How to plan and book your own fantastic cruise!

Planning a cruise starts with knowing who you are! Really. If you don’t think you’ll like cruising this post isn’t going to try to change your mind. This post is about how to plan a cruise you’ll enjoy. A cruise should reflect who you are and what you enjoy doing.

Many people are just fine with the ‘book it and go’ approach. And that’s great! However, there are other ways to do it so you can get even more out of your vacation time.

Before we book a cruise we consider:

Where we want to go

What we want to do on vacation (our mood or do we want to enjoy some museums?)

Is there a specific ship we want to go on? Check out our Cruising 101 – Ship s for tips on selecting one. What about the itinerary? More information on how we look at those is in C ruising 101 – Itineraries.

Then we start researching! This is really the fun part. We both take a look at the different offerings for different cruise lines. We shortlist, and send each other the links and take a look. Usually it’s really obvious which one we like. Sometimes, what we want to do isn’t available when we want to go.

The cruiselines we like include (but are not limited to!):

Once you know the cruise you want…

Planning a cruise means once you have figured out the cruise, and you’ve got yourself a deal, you get to plan the really fun stuff! Oh, WAIT A MINUTE – you don’t have a deal?? You can’t find a deal? Okay, read on….

Booking

Booking a cruise is so much about timing. And, who you book through, what is happening, and what country you book from and for where. A lot of variables. We have found consistently that we can secure the best deal possible directly from the cruise line.

HOWEVER. What you don’t necessarily get are the additional perks. Drink packages, gratuities, free WIFI, and so on. If you have cruised a lot, you may already receive a number of these as a part of your preferred status (loyalty programs). If you do, you can’t double dip. This is why we find the itinerary and the ship/cruiseline first. Then we try to find the best deal we can for what we want.

You typically have the ability via your travel agent or the cruise company to change your booking if another, better deal comes along. This is even for the same cruise on the same date!

Once you have booked your cruise, you are ready to get down to planning for fun! Check out our Cruising 101 – Shore Excursio ns for how to plan your days off the boat. But what about what to do onboard?

Onboard Ship

Every ship we have been on has a schedule for the day. Typically you receive it the night before or first thing in the morning in our room. We take a quick look if we will be ashore (so we know what we are missing!). If we are going to be onboard, we take a bit more time to see if there is anything that strikes our fancy.

Sometimes, we visit the sommeliers onboard/wine cellar to see if there will be wine tasting events or a series; or, we check out cooking seminars, or auctions. This all depends what part of the world we are in, and if we are in a ‘chill’ mood or an ‘active’ mood! One of the things we love about cruising is you can do as much or as little as you like, and make the trip your own. We see the ship as a moving hotel, with lots of amenities that allow us the freedom of choice!

One of the traps that we’ve heard from people is they feel ‘compelled’ to do as much as possible to get their full ‘value’ out of the cruise. To us, the value of cruising is you are paying for access and availability. This doesn’t mean you have to do any of it, but, it’s nice to know the activities are there if you want to partake. And, to be fair, a number of them cost a little bit more – which takes us to another topic – nickel and diming while aboard a cruise ship.

Many cruise lines have this as their main modus operandi – get the passengers onboard then you have a ‘captive’ audience. You are on board and want to enjoy yourself it’s only $100 more per person for that event, so, let’s go ahead and do it! Unless it is something you typically do, or go onboard that ship to do, think about it and maybe ask around. We have found that certain cruise lines and ships do some things (wine tasting) very well, and others do not. We’ve also learnt from our many cruises the type of cruise lines we prefer – the ones that don’t nickel & dime, and which are as close as possible to all-inclusive.

Use this post ‘Planning a cruise’ to try it out for yourself! You’ll find it very fulfilling getting out of the cruise all that you put into it –