What to bring on a cruise???

[Sanky]

Hi All,

Any one went on a cuise before? It is going to be our first time.
(with my fiancee & future in laws) I was wondering what to prepare when going on a cruise. Any ideas and MUST BRINGS? We will be boarding the Star Princess first week of December 2005 for 7 days. It will be to the Western Carribeans.

Any suggestions or tips will help.

Thanks,

Sanky

[wanted]

Camera, digital/photo and/or video.

[blizzah]

I'm not sure about Princess, but a set of formal clothes for the formal nights, other then that, a dress shirt or golf shirt would be good for the other days.

And a lot of light clothing and a wind breaker or sweater for the nights.

[philelmo]

swimsuit, beachtowels, money for gambling, nice clothes for dinner and dances

[HighFlyer]

There will be 2 formal and 5 'smart casual' nights. I just came back from a Princess cruise, and they were strict in enforcing the formal dinner dress code in the dining room. On the smart casual nights, anything other than jeans, t-shirts and shorts will be ok. Jeans, shorts are allowed in the dining room during breakfast and lunch.

Tips will automatically be billed to your stateroom at $10USD/day/person.

Beware of the 50lb baggage limit on airlines. I saw many cruise passengers rearranging/repacking their bags at the MIA check-in counters.

[Sanky]

Thanks thanks..It is really appreciated.. Great advices from all of you peeps.. :cheesygri :cheesygri

[Cryptic_Soul]

I'm not sure about Princess, but a set of formal clothes for the formal nights, other then that, a dress shirt or golf shirt would be good for the other days.

And a lot of light clothing and a wind breaker or sweater for the nights.

yes there will be formal nights...if i can remember correctly there will be two formal nights where you will have to dress up to be allowed in the dinning room. Also on those nights there will be several stations where you and your family can take "professional" pictures and purchase them a day later.

[pothia]

There will be 2 formal and 5 'smart casual' nights. I just came back from a Princess cruise, and they were strict in enforcing the formal dinner dress code in the dining room. On the smart casual nights, anything other than jeans, t-shirts and shorts will be ok. Jeans, shorts are allowed in the dining room during breakfast and lunch.

Tips will automatically be billed to your stateroom at $10USD/day/person.

Beware of the 50lb baggage limit on airlines. I saw many cruise passengers rearranging/repacking their bags at the MIA check-in counters.

Do I still need to pay tips at dinner then?

And I wonder what other types of pants are there besides formal and jeans. khakis would be the ONLY choice in this case,right?

[rEDSpider]

shrooms in your own canned tomato sauce. not a tin but a jar that has been "canned". Just tell them you have allergies.

[blizzah]

shrooms in your own canned tomato sauce. not a tin but a jar that has been "canned". Just tell them you have allergies.

Huh???? :?: :?:

[HighFlyer]

Do I still need to pay tips at dinner then?
No. If your cruiseline doesn't have auto-tipping, then you would need to calculate the tips for the length of the cruise and give it to the waiter(s)/room steward on the last day.

[blizzah]

No. If your cruiseline doesn't have auto-tipping, then you would need to calculate the tips for the length of the cruise and give it to the waiter(s)/room steward on the last day.

A dollar or two is a nice gesture, but you get auto gratuited lol.

You can change it so you pay less of this auto if you really want.

[gman]

Usually, it is more than just a dollar or two. If you are planning to pay a dollar or two, you may as well not tipping at all.

I assume they will dedicate a waiter for your table and serve you whole night and talk to you and what not. I would say a table of 4 should tip at least US$10. A bigger table would be around $20.

[pandaharo]

Bring some OTC motion sickness medicine, it might save your trip. :)

[trinity]

I am about to go on my first cruise as well in a few weeks. To prepare myself for this, I found a great website. Check out www.cruisecritic.com

All the wonderful tips and great recommendations you will ever find will be all on this site! I have spent hours reading it.

Hope that helps. :)

[poedua]

Usually, it is more than just a dollar or two. If you are planning to pay a dollar or two, you may as well not tipping at all.

I assume they will dedicate a waiter for your table and serve you whole night and talk to you and what not. I would say a table of 4 should tip at least US$10. A bigger table would be around $20.

good points......

also, from CNN.......



[ Tipping on a cruise is an art in itself, with various theories on how to best approach it. One thing that's clear is it's a good idea to check with your cruise line before boarding to get a sense of how much money you'll want to budget.

"You do have to think about that when you're pricing a cruise, because it can easily add a couple hundred dollars," Walther says.

Princess Cruises recommends tipping $3.50 per passenger per day to waiters and stateroom stewards, $2 per passenger per day to assistant waiters, and $2 per day to butlers. It also suggests rewarding the headwaiter and maitre d' if they provide a special service.

Norwegian Cruise Line, on the other hand, automatically bills each passengers $10 per day for gratuities to spare them a last-minute scramble for cash. Passengers who want to adjust the tip can do so.

While it's traditional to tip on the last day, some experts suggest passing along part of your tip early on in the cruise to increase your chances of better service along the way ]

[rc51]

CruiseCritic is a great site for information. Lots of seasoned cruisers there.

We sailed on the Sun Princess back in Mar. on a 10 day Eastern Carib. It was great!

If you haven't done so.. I would pick the 2nd seating fixed dining, we noticed lots of lineups for the Freestyle or Anytime dining, mind you, we did a 10 day, which is a much older crowd, due to cost and length of the cruise. I hear the 7 day ones attract much younger clients and more families (with kids) :( :(

Even if you do 2nd seating, you have lots of time in port, don't have to rush back, you can get back, order a snack thru room service, grab a shower, clean up, relax, go for a drink and then hit dinner around 8:15 or so. You can finish a leisurely dinner and still make the shows.

I would suggest some sort of 'sea-sick' remedy just in case the first day or 2 are rough, especially if you're a first time, we didn't need it, but the couple we were with, they had patches on and still were bothered by the rough seas. It was rough enough that we couldn't dock at our first port... Princess Cays.

Don't use the cruise/hotel transfers to the ship the day you sail, you can go early, we left our hotel at 11am and were on the ship by noon. It was a painless procedure seeing Princess board ALL those people, just incredible how they can move so many people around. Touring the ship at noon when it's almost empty was cool, we walked around and check almost the entire ship out.

Sit back and ENJOY it, it is nice. There were a few disappointments for us, but we've decided that we need to step up to Radisson or similar on our next cruise, but there's still fun to be had on the mainstream cruise lines.

PS

Room service is fully included on Princess, make use of it, we had a balcony, and ordered breakfast for 7am each morning, had it on the balcony, very nice. They say, anything available on the dinner menu is available on the room service menu. If you have a balcony, you'll love having breakfast via room service.

[BobW]

Take half the clothes and twice the money that you think you need. Staterooms are small and being space efficient is important to your comfort. Realize that you will NOT see any "real" places no matter where your ports of call are. What you will see is standard, overpriced tourist clip joints. In some ports, the prices automatically double the moment a ship pulls in. Your time in port is so limited that you do not have time to explore a place and find the real people or things that make it special...just the rows of "discount/duty free" jewelry stores.

At sea, realize that the ship is just driving in circles. They can easily get from one port to the next in a couple of hours, but they get you on a ship and literally drive in circles all night just so you are "at sea". I, personally, would much rather have had much more time in each port than they allow and spend much less time driving in circles, but that's the way cruises work.

On ship, be prepared to see the worst in people. Nothing like an open buffet to bring civilization down a notch or two.

They do have lots of activities on board to keep you busy. Take part in some. Doing the cruise thing is not for everyone; I'm glad I did one, but I really don't need to do one again.

[Sanky]

Bring some OTC motion sickness medicine, it might save your trip. :)


Thanks so much for your help, never thought of that!! :cheesygri

[Sanky]

I am about to go on my first cruise as well in a few weeks. To prepare myself for this, I found a great website. Check out www.cruisecritic.com

All the wonderful tips and great recommendations you will ever find will be all on this site! I have spent hours reading it.

Hope that helps. :)


I will go on it! Thanks for your advice! Which cruise line are you taking btw? :cheesygri

[Sanky]

CruiseCritic is a great site for information. Lots of seasoned cruisers there.

We sailed on the Sun Princess back in Mar. on a 10 day Eastern Carib. It was great!

Sit back and ENJOY it, it is nice. There were a few disappointments for us, but we've decided that we need to step up to Radisson or similar on our next cruise, but there's still fun to be had on the mainstream cruise lines.

PS

Room service is fully included on Princess, make use of it, we had a balcony, and ordered breakfast for 7am each morning, had it on the balcony, very nice. They say, anything available on the dinner menu is available on the room service menu. If you have a balcony, you'll love having breakfast via room service.

Thanks so much for your advice, we do have a balcony and we will surely oder room service to have a nice, quiet peaceful time. :cheesygri

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of disappointments did you encountered? :|

[iamthehub]

Hi All,

Any one went on a cuise before? It is going to be our first time.
(with my fiancee & future in laws) I was wondering what to prepare when going on a cruise. Any ideas and MUST BRINGS? We will be boarding the Star Princess first week of December 2005 for 7 days. It will be to the Western Carribeans.

Any suggestions or tips will help.

Thanks,

Sanky

Not nice to think about, but JUST INCASE: MOTION SICKNESS PILLS (gravol). If you're visiting some of the islands, you might want to have Pepto Bismol.

Small Flash light on a keychain or something! If your room is on the INSIDE with no porthole, it will be DARK DARK DARK with the lights out... You won't be able to tell when it's morning, so have a travel alarm (I don't trust the alarm clocks in the room).

[HighFlyer]

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of disappointments did you encountered? :|
I just came off that ship, and I'd say that the entertainment was severely lacking.

[Shift1212]

lol as long as you have money.. its no problem.. if your curise is a big one. they will have stores to provide you with whatever you need.. but incase urs isn't.. just bring swimming gear.. and lots and lots of clothes.. its soo expensive to wash your clothing on curises but if you have to.. keep it to a minimum..

[rc51]

Thanks so much for your advice, we do have a balcony and we will surely oder room service to have a nice, quiet peaceful time. :cheesygri

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of disappointments did you encountered? :|

The biggest disappointment for us was the food. Now you have to take this into context. Before we went on our cruise, EVERYONE we spoke to, friends, family, other travellers that had cruised simply raved about the food. And while it is very good, we just didn't get the WOW factor everyone spoke about. I think the reason for us is simple, we (my wife and I) go out alot, and we typically go to the nicer restaurants. My wife also travels alot on business and believe me, they don't skimp when it comes to entertaining clients or events. So one gets spoiled that way.

Another thing that was disappointing was some of the behavior of some passengers, or maybe the type of passenger(s) Princess attracts. We anticipated an older, more civilized group on the ship, but you get all kinds.

That is why we think we'll step up to Radisson or similar for our next cruise, just to try it out. It's a smaller ship, therefore less passengers and considered LUXURY vs mainstream as is Princess, Carnvial, RCCL, Celebrity...but the cost is double if not triple.

I think we owe it to ourselves to try a LUXURY cruiseline at least once.

[mlc2000]

I'm with you on the food. I think some people go out for dinner 6 nights a year - on the cruiseship!

We also eat at finer restarants, so the steaks and the seafood were a little disappointing. We were on Adventure of the Seas, we upgraded one night at dinner, went to Portofinos ($20USD upcharge each). The food was much better as was the service. Plus we had a table for two, candle light, quite nice. The wine selection was also much better than the main dining room.
If you're going to charge me $35USD for a bottle of Cailfornia wine, at least gimme a brand name.

I have friends who went on a smaller ship cruising Tahiti, they said the food and booze was much better. But then, their trip was $20,000.
A little different from $6000 caribbean trip.

I agree with a few of the posts about Gravol. I get seasick. Even on that massive tanker, i could feel it move. There's no escape from it, especially at night - they drop anchor 40 miles off shore (it doesn't take 12 hrs to sail 150 miles from one island to the next ;) )

To the OP, if doing Western Carib, if u stop at St Thomas, take a cab to Magens Bay, its a specatcular beach, one of the top 10 in the world.
http://www.basketballtravelers.com/images/gallery/lg/virgin1.jpg



The biggest disappointment for us was the food. Now you have to take this into context. Before we went on our cruise, EVERYONE we spoke to, friends, family, other travellers that had cruised simply raved about the food. And while it is very good, we just didn't get the WOW factor everyone spoke about. I think the reason for us is simple, we (my wife and I) go out alot, and we typically go to the nicer restaurants. My wife also travels alot on business and believe me, they don't skimp when it comes to entertaining clients or events. So one gets spoiled that way.

Another thing that was disappointing was some of the behavior of some passengers, or maybe the type of passenger(s) Princess attracts. We anticipated an older, more civilized group on the ship, but you get all kinds.

That is why we think we'll step up to Radisson or similar for our next cruise, just to try it out. It's a smaller ship, therefore less passengers and considered LUXURY vs mainstream as is Princess, Carnvial, RCCL, Celebrity...but the cost is double if not triple.

I think we owe it to ourselves to try a LUXURY cruiseline at least once.

[GT108]

Went on the Grand Princess a couple of months ago.

Pro
Food were above par. Especially surprise was the quality of the buffet. Most night you can have pretty much the same thing they serve in the dining room, in the buffet, without having to dress up. The other thing that I thought was a plus in the buffet was there were good service and the table was candlelit, opose to some other cruiseline that serve the dinner buffet in a almost cafeteria setting.

Rooms were well appointed, if a bit small. You will soon forget that in couple of hours as there were plenty of storage and they are well thought out. Beside, it really true that you rarely spent any time in there other than to change and sleep.

Con
Casino was very small and not very well runned. On many nights I found the place very dirty with overflowed trash cans and litter all over the place. Another peeve is there were often a big wait for tables even though there were unopen table around.

Entertainment was not very entertaining. Borders on lame for some of the broadway shows.

The Purser's Desk was staffed by some of the rudest people I have ever met on a crew staff. They were the unhappiest bunch of crew members I have ever seen on a cruiseline. They were often unwilling to even listen to your concern, cutting you off before you finish and brushing you aside.

Luckily I did not have to use them often or it would have surely ruin my vacation.

[GT108]

BTW, if you are prone to seasickness, buy your gravol or SeaBand here before you board or you will pay a extortionary prices.

On tipping:
On the last night before you go home, you will receive a print out of all your charges, including the tipping for your cabin. There will be a big line up at the purser desk of people who want to correct the mistakes, or pay.

You can avoid the line up by requesting a print out first thing in the morning or in the afternoon to verify and pay ahead of the herd.

[Sanky]

BTW, if you are prone to seasickness, buy your gravol or SeaBand here before you board or you will pay a extortionary prices.
.

LOL, ya, FYI I get motion sickness on any kind of transportation. on the GO, teh car, the plane.... and now I'll be trying on the cuise... I guess I'll need tons of Gravol or Seaband..

Thanks for your tips! :cheesygri

[pothia]

CruiseCritic is a great site for information. Lots of seasoned cruisers there.

We sailed on the Sun Princess back in Mar. on a 10 day Eastern Carib. It was great!

If you haven't done so.. I would pick the 2nd seating fixed dining, we noticed lots of lineups for the Freestyle or Anytime dining, mind you, we did a 10 day, which is a much older crowd, due to cost and length of the cruise. I hear the 7 day ones attract much younger clients and more families (with kids) :( :(

Even if you do 2nd seating, you have lots of time in port, don't have to rush back, you can get back, order a snack thru room service, grab a shower, clean up, relax, go for a drink and then hit dinner around 8:15 or so. You can finish a leisurely dinner and still make the shows.

I would suggest some sort of 'sea-sick' remedy just in case the first day or 2 are rough, especially if you're a first time, we didn't need it, but the couple we were with, they had patches on and still were bothered by the rough seas. It was rough enough that we couldn't dock at our first port... Princess Cays.

Don't use the cruise/hotel transfers to the ship the day you sail, you can go early, we left our hotel at 11am and were on the ship by noon. It was a painless procedure seeing Princess board ALL those people, just incredible how they can move so many people around. Touring the ship at noon when it's almost empty was cool, we walked around and check almost the entire ship out.

Sit back and ENJOY it, it is nice. There were a few disappointments for us, but we've decided that we need to step up to Radisson or similar on our next cruise, but there's still fun to be had on the mainstream cruise lines.

PS

Room service is fully included on Princess, make use of it, we had a balcony, and ordered breakfast for 7am each morning, had it on the balcony, very nice. They say, anything available on the dinner menu is available on the room service menu. If you have a balcony, you'll love having breakfast via room service.


ahhhh..expert talking..I don't understand.

First of all, what is 2nd seating? And what is cruise/hotel transfer?

[HighFlyer]

First of all, what is 2nd seating?

There are 2 assigned dinner times.... 1st seating refers to 6-8PM, if you have second seating, your assigned dinner time is 8-10PM

And what is cruise/hotel transfer?
Transportation between the port and hotel/airport, normally in the form of a shuttle bus/motorcoach.

[girlstar]

Sigh this thread makes me want to go on a cruise so much more. It's so addictive.

I saw someone say to bring beach towels but you're already packing enough to go on a cruise, you don't need them because the ship provides them. Just make sure you don't leave them ashore/lose them or you'll be charged for them.

Star Princess is likely set up like Grand Princess and that ship was confusing to get around. To get to our dining room you there was only one stairwell to access it. Some stairwells in the middle of the ship only stopped at like the promenade deck.

Oh my tip is to take the stairs when possible. It's good exercise since you'll seriously be eating a ton on the cruise. On Adventure of the Seas I'd walk from the 5th deck up to the 12th. The comedian would joke how people take the elevator one down. I only resort to the elevator when I have fancy shoes on :P

[trinity]

I will go on it! Thanks for your advice! Which cruise line are you taking btw? :cheesygri

I chose Royal Caribbean - Mariner of the Seas, which is one of their mega ships. I can't wait. I set sail in a few weeks. :)

BTW I went with second dinner seating.