The main event of your cruise will probably be your port day. While I love a good sea day, it's always great to get off the ship and venture around the port, even if I've been there before.
The one thing to look into before your trip is whether your stops are pier ports or tender ports. A pier port is one where you just walk right off the ship, down a ramp, and onto the pier to walk into the port. If you've ever seen clips of people running back to catch their cruise before it sails away, this is at a pier port. The other type of stops are tender ports. These are ports where the water near the shore is too shallow for your ship to safely dock, so they'll drop the anchor down in the middle of the water, and then you'll get off your ship onto a tender boat and be tendered over to the port. The two things to be aware of is that, unlike a pier port where you can just get on or off the ship whenever you want, with a tender port you're completely dependent on the availability of a tender boat to get on or off the ship. This means that if there's a lot of people who suddenly had the collective thought to get on/off the ship at the same time, you'll be waiting around for a while as tender boats can only hold so many passengers at once. The other thing to be aware of is that because these boats are much smaller than your cruise ship, you'll feel the motion of the boat significantly more. If you're prone to get motion sickness, you'll definitely want to make sure you've taken medicine before you tender to/from the ship.
You'll scan your room key as you get on and off the ship at each port, so the cruise can know who is on or off the ship, so make sure you bring your room key with you when you get off the ship. If you are doing an excursion, don't forget to bring your tickets with you.
Most people opt to do an excursion at each port, but I don't think you absolutely have to. Regardless of which port you're at, they'll announce which deck of the ship you'll need to go to so you can get off. The exit deck for a pier port will be different than a tender port. If you have an excursion, they'll usually give you the tickets on your first day of the cruise, and the tickets will tell you if there's a meet up spot and time for your excursion. Some meet up spots will be in main gathering areas on your ship, like in the theater or a bar. If you meet up on the ship, a staff member will take everyone down to the exit deck together and help you get off the ship. Other excursions will have a meet-up point at the port, so you'll just get off the ship and look for someone holding a sign with your excursion name. And if you don't have an excursion, then you can get off the ship at any time.
What to wear for a cruise excursion
If you're doing an excursion, what you wear will depend on what you're doing. Most excursions will involve being in/around the water. For those, I recommend you wear a one-piece swimsuit so you can zip-line or jump into a cenote without worrying about flashing a group of strangers. You'll want a fast-drying coverup that's easy to take on and off all day. I avoid flip-flops for excursions because you never know if what you'll be doing will make them going flying around, so instead I wear strapped waterproof sandals for excursions. For snorkeling or boating excursions, again I'd recommend either a
one-piece swimsuit and
UPF shirt, or a
rash guard and
water shoes. Bring a
waterproof sunhat to keep from getting burned.
If I'm not doing an excursion, I usually wear my
beach shoes and a
swimsuit under a
coverup off ship and then I'll pack a
wet bag with out underwear and a change of clothes in the wet bag in case we want to change out of our wet swimsuit.
Whether I do an excursion or not, I always make sure to wear my
Apple Watch that has a
watch face that has both ship time (time zone of the city the cruise departed from) and local time on it so I don't miss my ship's departure time but can also make sure I know the local time. I just make sure to use it with a
sporty watch band that is safe to use in the water and won't fall off my wrist easily. Make sure you plan to be back at your ship at least an hour before sail away time.
Cruises do not wait for late passengers and will leave you unless you are on a cruise-sponsored excursion that has notified the ship that you're running behind.
What to pack in your shore day bag
The most popular shore day bag is a
beach bag, because duh. Personally, I prefer to use a
beach bag with 2 shoulder straps like a backpack so that I can have my hands free, and so I don't have to keep shifting a bag from one arm to the other to keep my arms from tiring out as we walk around to explore the ship. I also make sure to have the UV index on my watch face so I can know if I need to reapply sunscreen more often than normal, and wear
UV stickers to make sure I don't get burned.
Any iPhone 7 or newer is waterproof, and basically any Android will be waterproof too, so you can take your phone with you anywhere and get really good pictures. If you're worried about holding onto your phone when you're in a swimsuit and don't have pockets, or if you want to swim around in the ocean, you can put your phone in a
waterproof phone pouch and just wear it.
It's a rite of passage for first-time cruisers (men particularly) to go into the ocean with their wallet in their pocket and then completely ruin the leather wallet and have all of their money soaked and the cards sticky from salt water. How you can avoid that is with a
waterproof travel wallet. These zip up to keep money/cards from falling out and to keep it waterproof. It's perfect because all you need at port is your ID, your ship card, a credit card, and some cash for tipping/bartering/buying things from merchants on the beach, so you can leave everything else in a regular wallet in your stateroom safe that way if your wallet gets lost/stolen, you didn't just lose all the cash you brought for the trip and all of your credit cards.
For the water, I'll bring a
small inflatable float that I can relax in the ocean if the waves are calm. We also decided to just buy and bring our own
snorkel gear for checking out the fish near the beach because it doesn't take up that much space in our luggage, and we like to have our own gear that we're used to and know we like. I once had a really bad experience where the mask I rented had a crack in it, so water kept filling up in my goggles and I had to wait until someone else checked their set back in before I could get a new mask because they were all sold out. This also saves us money in the long run, because you can buy your own snorkel set for about the price of renting it once, so if you use your snorkel set just twice, you'll save money.
The other bag we always bring is a
waterproof dry bag for our towels. This is a great bag to throw wet towels and swimsuits in at the end of the day, or to keep electronics dry if it's raining. You can take ship towels off of the ship for free, but I prefer to bring our own
camping towels. Even the largest camping towel (which is bigger than the ship towel) takes up less space in your bag so you can fit more towels into 1 bag and still have leftover room. And these towels are
significantly lighter than ship towels, especially when wet. They are also a different color than the ship towels, so you can find your beach chair much easier if you're looking for an orange towel in a sea of blue towels. I also bring
towel clips to keep our towels from flying away if we're not sitting in our chair.
If we're traveling with our daughter to the beach, we'll bring a
beach bag just for her. Right now we keep a
seashell collection purse,
travel sandcastle toys,
water shoes,
sunglasses,
sun hat,
sunscreen applicator, and
floatie packed for her. One weird thing I bring with us to the beach for her is a
water bottle shower attachment. This can go on any plastic water bottle and spray water, which we've found is great if she gets her face covered in either sand or food. I also like to bring a
sand-proof beach blanket to spread out so she can have a place to either play or nap. We would just use a
baby tent to keep her shaded for naps. Obviously, all of this is in addition to the diapers (swim and dry), wipes, paci, change of clothes, and snacks that we brought ashore.
If we're doing an excursion where you're snorkeling or on a boat all day, all I would bring is the dry bag for your towels and then a
waterproof crossbody for your phone,
wallet,
sunscreen, and
water bottle. Don't forget to put your sunglasses on a
floating sunglass strap so that they don't go flying off your head, but they won't sink away if they do get knocked off. My sister lost a pair of RayBans while we were jet skiing on our first stop of the cruise and had to buy overpriced crappy sunglasses at a souvenir shop.
If you're doing an excursion where you're visiting ruins or doing a tour, just know that it will be a lot of walking and it will probably be hot. Keep all your stuff in a
lightweight backpack since you'll be carrying your bag all day. You'll probably want a
neck fan,
shirt fan, or
handheld fan to keep you from overheating from all the walking in the humidity. Definitely make sure you fill up a
water bottle with cold water from the ship before you leave for your excursion. There might be bugs really bad, so don't forget to pack
bug repellant. The Caribbean can have quick storms pretty often, where it might rain every day but only for an hour. If a stop is looking like it might rain, I pack my
travel rain jacket just in case.
What not to pack in your excursion bag
This is a heavily-debated topic between cruisers, so here's my hot take: I don't recommend you take your passport off of the ship. The recommendation for bringing your passport with you to shore is if there's a medical emergency and you won't be returning to the ship, or you get to the port too late and miss your ship, then you'll have your passport with you and can easily fly out of the country to either go home or meet up with the ship at the next stop. Both of these things do happen probably just about every cruising, but it still feels like a rare occurrence to me.
Why I don't bring my passport off the ship is because I believe, statistically, that I'm much more likely to lose my passport on shore than I am not getting back on the ship. When I studied abroad in Sprain and my mom came to visit me, her passport didn't make it out of Barcelona. We don't know if she was pickpocketed, if she sat it down and forgot about it, or if it just fell out. She ended up having to go halfway across the country to Madrid where the embassy is and get an emergency passport. That was very, expensive to pay for an emergency passport and spend the money getting to another city to get to the embassy. It also took up a whole day off of her trip and added a lot of stress for her. To me, it's just not worth it. I do have a scanned copy of our passports saved in a Goggle drive that I've made available offline, just in case.
Another thing I don't bring ashore is my engagement ring or wedding band. I'll wear a
travel wedding ring instead. Most ports are safe, but you don't want to make yourself an easy target by flashing a rock worth several thousand dollars. But I mostly swap out my rings just because I don't want to lose them! I've actually fallen in the water and lost one of my travel rings, and I was SO grateful that it wasn't my real ring. I'll just keep my real ring in the safe back on the ship so I know I'm going home with it at the end of the trip.
One last port don't is don't bring anything back on the ship that you're not supposed to. Some cruise lines have drug dogs hanging around the gangway to make sure no drugs are snuck in. The ship will have you go through a quick security process when you get back on, where you walk through a metal detector and your belongings go through an x-ray machine. You can't bring fresh fruit, food, or your margarita back with you. If you bought alcohol or some cigars on your trip, they will hold them for you until the last day of your cruise. Depending on the country you're on and your ship, you might not be able to bring seashells or sand back on.
