Some lessons learned the hard way.....

[printingchick]

Lessons learned the hard way:

 

* It's worth the extra $$ to book a DIRECT/NON-STOP flight to the city from which your cruise will depart. A connecting flight doubles your chances of a delay or cancelled flight.

* Always have a back-up plan! (in the case of cancelled excursions)

* Always recalculate the cash you're taking ashore in the event you have to go with a back-up plan! Part of my anal organization means I figure out - in advance - how much cash to take ashore at each port of call. That way, I'm not struggling to figure it out that morning. However, if the excursion you booked is cancelled and you end up going with a back-up plan, your on-shore costs could be much higher than anticipated. (Particularly if the cancelled excursion was paid in advance.)

* On port-intensive cruises, schedule some relaxing days. On my first such itinerary, I booked very active excursions in EVERY port. It was fun, but we missed nearly ALL the night life on the ship because we were just constantly exhausted!

* Don't get too carried away with those drinks of the day on embarkation day!!

* SUNSCREEN if you FRIEND!!!

* Take a water bottle to save money buying bottled water. The tap water on the ship is filtered and your room steward will keep you supplied with ice.

[ashefrog]

In 2006 I organized a group cruise with family and friends for Thanksgiving week on Carnival Liberty. As group leader I had been planning for a year, sold many on the cruise about the new ship we were going on, it was a western Caribbean itinerary which quite a few us had never done. I believe there were 5 ports. My group consisted of ages 5 to 75. I was so excited, couldn't wait to be with my family and friends on this cruise.

 

Three days before the cruise it all went to hell. The Liberty had a flu run through the ship on the transatlantic trip to Florida. They had to dock the ship for 2 days to clean and sanitize it.

 

Now we were getting a 5 day cruise going to Key West and Cozumel, which my husband and I had just done on our last cruise. Carnival was great about the whole thing, but my group freaked out. They had concerns about going on the ship, disappointed at the port changes, etc. My travel agents had to make many calls over the next two days to assure everyone of their options (Carnival gave us 3, something for everyone).

 

Long story short, in the end only 1 person didn't go. We all had a great time, the ship was beautiful, no one got sick and we all had fun at the ports of call.

 

Lesson learned - do not get too carried away making plans because sh*t happens.

[Stokeset]

I love these stories! I've learned more from these posts about the "art" of cruising than in the last dozen or so trip reviews I've read. Thanks everyone, and keep 'em coming!

[cwistyred]

Well to be honest we had our whole itinerary changed. In 1998 we had a western caribbean cruise planned. One of the first scheduled to go to Roatan, on the old Premier line. We were also going to Cozumel, Belize and Key West for Halloween. A little hurricane named Mitch came along and killed a lot of people and made a huge mess out of that area. We still took the cruise but they changed the whole trip to an Eastern Caribbean sailing going to the Bahamas, St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. A lovely group of islands but not quite snorkeling on one of the best reefs in the world like in Roatan or cruising down a river with wild monkeys like in Belize or climbing the ruins of Tulum. It was a rocky trip, but we enjoyed it anyway even though we got to Puerto Rico about 5 hours late and it was raining. A lot of people we devastated by the hurricane, I still got to travel on a great old ship and lived to talk about it.