Quick advice for a first time cruiser?
 

OK, so my father is turning 70 later this month and he and my mom want to take our family (5 adults, 2 kids) on a cruise in June. Looking to probably do a 4-5 night deal and would like to upgrade to suites with a balcony for a little more space. Figure we could do 3 adults in one room and 2 adults/2 kids in the other with pull out sofas.

So, I was looking at Royal Caribbean Enchantment of the Seas 4 night Bahamas cruise that leaves from Miami.

Other than that, I have no idea what I am doing. Not sure if 4 or 5 nights make a difference, what ports to try and target, if this older ship is even a good option. Help!

I am guessing that we will do a mix of snorkeling and walking the ports with some rest and relaxation while on the ship. My wife would be a big fan of a decent gym and a nice pool on the boat.

Anyone give me advice or point me out to a website to visit? Sorry, I am so lost!

CruiseCritic.com is the Flyertalk of the cruise world. You can get some good reviews there.

Have fun! 4-5 days is a good length for a first cruise to see if you like it.

(Depending on the ages of the kids, you may want to reconsider balcony.)

Thanks so much. Older kids 12 & 13

Have a great cruise!

OP: Advice for first time cruiser based in USA: Seven-day Alaska cruise. Or, seven-day round-the islands Hawaii cruise.

Have fun!

day one is getting on the boat. last day is getting off the boat. might consider a longer trip. wife and i like grandeur. it is being refurbished this summer. food is good. staff is great. i do not recall 2x pull out sofas. extra's are a killer.

we are doing a 9 day in august on grandeur. if you want any particulars about the boat, PM me

Thanks for the input so far. My parents have done the Alaska route a couple of times but never the Bahamas/Caribbean. I hear you on burning a day on each side, but I'm not sure a 7-day+ makes sense for us first timers. Honestly, afraid we might not like it and be stuck! :)

I've been happy buying cruises from www.vacationstogo.com. In fact, the specific agent is Katrina Long ([email protected]). She seems to have a knack for finding the better deals.

You might find three rooms with a couple of them inside (or oceanview) and one balcony (or suite) to be roughly the same cost as two suites. And there would be three bathrooms.

Some of the shore activities are wonderful for kids. My granddaughter loved a zip line and snorkeling.

I'm big on "toe-in-the-water" too. My first cruise was 3 nights Seattle to Vancouver. It worked, and I've been back for 7 or 8 more, including a transatlantic.

You spend four nights at sea, but only make three stops as the first and last day are for boarding/disembarking the ship.

Monday-Board Miami leave port around 5 pm, usually some shows and a pool party during the night.
Tuesday-Arrive in either Freeport or Nassau before sunrise, leave near sunset
Wednesday-Arrive at the other city or their private island before sunrise leave near sunset
Thursday-arrive before sunrise in the final port of call, leave at sunset
Friday-arrive before sunrise, but can not get off ship until Customs clears it. Usually starts around 7 am, but can start as late as 8 am as well

I live in SFLA, and am used to the temperature and humidity, but a June cruise in the Caribbean or the Bahamas can be unbearable as the temperatures are usually in the high 80's to low 90's with the humidity close to 100 %. This will put the feel-like temperatures over 100 degrees.

I would suggest maybe a cruise out of NY or Baltimore going to Bermuda. You will spend some relaxing days at sea which can be cooler.

One important thing to look into if you do a cruise in June is Insurance. We have seen in the past hurricanes or other tropical systems force a change in itineraries of the ships as they "go around" the storms. Insurance will help cover any additional expenses incurred due to delays of return to original port due to a storm.

I have used cruises.com to look for cruises, as they can show you different lines with similar cruises. But sometimes, I have gotten better deals by booking directly with the cruise line.

Good luck

Thanks for that link - they seem to have pretty good deals. I will reach out to Katrina next week.

Eyeballing a Royal Caribbean on the Oasis ship. Looks amazing.

I find the Vacations To Go website very functional for the way I like to search. After I've narrowed down to perhaps my possible time frame, destinations and other detail and get a list of possibilities, I change the "Status Column" (right hand side) to price per night by clicking on the underlined "Price Per Night". Then I click on the "Price Per Night" column heading and it sorts by price per night. The bargains automatically bubble to the top. You also can get the rate information for Cheapest Overall,OceanView,Balcony or Suite (click on what you want in the header).

Then the "Custom Search" is really powerful, letting me look at something as specific as my choices for Transatlantic, April 2018, 10-13 nights, Oceanview, Celebrity, 4.5* and higher ship, visiting Tokyo. It is right under the red "Show Me the Deals!" on the left side. Brilliantly designed tool.

You will probably find you are looking at slightly higher rates than your parents. I was discussing cruises with a son, and we finally figured out that mine automatically was giving me the 55+ lower rates.

While most of my cruises have been a simple matter of me emailing or calling and telling them what I'd like them to hold until I have airfare set, the couple times I've had minor issues VTG has promptly helped me sort them out. Once I was traveling a couple weeks ahead of the cruise (Rome departure) and their normal mailing of documents to my home was within that time frame. They simply had the stuff mailed earlier. I can't remember the other issue, but do remember it was some sort of problem and they fixed it. I would be remembering if they hadn't.

Good luck to you.

One piece of advice: always fly to your departure port at least one day in advance if at all possible. This saved me when weather made me miss the once a day flight to SMX to meet my ship. You can spend the extra day at the beach, or maybe Kennedy Space Center if you leave from Port Canaveral.

Yeah, that is definitely the plan. So, if we were to fly into Orlando - what do people normally do to get from the airport to Port Canaveral (knowing we would not need a car for the duration of our cruise). Car service?

Unless you stop at a port using tenders, you will not be getting on and off a boat:confused:. You will be getting on and off a ship. A boat is what they put on the ship to save you.;)
FYI, never use the term "boat" around any of the ships officers.

Totally agree with the above statement. Ships can carry boats, but boats cannot carry ships.

My favorite "how do I get from ... to ...." is www.rome2rio.com.

While I'm not personally familiar with the route, the above website shows both shuttle and bus service from MCO to Port Canaveral. The shuttle showed 5 times per day.

My theory is that when I'm doing something lots of other people are doing (Orlando airport to cruise ship) there are people out there that have figured out how to make money on the action.

But with several of you, a one-way car rental might be a better choice.

The cruise ship may well offer transfers for $. They can be a reasonable deal.

And I totally agree with the suggestion of planning to come in a day early. Always.

Unless it's only a group of 1 or 2 people, there are few locations where the cruise ship transfers will be the best deal. Port Canaveral isn't one of those locations, especially if flying in the night before. For Orlando to Port Canaveral, look into shuttle services or rental cars. If you want to stay near Port Canaveral, look into hotels at Cocoa Beach. There are a few that run shuttles to the port.

I'd look into a one way car rental for your family so you'd be able to get around in the Cocoa Beach area and see things. Likely not too expensive compared to shuttle fare X 5.

I sailed the Oasis the first year it was in the fleet and it was amazing, huge with many activities. You've never done a cruise so you don't know what you'll like. I like smaller ships for short cruises and the bigger when I have the kids/longer cruises. You won't go wrong with that ship IMO.

Appreciate the confirmation. We've booked the 7-day Western Caribbean trip (St. Maarten, San Juan, Labadee) out of Port Canaveral on the Oasis of the Seas. Very excited as this looks to be a cool ship.

Sounds wonderful! I'm glad you got it worked out.

All sorts of ways for families to coordinate on group cruises. One family got inexpensive battery-operated walkie-talkies for everybody. Another simply agreed that everybody gets to go their own way, but they always get together at a specific time for dinner and share the day's adventures. There should be in-room phones, on which voice messages can be left. Door bulletin boards work for some, with messages as to where the occupants might be.

In any case, hope you all have a wonderful time. My parents (and of course grandparents) are long gone, but I have no regrets about doing any shared adventure they every wanted me to do.

I wouldn't do anything less than 7 nights as it doesn't seem worth the travel to me to a ship otherwise.

I think you picked a great ship for your cruise. Enjoy!

Good choice. I'm glad you avoided the Bahamas. Nassau is a dump - you have to work too hard to find something interesting especially, your 3rd and 4th visit which becomes almost inevitable if you favor the shorter cruises from Florida ports. I found Freeport so uninteresting, I didn't leave the ship.

You really shouldn't be planning to go directly from the airport to the ship. Always arrive a day early to allow for IROPs.

Totally agree. I arrive 2 days before cruises outside the USA and always a day early for cruises in the USA. Too many horror stories to mention for folks that missed their ship because of IROPS.

+1

Great choice. I recently traveled to Labadee and it was absolutely beautiful. Definitely my favorite port in the Caribbean.

We did a 7 night cruise a couple of years ago and it was a bit too long for us. We prefer the 5 night ones. Maybe it was just our itinerary as we were at sea most of the time vs being in port very much. Try not to get sucked into the "art" presentation if you can help it. The cruises that have private beaches are always fun. I only had a balcony once, but it was completely worth it. It was peaceful sitting outside in the evenings. I would definitely recommend the dining room for dinner. I haven't been overly impressed with them during lunch, but they have decent food/service at night. The game shows and magic shows are usually fun. We also usually rent a car when we're in port so that we can visit the non-tourist areas.

We, on the other hand, will not book a cruise shorter than 10 days. Part of it is that our annual cruise is basically our major vacation and anything shorter than 10 days is too short. Secondly, after we've paid for airfare and a pre-cruise hotel we want to get as much "bang for our buck" as we can. I will say we look for port intensive cruises and are not much into sea days. The idea of a say a trans-Atlantic cruise with six or seven straight sea days is of no interest to us.

Agree & disagree (travel is so fun - there are options for all of us!) I have no desire to do a 5 day cruise - I have an algorithm of how long a vacation needs to be to make it worth my while to travel there ;-) Most 5 days in the US (I'm on the east coast) tend to be quickie Carib trips and I'm not interested in that at all. And based on what I've read on CC - lots of those short & cheap cruises are party cruises, and I'm really not interested in that!

On the other hand - I am looking forward to doing a TATL repositioning cruise in the future - preferably on a luxury line (repo cruises tend to have the cheapest per diem rates - might be the only way I get to try a luxury line^) Lots of time to enjoy that luxury. But we also like small ships, and TATLs on the small ships take a long time - 10 days without ports might be too much for me. We'll see!

Try a x-DBX cruise to the Med on a luxury line. Last year we did a 20-day cruise that was about 66% less expensive than what we are paying per day on a Northern Europe cruise. Great way to experience a luxury line.

Do these route past Somalia and Yemen or go around the tip of South Africa? For twenty days, I would assume the latter. Did it stop in any ports along the way?

That doesn't appeal at the moment but a good reminder that "good deals" can pop up all over the place when you're flexible! (part of the issue for me is that a port-intensive cruise is not a relaxing vacation for me - it's why we don't cruise often - I'd prefer to go to one place and enjoy for a few days ;-) But when traveling far, that's not necessarily my "best" use of time.....)

A friend did Windstar's repo from Aruba to Tenerife this year, and I was highly jealous. Basically the ship was at less than half capacity and the attention from crew was stellar. It was a 14 night repo I believe, and they did make an unexpected stop in Barbados due to a tropical storm popping up unexpectedly. She sent pictures showing herself as the only one on the pool deck on a sunny day at noon.

I started with a 4 night cruise, then went to 7 nights. Now, I prefer much longer cruises, but will occasionally go back for a 3-7 night just for a quick fix. I love sea days for relaxing, and even frequently turn visits to ports I've visited previously into "port day sea days."

But with everything it's going to be about personality. I have a few friends I would never recommend take a cruise. Others I would send to Carnival for a 4-5 night cruise. And yet others I'm going to recommend a longer cruise on Silver Seas. It's all about what you look for in a vacation.

That point of view is why this is a great "travel" website! So many people on other sites are like my in-laws - if they have a good time, they assume everyone else will just love the same thing. Not true!

We might feel differently in the future. Mrs K is a senior executive and while she gets what might be considered ample vacation time taking it in large chunks is problematic. Once she retires in five or so years we won't be as constrainted.

It is very possible. When I went on my first transatlantic, my traveling companion had an issue with the total length of the vacation and the number of sea days in a row, and ours was unusual in that we only had a maximum 3.5 sea days in a row.

We just did another, more traditional transatlantic together last fall (one longer than the first one even), and she was completely fine, in fact wished it was longer, with even more sea days. Between the two she went from working full time to being retired, and the pace of her life completely changed.

mine was a 20-day DXB-Monte Carlo, with stops in Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Israel and Rome. Special Forces contractors on board while cruising near Yemen and Somalia.

Understood - we're both still working (and, as Americans, that means 4 weeks a year for me? Husband owns his own small business and couldn't be away for that long a stretch. We did 21 days away this past fall and it was too much - Asia cruise, pre & post, travel time etc)

There's a Princess (I think?) 60 day around South America that looks so interesting! I don't think I could do 100+ days of a World Cruise (never say never ;-) but I might be able to do 60 days - esp since I've never been to South America (well, except the Cartagena, Colombia on a Panama Canal cruise...) I don't really want to be on that ship (I think it's Island, so bigger than we like - we prefer to stay under 1000) but it would be more affordable than 2 months on Silversea, for sure:D

Take a couple of highlighter pens to mark activities that interest you on the "daily ship paper'/'patter'. and in a pinch as a BINGO marker (paper game board.)

The cabin walls probably are metal and a few magnets can help keep your schedules tacked up for viewing.

Relax, enjoy your family time together & apart, pace yourselves as to how many activities to try, and enjoy food & drink in moderation.

Do a pre cruise budget plan to try to avoid extravagant impulse buying or gambling.

Happy cruising!