Cruising Tips 1-5
Let me start by stating my only cruise experience was being on one boat that being the Norwegian Epic Cruise Vessel. I encourage others to leave their experiences in the comments as to other experiences on the same cruise line or different cruise lines as well as different boats. Remember these are my experiences and I only have one experience to go on.
Tip #1 - Get To Know Your Ship
I think one of the best things we did was to get the layout of the ship on the first day. Usually that is just a traveling day but a great time to familiarize yourself with the layout of the ship. Get to know the floors and what is on each one. By doing this you will save your time and effort later by knowing exactly where to go and the best way to get there.
Tip #2 - Make Sure To Take Some Cash
For us that live in the US we often never use cash anymore. Almost everywhere in our modern society takes some type of card. However, as I learned some of the stops in less modern countries don't accept credit cards. Also if you using local people for your trips or excursions they are going to want cash, either because they don't have access to a credit card processing equipment or maybe they don't want a paper trail of the payments either way if you have cash you are better prepared for adventure. Now for safety sake don't bring a lot of cash with you on the stops leave some locked in the safe in your room.
Tip #3 - Excursions Can Be Canceled
Understand that even though you book your excursions through the cruise ship, they can still be canceled. This happened to us three times on our trip. Now they can be canceled for a variety of reasons. Sometimes bad weather, such as our first two experiences. But they can also be canceled for unforeseen issues such as our third cancelation. Sometimes these might happened because they don't have a guide for the trip or maybe enough people didn't sign up but what ever the reason it can happen as we experienced. These cancelations often happen at the last minute changing your plans for the day very quickly. Our third cancelation we didn't find out until 8:30pm as we were coming back from dinner.
Tip #4 - Familiarize Yourself With The Stops
As mentioned above excursions can be canceled on the spur of the moment, so do some research before your trip so you have a back up plan should your excursion get canceled. By doing this you will save your valuable stop time and still enjoy the stop as we did. Do not expect to just join another excursion because as we found out they are often always booked and they had not others excursions available on the day ours was canceled. So be prepared to go with the flow and find your own adventures should yours get canceled. So if you purchase the internet option package it can help find something quick to replace an excursion that was canceled. Do not rely on the start to help as we found out on our trip they only are versed on the excursions that the ship offers and will not offer suggestions, they just told us to get off the boat and ask the people on the dock, not great customer service in my opinion after they canceled out excursion.
Tip #5 - Internet Access Tips
Okay the internet packages the ship offers when you booking your cruise at expensive. The internet access for our trip if purchased ahead was $150 for a week, pretty pricy. But they give you 150 free minutes so we thought that would be plenty we were not planning on surfing the net so that seemed fine. But it went quickly and as I witnessed most people world forget to log off the internet (because it was difficult) and burn up their minutes in the first day. But here is my big tip, the internet price goes down as the trip goes on. The $150 dollar package drops to $90 on the second day of the cruise and on the third day it dropped to $50. Now again this was on our specific trip as mentioned above but talking to others that seems to be the norm. So my suggestion is to try to get by on your 150 free minutes the first two days then purchase the internet package on the third day.
Sharing this information is my way to help you make your experience more enjoyable again these are just my experiences and suggestion always to the research for yourself and your specific cruise line and vessel.
Peace and Love,
Rob
