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I am by no means pro yet, but have been on cruises alone with my husband and with kids. I love it!! I highly recommend cruising as a vacation. This is one of the best ways ever to vacation because there is something for everyone no matter what age.
The most relaxing cruise was of course just my husband and I. We had time to ourselves, lots of relaxing around the pool, nice dinners, shows, it was great. I could go hit the casino while he went to soak in the hot tub and then meet back up for lunch. We spent lots of time together but also enjoyed a little alone time. We made up for a lot of missed date nights. It was the best!
Our next cruise was a huge family affair. It included all of my husbans siblings, their spouses and kids, his parents and us with our kids. There were 17 of us in all. Not as relaxing but just as much fun. Lots of options to do as a big group but still time for us to do things with our individual families as well.
While on this trip we did some of the excursions. My husband and daughter went scuba diving with some of the family and all of us went swimming with the dolphins. So fun!
My husband and I still got some time out as adults, going to shows and lounging around. My teenage daughter had dancing, nightclubs, bingo and some shows. My son, 6, at the time absolutely loved kids camp. We could hardly get him to leave. We had to practically force him to hang out with us or to go to dinner. I was glad he had someplace safe and fun to hang out though. It gave us a chance to relax while he was being entertained and making new friends. We didn’t feel guilty because we knew he was having the time of his life.
There is a lot of planning involved for a cruise though. I’m sure the more you do it the easier it gets though. So I better get onto planning another, haha. Besides just choosing dates and destinations you need to take some time to research the trip your planning and the ship you will be on.
Once you decide on your trip and purchase your tickets you can then get into your account and start adding in the extras. This is when we started really looking into the excursions that we wanted to take and booking those. This is also your chance to add other things such as unlimited drinks. Not just alcohol but carbonated drinks as well if you plan to be getting any of these from other locations on the ship other than the buffet area . We aren’t big drinkers so we did not pay extra for this. We would just swing through the buffet area to grab drinks throughout the day. We did however purchase a case of bottled water ahead of time, which they have in your room upon arrival. Another thing we paid for ahead of time was our gratuities. You’ll pay for this either way. You can wait and they will track automatic gratuities everytime you order a drink, eat dinner, etc ,or you can pay one lump sum ahead of time. When I did some figuring I decided it was cheaper to pay the lump sum and just not worry about what I might owe at the end. I don’t like surprises.
You have the option to add a credit card to your account or you can use cash and go put a certain amount of money on your account when you first arrive for boarding. This is what we chose to do. That gave us a way to put only a certain amount of money on each of our accounts. If we needed more we could always add more later. There are kiosks around the ship so you can check and manage your account whenever you need to.
Be prepared for numerous photo ops. They take pictures all of the time, you can then go find your printed photos and purchase. I usually buy one or two that I really like and get one nice one of the family. The rest of the time I just make sure I take lots of photos myself because it can get expensive quickly when you purchase theirs.
Even with all of the extra charges that you can rack up during a cruise I still feel like you’re getting a lot for your money. It doesn’t involve as much planning as other trips. You don’t worry about hotels, restaurants, or things to do. You have so many options and you are not going to starve with the unlimited food, haha. There is literally something for everyone. I can’t wait for our next one.
Happy planning!
