We went on our first cruise for our honeymoon. We left out of the Port of Miami and went to Half Moon Cay (a carnival private island), St. Thomas, San Jan Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk.
The first thing you need to be aware of when you go on a cruise is: You are on their time, they do not wait for anyone. With this being said I would recommend getting to your port city the day before just in case you have flight delays. We had a flight delay so I am glad we decided to get in a couple days before to extend our vacation.
When you print off your cruise documents (do this ahead of time, it saves you a lot of time), you will have a scheduled time to board. Don't worry about that time, our boarding time was at 1pm, we ended up getting there around 11:30 and getting on board way before our scheduled time. It doesn't hurt to get there early and beat the big crowds. Once you get on board your cruise starts! So you might as well get there early to start eating, drinking, and exploring!
Know what time your cruise ship leaves port and get a good seat! If you wait until the last minute like we did on finding a spot for departure, you don't end up with a great heading off picture, but we still loved it.
Drinking
If you and and the person you are traveling with like to drink then you might want to look into buying the drink package. We looked into it and bought one. We figured out that we would each need to drink 6 drinks a day each day of the cruise to make the package worth while. We made that goal once! We added up the total drinks at the end of our trip and we would've been better off paying as we went for drinks. There is so much stuff to do and see on a cruise its hard to drink the whole time.
They do have drink packages for pop drinkers and that is worth it if you drink pop at all. We had pop and juice in our alcohol package but we found out they only gave cans of pop to the people who purchased the pop drink package.
Packing
If you are like me you are a heavy packer, which is fine. You can take as many bags as you want on board, but just make sure you can take all of them off on your own. You can get off the ship faster if you take your own bags off the ship. That is pretty important information, especially if you have a flight before noon. But here are a few things to pack that you might not think of ahead of time and some other fun facts:
-Medication (aspirin/pepto/tums/bandaids/etc) they do have all of this on the ship but it is all ridiculously expensive. I ended up getting a sinus infection while on the cruise and I paid $5 for a small pack of throat lozenges which was worth it but I didn't want to pay almost $30 for NyQuil.
-Small bills/tipping money. Even though it says that you paid all "gratuities" it is still customary to tip on the ship. You will have someone who cleans your stateroom twice a day! We tipped them a couple dollars a day along with candy and left a big tip when we left because they took such good care of us. Also the last formal night is when it is customary to tip your waiter/waitress for dinner. They are great and you tend to set in a section where you really like your waiter/waitress for the whole cruise.
-Book the Balcony room, its worth it! The balcony rooms are bigger than the inner rooms of the ship and they have a great view! It was nice being able to sit and watch as we pulled into port in the comfort of our private balcony. You can also order room service and have coffee and sit on your balcony and just take in the view.
-Don't bring beach towels. The cruise ship provides beach towels for your to use on and off the ship.
-Bring a wrist watch. You are on the ships time, so if you set your watch to the ships time you will always be on time for shows, events, and leaving port.
-Don't waste your money on wifi. You are on vacation, the great thing about a cruise ship is to get away. They have wifi hotspots on the ship just in case you need to check in with the rest of the world. Also, phone carriers offer a travel option on your plan to purchase right before your trip if you need to call home and not get charged an outrageous amount for it.
-Power strip, they don't always have a lot of power outlets in the rooms so it helps to bring a power strip.
-Wrinkle free release spray. They don't have irons in your room on the ship, so it's a great idea to bring a couple travel size bottles of this for your clothes that you have stuffed in your luggage.
Ports
Do research on your ports before you cruise. We did not buy any excursions, we made our own. We went everywhere we wanted to and did almost everything that was offered in the excursion packages for half the cost. The main reason cruise ships push their excursions is that the cruise ship won't leave you if a ship excursion is late for the ship. However, if you are off doing your own thing and the ship is ready to leave, it will leave. Just make sure you keep track of when your ship is scheduled to leave and get on board at least 30 minutes prior to departure just in case.
We will book an excursion next time if we go to a place with a rain forest. That is the only thing we didn't get to do in Puerto Rico. (We were fixing to go on a local rain forest trip but I had a panic attach so we didn't go. I was worried the ship would leave us.)
Another good thing about making your own excursions is you get to have the locals view of the island. We booked an island guide right off the ship in St. Martin and he took us to some great places!
The Shows
Cruise ships have a lot to offer as far as entertainment. They have live shows every night. They also have different things during the day for the cruisers that don't want to get off the boat for a port.
Go see the comics. They have 2 comedy shows a night and switch the comedians in the middle of the cruise. You will never see the same show twice.
Be Friendly
Most experienced cruisers are extremely friendly and want to tell you all about the best parts of cruising and they want to make sure you have a good experience on your first cruise. You will find that when you have dinner you will either dine around or dine with the same groups of people. We thought it was funny because we had dinner for 3 of the 6 nights with the same group of people even though we were eating at different times each night. You will make a lot of different friends on the ship, so try to think of a way to remember names because they WILL remember yours.
We had a blast on our cruise and we can't wait to do it again!
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