revile them, while other vacationers don't want to travel any other way.  

There is a reason for the appeal of cruises.  They hit many destinations in one trip.  Large cruise ships offer multiple entertainment and recreational venues.  A cruise fare bundles many expenses together, hypothetically saving money on all of them.  Cruise ships take care of most of their passengers' needs, making a vacation relatively stress free.

Cruises also have disadvantages.  When a ship is at sea, passengers are stuck.  The scenery never changes (unless it's a river cruise).  Even the most well-appointed ship can feel boring or even claustrophobic.  The number of people crammed into one vessel creates a high risk for disease transmission.  Ships only spend a day in port, limiting passengers' options to explore interesting destinations.  No matter how many activities are available on board, many passengers feel all they do is sit on a deck chair and eat (and drink).  Cruising can pose a risk for people prone to seasickness.  Cruises create an enormous amount of waste and destruction of the oceans.  Cruise ships are an environmental disaster.

I am not a "cruise person" but I am not an anti-cruise person either.  If you give me a choice, a cruise would not be my preferred way to travel.  However, I have family members who are cruise people and in the past have invited Kevin and me to join them (in one case paying for it).  My experiences on those ships were mostly positive.  I can make many complaints about cruises and what's wrong with them, but I remember how depressed I was when  my first cruise was over.  

I have been on four cruises in total and experienced different destinations and different types of ships.  I was on two mass market cruises (Norwegian, Princess), one luxury cruise (Regent), and one river cruise (Viking).  All of the experiences were different, but some common threads run through most of them.  My goal here is not to tell you if you should go on a cruise or not, but to know what to expect and some tips to make the trip easier.

If you have to fly to the cruise port, do so the night before if at all possible

On my first cruise (Princess, Western Caribbean), I had to fly to Port Everglades in Florida the day the ship sailed.  This meant taking a taxi to the airport around 4AM for a 7AM flight and then meeting the cruise shuttle at the airport around 11AM.  They took my luggage and I didn't see it until the end of the day.  I arrived at the port and had to wait two hours to embark.  (Cruise ships, like airplanes, have separate, shorter, lines for passengers in premium cabins. The riff-raff in the lesser cabins have to wait.) It was lunch time when I boarded the ship and all of those people boarding at the same time I did were in line for the buffet.  I didn't have access to my room right away, so all I could do with my afternoon was walk around the ship (which wasn't a complete negative since it gave me a chance to learn the layout of the ship and learn where everything was).  Once I had access to my room, my luggage wasn't delivered right away. 

On my second cruise (Norwegian, Western Caribbean) I stayed overnight in the port area the night before we sailed.  That meant I could get to the ship at my leisure by taxi and had a shorter wait time to board.  It was a much more relaxing day.

If you can't fly to the port the night before, keep a well-stocked carry-on bag with you

As I said above, when I went on the Princess cruise and flew to the port on embarkation day, I let the cruise representatives take most of my luggage at the airport.  I think I kept nothing more than a purse with me when I boarded.  First I had no access to my room.  Then I didn't have my luggage.  I can remember how it felt when the ship set sail in the late afternoon and we were on deck enjoying the sail-away celebration.  I was wearing the same clothes I had been wearing since 3AM that morning. Not only did I feel grimy, but the long-sleeved shirt and track pants I was wearing were beginning to feel oppressive in the Florida sun.  I soothed myself with icy cocktails while I watched the people who had checked into their premium cabins splash in the pool.  

On my third cruise (Regent, Mediterranean) I had to take a red-eye flight to Rome the night before we sailed and arrived at the cruise port in the morning.  This time, when the cruise shuttle met us at the airport, I kept a bag with me that was stocked like an overnight bag.  It took less time to board the ship (Regent ships are much smaller than mass market ships) but I still didn't have access to my room or my main luggage right away.  That was not a problem.  In my bag I had a bathing suit, a sundress, a pack of body wipes, and basic toiletries.   I was able to duck into a bathroom wipe myself down, brush my teeth, put on my bathing suit and throw a sundress over it so I felt human and looked decent for lunch.  After lunch I took a dip in the pool.  It meant I had a little more to carry, but it was worth it.

It wouldn't hurt to have some snacks in your bag as well.  You might be waiting a long time for lunch.

Think twice about taking a river cruise

You know you thought about it while watching Downton Abbey.  The river cruise ads showed a small ship sailing through a majestic valley, passing bucolic mountains and stately castles along the way.  Shots of the ship are interspersed with montages of the the offshore experiences - the art and culture, the beautiful countrysides.  You are tempted.  This isn't some tacky party cruise.  This is sophistication and elegance.  This isn't staring for hours at an endless expanse of ocean.  This is cruising with a constant view.

Here is what they don't tell you.  The amount of time your ship spends on the river is contingent upon the right water conditions.  Was the rainy season exceptionally rainy?  That could mean the river is too high for the ship to safely pass under bridges.  Was there a recent drought?  Then you might find out mid-cruise there isn't enough water in the river to float a ship.  

What happens if your ship can't pass through the river?  Well, that could be the end of your cruise.  You could end up spending hours on a bus to drive to the port for your shore excursions.  You may have to board another ship in a different location.  You may end up staying in a hotel.  You will lose hours of time you could have been spending taking land tours or enjoying those scenic rides through the river valleys.  

This is what happened to me on a Danube (Viking) river cruise.  My ship had to stop short of its third port and then I had to take a bus to another ship.  That ship was only able to make it to one port before the river became impassable and I spent another day on a bus and another night in a hotel.  It wasn't the itinerary I expected. 

The cruise lines will do everything they can to keep you from cancelling, so they may wait until the last possible minute to let you know there may not be optimal water conditions on your cruise.  If you are thinking of doing a river cruise, keep an eye on the local weather and check out sites like CruiseCritic to see what recent passengers who took the same route had to deal with.  Climate change is real and it's not creating good water conditions.

Also, you don't have a constant view on a cruise.  River cruise ships go through locks and your view may include a lot of brick walls.

Mass market cruise ships nickel and dime you for everything

You think your cruise is a bargain.  It's supposed to be all-inclusive.  It's true they include a lot.  You will have a room, many shipboard activities, endless amounts of food available 24 hours, and possibly even airfare included in the cost of your passage.  It's a good deal if you're happy with only that.

Do you know what's not included?  Drinks.  When I say drinks I don’t only mean alcoholic beverages, but I also mean soft drinks.  It will cost money for soda and other non-alcoholic beverages (something to consider when traveling with kids).  Do you want a cup of tea or coffee?  That is included in the buffet or the dining rooms at mealtimes, but you will have to be in those areas to get it.  Also, when I say coffee, I mean regular hot coffee.  If you want a cappuccino or a cold brew, you will need to get your coffee from the specialty coffee bar - and that costs money.  If you are in the lower decks and you want coffee at any time of day, either take a trip to upper deck buffet or pay at the coffee bar.  

You may also have to pay extra for specialty foods like ice cream or pizza if you're not having them in the main dining room or buffet.

There are also premium restaurants on many cruise ships that charge you on top of the cruise fare.  If you're tired of the main dining room and the buffet, you can pay more for a specialty Italian restaurant or a Japanese hibachi place.  

It’s easy to rack up a huge bar bill because there are bars everywhere.  Even if you aren’t sitting at a bar, when you’re relaxing on a deck chair the servers will come around asking if you want anything.  It’s tempting to keep ordering drinks as you watch other passengers’ margaritas go by.  

The ships will offer a package for unlimited soft drinks, or you can prepay for a drinks package, but these may or may not pay for themselves depending on how much you drink.  Families with kids usually benefit from the soft drink package.  You may have an allowance of bottles of soft drinks or bottles of wine you can take on the cruise with you.  Find this out ahead of time.

Do you plan to take shore excursions?  The ship offers a huge variety of options through their excursion desks, which makes planning easy, but they will cost you.  (More on that to come.)

Do you want a massage and a manicure in the spa?  Be prepared to pay far more than you would at Massage Envy or your neighborhood nail salon.  While you are there, your technicians will try to sell you products.  

Do you want to try your luck at Bingo?  You can buy a traditional Bingo card or one of the ship's special electronic cards.  Is it coincidence players with the latter card seem to win more?

Even if you go to free events, someone will try to sell you something.  For example on a Princess cruise Kevin and I went to a wine tasting class that was free, but they pushed us to buy every wine we sampled.  You also may have to deal with more crowds at free events, or sign up ahead of time and hope the list doesn't fill up.

There may be other cool recreational activities that incur an extra fee.  Shuffleboard is free, but the rock climbing wall, go-kart track, or surfing pool might not be.  You may also have to book these in advance because they fill up quickly.  The premium cabins will be able to book activities and spa appointments well in advance of the cruise, leaving the passengers in the cheaper cabins to scramble for a place.

Every purchase you make is conveniently charged on your room key card, so it’s easy to lose track because you don’t see the money coming out of your account.  You won’t realize how much you spent until the bill comes at the end of the cruise.

River cruises and luxury cruises will be more inclusive, but the initial cost of your cruise is way more expensive.   Both types of cruises will offer free shore excursions, but many of them will be a basic bus tour. More interesting excursions are considered premium and may incur a fee.  Your beverage package will be more inclusive, but not necessarily all inclusive.  The Regent cruise I went on included standard wines and all cocktails at all times with an extra cost for featured premium wines.  The Viking River cruise I went on only included wine and beer at dinner.  Cocktails along with wine and beer at any other time (like cocktail hour) were extra.  

I don’t know if it evens out in the end to shell out for a luxury cruise and have most extras paid for or if it’s cheaper to go mass market and incur all those extra charges.  I wonder if anyone ever calculated those costs.  Maybe in the end it costs more to take a mass market cruise and pay for all the extras and you might save something if you cruise on a smaller ship.  I suppose it depends on your room type, the number of excursions you take, and how much alcohol you drink.

About Those Shore Excursions...

Should you take a cruise shore excursion or not?  Mass market ships offer a superb selection of excursions that include cultural tours, active sporty tours, and party tours at varying price points.  There are no free excursions on a mass market ship, so even if you go on cheaper excursions, the costs can add up if you leave the ship in every port (as I like to do).  The advantage of taking these excursions is your tours and pickups are all arranged for you and the ship knows where you are at all times if anything goes wrong.

Another option you have for shore excursions is to book them yourself.  You can check out companies like Viator or Shore Excursion Group, or simply google cruise ship tours in your destination port.  TripAdvisor is useful for recommendations. These tours are often less money than the ship's offerings.  I found this helpful on the Regent cruise when the ship offered no interesting tours of Zakynthos and Corfu.  My family chipped in for private tours in these islands and had a much better time than we would have had if we had stayed with the ship tours.  

The final option is to go solo.  Do your research on places you would like to see near your port and find the public transportation to get you there.  This will cost less than any tour you can take, but there is one disadvantage.  If you are going out with a ship's tour, that tour company will know what time your ship leaves the port and will do what it takes to make sure you are back on time.  The ship will be more likely to wait for you before sailing off if you take a ship's tour.  If you go out on your own, you can be at the mercy of traffic, or unscrupulous taxi drivers who will take the long way back to the ship.  You might have such a good time you don't keep track, or you don't know how long it will take you to go back to the ship.  The ship will leave without you if it has to.  There are plenty of YouTube videos out there of passengers arriving at the dock when the ship pulls away.  If that happens to you, then you are responsible for the cost of transportation to the next port to meet the ship again.

Passengers on Mass Market Cruise Ships Can Be Incredibly Rude

I suppose it's all about percentages.  Massive cruise ships contain hordes of humanity.  You can be stuck on a boat with over 5,000 people depending on the size of the ship.  The more people crowded onto the ship, the more likely you are to have mean, rude, entitled people on the ship with you.  

All of us want to enjoy our vacation.  We worked hard and saved money and all we want is for our vacation to be the way we want it.  We forget there are over 1,000 other passengers on board who all want the same thing.  It's best to pretend other people aren't there and our needs are more important.  Kevin dubbed this "Cruise Rage".  

I have had doors slammed in my face.  I once couldn't get into the pool because people talking, drinking and sunbathing formed a blockade around the edges making entry impossible.  I took an entertaining bus and train tour through Panama and the Panama Canal with a helpful and informative guide that was nearly ruined by a woman who couldn't stop complaining about how the tour was not what she expected.  (Kevin and I complimented the tour guide extensively and tipped him well at the end of the day.)  

Before I went on my first cruise I was concerned about the hordes of children in the pool and recreational areas.  Children are not the problem.  Unlike adults, children care about what adults think of them, so they do make some effort to be polite and stay out of your way (or at least apologize for getting in your way).  Adults don't care enough.

I had better experiences on the Regent cruise and the Viking river cruise.  There are a few reasons for that.  Those cruises attract an older and calmer crowd.  They are likely more seasoned travelers who don't see their cruise as the trip of a lifetime that has to be enjoyed at everyone else's expense.  Plus on a mega-ship you are less likely to run into the same passengers all the time. On smaller ships, you run into the same people.  This is especially true on a river cruise where there are under 200 passengers and one dining room and everyone eats at the same time.  The smaller the ship, the more likely it is to have other people remember you. It's not a place to make a bad impression.  

Food and drink are always available - except for dessert

Mass market cruise ships have a strange quirk.  They make food available 24/7, but that doesn't include dessert.  I found this out on my first cruise when after a late night Kevin wanted some sweets so we went to the 24-hour buffet to find a cookie or a brownie.  The buffet was stocked with plenty of savory foods, but the desserts were all moved to a locked case.  

The second example of this was on my second cruise.  The ship had it's regular 24-hour indoor buffet, but also had a smaller buffet out by the pool.  I spent my morning swimming and noticed when the lunch buffet was put out, there was a delicious looking selection of cakes offered.  Kevin preferred the indoor buffet to the pool buffet, so we had our lunch in the indoor buffet, but I promised myself I would come back to the pool buffet in the afternoon and have some cake.  When I returned to the pool in the afternoon, the desserts were gone.  

Maybe these two incidents were not typical, but I get the impression large cruise ships don't have an unlimited supply of desserts and will ration them a bit.

You can do a little better on a river cruise.  On my Viking cruise there was a 24-hour self-serve coffee bar that was always stocked with cookies (and they were good cookies).

Pack everything you think you will need

When you pack for a cruise, make a list and check it ten times.  Don't assume you will be able to buy anything you need on the ship.  I am not talking about clothes.  Many cruises have self-service laundry rooms (or a laundry service you can pay for)if you fear running out of clean underwear (or you can always buy travel detergent and wash your clothes in the bathroom sink).  I'm talking about incidentals.  

On my first cruise on Princess I had a minor injury.  I was climbing out of the pool and cut my foot.  All I needed was a Band-Aid.  I hadn't packed any.  I went to the ship's convenience store to buy some.  I knew it would cost more money than buying them on land, but we were at sea and I had no choice.  I went to the store and didn't see any.  I asked the clerk where the Band-Aids were and she said they only sold one kind if that was okay.  I said that was fine and she showed me where they were (which was the exact place I was looking).  They weren't there.  She apologized and said they must have sold out.  

I did the obvious thing and went to the doctor's office.  I asked for a Band-Aid at the reception desk. She told me to go buy one at the ship's store.  I said I tried that and they were sold out.  She refused to give me one.  I showed her my little toe covered in blood.  She still said she wouldn't give me a Band-Aid and wouldn't tell me why.  I may have asked and she might have given me something about regulations.  I don't know why the ship would have rules about giving people Band-Aids when their flesh is split open, but that's the way it is.  I managed to heal and not get sepsis, so no big deal, but now when I go on a cruise I take no chances.  I make sure I have all medical supplies with me.  

If you can carry your own luggage off the ship, do it!

If I were to name the second worst thing to ever happen to me on a cruise (next to the river cruise with no water), I would say it was disembarking from the Princess cruise.  

When the cruise arrives in the home port, it has to be cleared of passengers and all the rooms have to be cleaned so the next group of passengers can board that afternoon. That means everyone had to clear out quickly. "Goodbye.  Nice cruising with you.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out."  Once you are checked out of your room, the ship stops caring and the staff wants you gone.  The ship does nothing to make your disembarking more comfortable and prolongs the discomfort.

The night before disembarking, passengers had to have color coded labels on their luggage and then leave them out in the hallway for collection.  After breakfast we had to vacate our rooms and gather in the ship's atrium.  Passengers stood out there waiting for hours for their color group to be called so they could leave.  It's boring and uncomfortable.  When they finally called our number, we left the ship and claimed our luggage from its designated pile.  

Some ships will let you carry your own luggage off the ship.  If you're physically able to do so, do it.  You'll disembark so much faster and without the endless, uncomfortable waiting.

I had a slightly better experience on Norwegian where I was traveling with family members who were unable to carry their own luggage.  The groups were not all gathered in one place, but each group had its own room to wait.  I remember sitting in the casino and I was at least able to sit down and not be sitting on floor.

So would I still go on a cruise?

Yes.  It's still not my preferred way to travel, but as long as family members want me to take cruises with them, I won't turn it down.  I had some memorable experiences on all of the cruises.  I loved ringing in the new year on the Lido Deck where I could eat unlimited chicken wings.  Going through the Panama Canal was a once-in-a-lifetime sight.  I saw my first sloth and my first toucan in the wild in Costa Rica.  I climbed a Mayan pyramid.  I snorkeled for the first time in Grand Cayman and fell in love with snorkeling.  I had a blast galloping a horse down a Cozumel beach.  Massages are expensive, but they hire great massage therapists on cruises.  On the smaller ships I met many fun people from all over the world, saw some places in Europe I never considered visiting before, and was never bored.  

If you have any interest at all in a cruise, try it.  You may find it's not your cup of tea, but the odds are good you will have a good enough time on your vacation that it won't feel like a waste of money.