A first cruise has a learning curve that nobody warns you about, because everything written about cruising is written either by the lines or by people who have done twenty. Here is the version for the first one.
The fare is a door charge
Mainstream ocean lines price the fare below what the holiday costs and recover the difference on board. Our data has the Caribbean at a median of $79 per night, which is not a real holiday price — it is an entry ticket. Industry figures put the extras at $50 to $200 per person per day.
What is genuinely included: your cabin, most meals in the main dining room and buffet, entertainment, the pools, and getting from port to port. What is not, on most mainstream lines: drinks beyond water, tea and basic coffee; speciality restaurants; shore excursions; wifi; the spa; photographs; and gratuities, which on many lines are charged automatically per person per day.
Work out your all-in number before you book. Take the fare, add the daily gratuity, add a realistic drinks figure, add one excursion per port and one speciality dinner. That total is what the holiday costs, and it is the number to compare against other holidays — not the fare.
Embarkation day
- Fly in the day before. This is the single most important piece of advice on this page. The ship leaves on time. If your flight is delayed, it leaves without you, and no insurer will regard a same-day flight as reasonable planning.
- Your cabin is usually not ready when you board. Boarding often starts around midday and cabins are ready in the early afternoon. Bring a small bag with swimwear, medication and anything you need for the first few hours.
- Your main luggage arrives separately and can take until the evening. Do not pack medication, documents or anything you need before dinner in the checked bag.
- The muster drill is compulsory and now usually done through the app plus a brief check-in at your assigned station. It happens before sailing and the ship will find you if you skip it.
- The first evening is the best time to book speciality dining and spa treatments. The good slots go on day one.
The cabin decisions that matter
Deck and position matter more than size. If you are at all prone to motion sickness, book low and midships — the middle of the ship on a lower deck moves least, in the same way the middle of a see-saw moves least. A high forward cabin is the worst place on the ship in a swell.
Check what is above and below you. A cabin under the pool deck gets scraped deck chairs at six in the morning. One under the nightclub gets bass. One above the engine room hums. Deck plans are published; five minutes with one is worth more than any amount of cabin-grade upgrading.
Balcony or not is a genuine question. On a scenic itinerary — Alaska, the fjords, the Inside Passage — a balcony is close to essential. On a Caribbean itinerary where you are ashore or by the pool all day, it is an expensive place to keep a chair you will sit in twice.
Eight things first-timers get wrong
- Booking a same-day flight. See above. It is the only genuinely unrecoverable mistake here.
- Buying the drinks package reflexively. They are priced to win. Count what you actually drink at home, be honest, and note that most lines require every adult in the cabin to buy it if one does.
- Booking every excursion through the ship. The ship's tours cost more; their advantage is that the ship waits for them. Use them where the port is far from the sight or the schedule is tight, and go independent where the town is at the quay.
- Ignoring the daily programme. The paper or in-app schedule is the whole ship's day. People miss the things they would have most enjoyed because they never read it.
- Packing formal wear they will not use. Check the actual dress code for your line. Standards have relaxed a great deal and a dinner jacket is dead weight on most mainstream ships.
- Leaving data roaming on. At sea the phone connects to the ship's satellite service, which bills at maritime rates. Airplane mode plus wifi, from sailaway to disembarkation.
- Not checking the disembarkation time. You are off the ship early on the last morning — often by 9am — and a same-day flight home before midday is tighter than it sounds.
- Treating the last sea day as spare. It is when everyone settles accounts, packs and queues. Do the things you meant to do earlier in the week.
The small things that improve the week
- A power strip without surge protection — surge-protected ones are confiscated on most ships for fire-safety reasons. Cabins are short of sockets.
- A magnetic hook or two. Cabin walls are steel and there is nowhere to hang anything.
- Motion sickness remedies bought before you board. The shop sells them at a captive-market price.
- Eat breakfast somewhere other than the buffet at least once. The main dining room is quieter, table service, and included.
- Sea days are the point, not the filler. First-timers often treat them as wasted. They are the only days you actually experience the ship.
The short version
- The fare is an entry ticket. Budget $50–200 per person per day on top.
- Fly in the day before. Everything else is recoverable; this is not.
- Low and midships if you are worried about motion. Check the deck plan for what is above you.
- Book speciality dining on the first evening.
- Airplane mode plus wifi at sea, always.
- Read the daily programme. It is the whole holiday.