TIME to GO
If YOU PURCHASE AN AIR/SEA PACKAGE, your cruise begins from the moment you arrive at the airport. Here’s how.
CRUISE DOCUMENTS
NORMALLY, YOU RECEIVE your travel documents— including tickets, transfer vouchers, boarding forms, and luggage tags—about two weeks before departure. Some cruise lines, particularly deluxe and smaller ones going to offbeat destinations, begin sending material a month or more in advance, and often include information on ports of call and on shore excursions sold on board ship. A “Welcome Aboard” brochure is intended to familiarize you with your ship. Read it.
The final documents will include your airline and cruise tickets. Your agent should have checked them before sending them to you. Check them yourself. If you buy your cruise late, documents may come directly to you from the cruise line. Check them, too. Remember that you must show your cruise ticket when you check in at the dock.
In 2007, Princess Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Lines began sending cruise tickets and other documentation to passengers via email, unless you or your travel agent request otherwise. You can expect other cruise lines to follow suit in the near future. Actually, it’s better for you as you will receive the tickets earlier and you will have a chance to examine them sooner to correct any errors that might have occurred.
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Be sure to carry all documents and essential literature you receive from your cruise line or travel agent with you. Do not pack them in your luggage.
Luggage tags show the cruise line’s name and logo. They have spaces for your name and address and the name of your ship, cruise and cabin numbers, and departure date and port. Complete the luggage tags using information contained in your cruise ticket. Attach at least one tag to every piece of your luggage, including your handbags. (An amazing number of people, in their excitement, leave hand luggage behind on an airplane, in the airport, or on a motorcoach. If it’s tagged, airline or port personnel will know immediately what to do with it.)
When you arrive at the airport, you will claim luggage and it will ride on the transfer bus with you for the drive to the pier. There, it will be taken by baggage handlers and will show up in your cabin in a few hours. If not, do not panic. Cruise ships, especially large ones, have thousands of bags to load and sort as passengers arrive. In our experience, luggage is moved from the airport to your cabin with amazing speed.
AIRPORT ARRIVAL AND TRANSFERS
AS YOU LEAVE YOUR AIRPLANE in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, San Juan, Vancouver, or any major departure city, you will be met by uniformed cruise line representatives, usually holding a placard showing your ship’s name. The representatives gather their charges and escort or direct them to a waiting motorcoach. Keep your transfer voucher handy; you must show it to board the bus.
If you do not spot your cruise line representative, ask airline personnel or other cruise lines’ reps for help. Or go to an airport “red” phone and ask that your line’s representative be paged. Or proceed to where motorcoaches pick up passengers for transfer to the pier.
ADVANCE ARRIVALS OR DELAYED RETURNS
ALMOST ALL LINES HAVE HOTEL and sightseeing packages for people who choose to arrive at their port of departure in advance of their cruise or linger there afterward. Packages are described in your cruise brochure. If your cruise begins after a long flight, lines normally schedule the first day for cruising to give passengers time to overcome jet lag. If the itinerary calls for immediate ports of call, you might consider arriving a day before departure.
Give the most serious consideration to a day-in-advance arrival when you buy the cruise by itself, are arranging your own transportation to the departure port, or your travel falls during busy travel periods when weather in the northern United States often turns bad and flights are delayed (such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and Presidents’ Day weekend).
If you’re on an air/sea program, your line has a greater incentive— although not necessarily a legal one—to get you to the ship when you’ve been delayed, either by postponing the sailing or by arranging a hotel room and transporting you to the first port of call. In such instances, you’re likely to be one of many stranded passengers. Your name is on a passenger list, and the cruise line representative at the airport expects you. He or she is in touch with the airline and your ship and probably is setting strategy before you arrive. If you’re traveling on your own and are delayed, your cruise ship has no record of your flight and no obligation to help, although most will try. If you arrive at least a day early, you can avoid this hassle.
This is highly recommended whenever possible. Why risk missing the ship due to a flight snafu? Some people advise arriving early to avoid standing in line for check-in. We view this as the least valid reason unless you want to be on as early as physically possible to enjoy onboard amenities. Queues at the airport and dockside departure gates are a fact of life in mass-market travel. If you’re so impatient that you cannot stand in a check-in line—even if it takes an hour— without having your blood pressure skyrocket, then you’re probably on the wrong cruise. Megaships have megapassengers, and they must be individually processed. (It would speed the process if everyone arrived with all their documents completed properly.)
AT THE PIER
IF YOU’RE LUCKY, you will be among the first to arrive from the airport and the first in line for check-in. More likely, you’ll be among several hundred others, and, depending on the cruise line, day of the week, size of the ship, and other contingencies, you will stand in line ten minutes to two hours. Pull out a magazine or travel book and start reading.
Large ships have a check-in system, asking you to line up behind your letter in the alphabet. Despite occasional glitches, this works well. You often have until 60 minutes before departure to board the ship. Some lines let you board until 15 to 30 minutes before departure, but we don’t suggest cutting it that close.
Normally, lines begin processing passengers at noon or 1 p.m. for a 4 or 5 p.m. departure. But they seldom allow passengers to embark sooner than two or three hours before departure, because time is needed for previous passengers to disembark and the crew to clean the ship and prepare your cabin. Some luxury or premium lines will let you come aboard sooner sometimes for a fee, but you must remain in public areas.
VISITORS
FOR SECURITY REASONS, lines do not allow visitors. If your friends or family want to send you off in style, they can contact your travel agent to arrange a party for you in your cabin, complete with flowers, wine, and Champagne, or a birthday cake or anniversary surprise in the dining room when the ship is at sea.
SETTLING IN BOARDING YOUR SHIP
SOME SHIPS, PARTICULARLY the most luxurious ones, have uniformed cabin stewards and stewardesses at the gangway to take you to your cabin and carry your hand luggage. Your escort may offer a quick orientation or ask you to wait for your regular steward, whose name is probably on a small tent card on your dresser. Also in your cabin is ship’s literature, including an agenda for the day’s events, a deck plan, and possibly stationery.
CHECKING OUT YOUR CABIN
TAKE A QUICK LOOK AROUND THE CABIN to be sure everything is working—it usually is on new ships, not necessarily on old ones. Check how to operate air- conditioning, lights, and the hot-water faucets—some fancy new ones are tricky, and the water can scald you. Check the location of life preservers, blankets, and pillows—do you have enough? If anything is missing or not as you requested— twin beds instead of a double—report it now. If you cannot locate your steward, go to the purser or front desk. If you do not get satisfaction, work your way up to the hotel manager.
HAIR DRYERS/ELECTRIC SHAVERS
ALMOST ALL CABINS ON MODERN SHIPS have standard 110-volt AC electrical outlets: your small hair dryer and electric razor won’t need an adapter. A few older ships need them. Most new ships have hair dryers. We list this information in the ships’ profiles in Part Two, in Standard Features, under Cabin Amenities.
LAUNDRY AND DRY CLEANING
ALMOST ALL SHIPS HAVE LAUNDRY SERVICE. Far fewer have drycleaning facilities. Generally, laundry service is good and reasonable but ship laundries tend to use lots of bleach. Price lists and laundry bags are in your cabin. Give your articles to be cleaned or pressed to your steward. They usually are returned in a day, and same-day service is available for an extra fee. For safety reasons, ships ask that passengers not use irons in their cabin, but many have public launderettes with an iron and ironing board, as well as coin-operated washers and dryers. The Standard Features section in our cruise line’s profile details the availability of launderettes.
TELEPHONES AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS
ALL BUT A FEW SHIPS HAVE TELEPHONES in cabins with instructions for using them. Most phones have direct-dial to the United States 24 hours a day, but be aware of the price. Usually, you are charged $6 to $10 per minute for a ship-to-shore call. Receiving a call or a fax may cost $5 to $7 or more per minute. Policies vary. Some allow you to call collect or charge your call to your shipboard account. Shore to Ship has technology enabling passengers to dial toll-free numbers in the United States directly from their cabins. The price is $6.95 per minute, maximum ten minutes per call. Crystal Cruises was among the first to enable passengers to send and receive e-mail with relative ease. Now, most cruise ships, including even small adventure ships, have e-mail facilities and more and more are adding wireless access.
If someone wants to reach you at sea, they can telephone the ship by calling #800-SEA-CALL, asking for the ship by name, and giving its approximate location. The specific phone number for your ship is often included in the documents you receive from the cruise line in advance of your cruise. Charges for this call will appear on the caller’s long-distance telephone bill. Ship-to-shore telephone and fax services are normally available only at sea. When the ship is in port, onshore communications must be used.
Until recently, cell phones worked locally in ports and up to about two miles at sea, depending on the phone and the location. But now, cruise ships, especially new ones, are installing technology that enables passengers to use their own cell phones at sea with the cost being charged to the passengers’ cell phone account. Be warned: it’s expensive. With e-mail becoming so readily available on cruise ships, it is the best, least costly means to stay in touch with family and friends, or to tend to business during a cruise.
Almost all new ships have an Internet cafe with a dozen or more computer terminals, and older ships and many small ones have installed at least one or two terminals for passengers’ use. Many older ships have also been retrofitted with these cafes. Charges range from 25 cents to 75 cents per minute, including dial-up time, which can often take five minutes or more at sea. On weeklong or longer cruises, many ships offer weekly rates. Wi-Fi access is rapidly becoming the norm on large ships; cards usually cost $10 per day. Internet cafes in ports of call are now available around the world and are usually very inexpensive to use to send and retrieve mail—certainly much less costly than shipboard facilities.
CHECKING OUT YOUR SHIP
AFTER YOU CHECK OUT YOUR CABIN, you might want to tour the ship or, alternatively, relax in a lounge or visit the spa. The ship will be your home for a while, and it’s nice to feel at home as quickly as possible.
CHECKING ON YOUR DINING RESERVATIONS
WHEN YOU BOOK YOUR CRUISE, your travel agent should state your dining preference and request reservations. On ships with assigned seating times, you may request first or second seating, or on ships with four seating times, any of those. Tables for two, four, six, or eight are available; and guests can ask for smoking or nonsmoking areas, although most ships departing from U.S. ports now have smokeless dining rooms. Most lines say they honor requests on a first-come, firstserved basis, yet few confirm them in advance. Generally, dining reservations are confirmed only by the maître d’hôtel on board. Royal Caribbean International is among the few lines that print passengers’ dining reservations on their cruise tickets. Why, in this computer age, all can’t do the same is a mystery—unless it’s to allow the maître d’hôtel to control last-minute shuffling and to ensure he gets his tips.
You may receive confirmation of your dining arrangements on check-in, or it may be in your cabin. If not, check on it. Even lines that give you a dining reservation in advance may ask you to confirm it with the maître d’hôtel. If you have a problem with your dining arrangements, know that most cruise lines will accommodate your change request, though not necessarily on the first night. Rest assured, you won’t be the only one. No other item causes more consternation than dining-room reservations.
If you let the cruise line or maître d’hôtel place you randomly at a table and you are unhappy with your companions, do not hesitate to ask the maître d’hôtel to move you. Nothing is worse than spending a week dining with people with whom you have nothing in common and no basis for conversation. And you don’t need to.
DINING HOURS
CONSUMERS OFTEN ASK ABOUT dining hours before they cruise. They vary so much that it is difficult, if not impossible, to give an accurate generic overview. Keep in mind that each line, each itinerary, and sometimes each ship may have varied hours. You will get a complete list of hours on board, and some general information before boarding about dining times and seatings. Ask your travel agent or cruise line.
But before booking, it is more important to assess how you will dine and to pick a line that meets your needs. Do your homework up front. What type of dining do you prefer? Are you more structured or flexible in dining times? Do you like to socialize with other passengers every night or do your own thing? Check brochures, Web sites, consumer cruise bulletin boards, and ask questions of your agent or friends. Find out exactly what the dining policies and dining style are on every ship you are thinking of sailing on (see our descriptions in Part II). For those seeking the most flexibility, some luxury lines offer open seating and anytime dining programs. On the mass-market side,
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If assigned arrangements are not what you requested, make a beeline for the maître d’hôtel. Norwegian Cruise Line offers the highly flexible Freestyle Dining— guests eat where, when, and with whom they want; and guests can also access a host of onboard alternative restaurant choices in addition to the main dining room. Some are free, some come with a charge. Expedition and small ship lines may have open seating but set very specific times for their dining service.
Princess, in another twist, offers both a flexible dining experience and a more traditional fixed one; guests choose which so they can have the best of both worlds. Some lines also have open seating for breakfast and lunch, yet more structured, assigned seating times and tables for dinner. That means you are assigned a table with other guests and you dine at that same table, at that same time, every evening; of course you don’t have to dine there every night. Guests often take a break and have room service one night, or visit an alternative restaurant or the buffet restaurant on another. But if you do dine in the dining room on any evening you will eat at that table and with those people each night.
Generally, there are two fixed dinner seatings between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. and between 8 and 10 p.m. But even those times can vary. Carnival and Holland America have both adopted four seatings within the same period to offer more flexibility for guests. So if you have strong preferences, tell your travel agent, who can explain what the dining hours and choices are on individual lines. Whichever line you pick, you won’t go hungry. In addition to the regular meals, most lines offer a host of other options. These might include room service, ice cream on deck, pizza parlors (some 24 hours), a late-night snack or buffet, afternoon tea, barbecues on deck, early-bird coffee and continental breakfast in a lounge, cocktail canapés, and a host of alternative dining options.
ESTABLISHING SHIPBOARD CREDIT
MOST LINES USE A CASHLESS SYSTEM aboard ship. At check-in, you receive a card—like a credit card—which will be your identification card and probably your cabin door key. If you want to establish credit for purchases on board, drinks at the bar, wine in the dining room, and so forth, you must present a major credit card at check-in or the purser’s office (you will be told at check-in) to have an imprint made and signed.
On the last night of the cruise, you receive a printout of your charges for review. You can pay the amount with cash or traveler’s checks or have it billed to your credit card. In profiles in Standard Features in Part Two, we list credit cards each cruise line accepts. Also see our discussion of credit holds on pages 113–114.
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