3 things first-time cruisers need to know before stepping foot on the ship

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1. Figure out what kind of cruise you want and when to book it

First, consider where you want to go. Once you pick, Linda Speer, a travel agent affiliated with Virtuoso-member agency Brownell Travel, recommended working with a travel advisor who can help you pick the best time to go. Crowley worked with an advisor at My Path Unwinding Travel.

For Alaska cruises, for instance, the season runs from mid-May to mid-September, but in order to have “reliably good weather, you’d really want to go, I’d consider it to be from Memorial Day to Labor Day,” Speer said.

The itinerary can also impact other aspects of the voyage. Speer said some newbies opt to get their feet wet by taking a three-day cruise, but she warned that is a “terrible idea.”

“The cruise lines usually put their oldest vessels on their shortest routes, so in order to go on the nicer ships, you need to primarily do a seven-day or longer cruise,” Speer said. Longer trips also give first-time cruisers more time to get oriented.

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Cruise lines are all different, as well. 

“If they’re purely looking for cheap, then we know to look at Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean, not to worry about the more expensive ones like Holland America, Princess, Celebrity,” said Geoffrey Millstone, owner of Clarksburg Travel Service.

But even if a cruise is affordable, air travel can add significantly to a trip’s overall price tag. Driving to a closer port can present a less expensive alternative, said Speer.

And even with cruise lines that offer fares with drinks and other amenities included, she said her office will frequently “price it out naked,” stripping away everything but the fare, taxes and fees. Then she can pick the packages or offers that make sense for each client. “If you’re not going to use something, you don’t really want to pay for it,” she said.

As you’re planning, pick your cabin carefully. “First-time cruisers usually are like, ‘I don’t really care what my room is like, I just want to go,'” said Speer. “And so I will tell them to get their smartphone or their book and go and sit in their walk-in closet and see how comfortable they are.”

If you get claustrophobic, she said, you should avoid inside cabins, which do not have windows.

2. Prepare and pack accordingly

Before taking your first cruise, doing your own research can help. Denise Langner and her husband went on a Carnival cruise to the Bahamas for their honeymoon and to celebrate her birthday. While the 29-year-old’s husband, Keefer, had cruised before, she had not, so she sought out wisdom online before their March trip.

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“I guess really the most helpful thing was browsing on Reddit, just trying to figure out the process of things,” said Langner, who lives in Costa Mesa, California. “There’s posts for first-time cruisers, like, tips and such, and I think I took a lot from that.”

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