Depending on how early you booked your cruise, there can be several months between your booking date and your sailing date. It can feel like your cruise is forever away, yet there's plenty to-do's to keep you busy and excited as you countdown to embarkation day. Here's 10 things you can do while you wait!
Book Your Flight and Hotel for the Day Before the Cruise
If you're flying to your cruise port, you need to make sure you arrive at least the day you sail away. Cruise ships usually leave around 4pm, and if your flight is delayed or traffic is bad, then you will miss your ship. They do not wait for you, and they do not let you board last minute after the last boarding zone time. You also don't get a refund if your ship sails away without you. Because you'll be staying overnight, you'll need to book a hotel room too.
Order a Passport
If you don't have a passport, or your passport will expire before the end of your trip, I recommend you get a valid passport for your cruise. While it is true that you technically don't need a passport if your cruise stops and starts in the U.S., and you could just use your birth certificate + ID to get on, any experienced cruiser will tell you it's worth it to get a passport. The cruise lines have ways to quickly scan your passport and verify all your information instantly, whereas with a birth certificate they have to check your information individually by hand.
When we were getting off on the last day of our last cruise, if you had a passport then you literally just walked up to an iPad that scanned your face and you were good to go. It took less than a minute to get through security to get off the boat, so the passport line was moving very fast. On the other hand, the birth certificate line had only 2 people to check information, so that line was backed-up and it looked like it took about an hour to get through.
Passports are good for 10 years for adults and 5 years for kids, so the cost and time it takes to get a passport pays off with how much time you can save over the years. Plus, then you'll have a passport and can do other international trips easily.
Book Excursions
The mistake my family made on our first cruise was that we didn't even know excursions existed, and didn't know we should book them ahead of time. We learned about excursions on the first day, and by the time we went to the excursion desk on the cruise, there were slim pickings left. When it comes to excursions, your can do them through your cruise line, but also outside of your cruise line on your own. For your very first cruise, I recommend booking all of your excursions through your cruise line. There will be a lot of unfamiliarity when it comes to doing excursions for the first time, and it will be a lot less stressful if you have the cruise do everything for you.
Not every port will need an excursion, but some ports absolutely do. It can be hard to tell if you need one or not. The best place to start is to go on Facebook and search for the cruise line + ship name + sailing date to find a Facebook group with your exact sailing (so, for example, I joined a Carnival Vista April 22, 2023 Facebook group for our cruise). There will likely be someone who has been to your exact port and can tell you if you need an excursion or not. In general, if your ship is stopping at a cruise line-owned island (Coca Cay and Labadee on Royal Caribbean, Castaway Cay on Disney, Halfmoon Cay for Carnival, or Princess Cay for Princess) then you will be fine without an excursion. These stops are on an island that has chairs on a beach set up for you, so you could just do that for free. Other stops, such as newer ports will only have a port... and nothing else. You'll be limited to just some touristy shopping and 1-2 touristy restaurants, and that's it. These stops you'll want to have something planned. Of course, you can do an excursion at each stop, even if it's at a cruise line-owned island. You usually can't do more than 1 excursion a day, so keep that in mind when you're trying to book.
Sign Up for Promotional Emails
I hate my emails being full of a ton of spam emails, but I think this is a necessary evil. Pre-cruise sales happen sporadically, and you can save yourself a lot of money by buying the internet package, drink package, or specialty dining package on discount. If you're cutting it close and you don't see any of these going on sale and your cruise is coming up, then go ahead and buy them. These packages are always more expensive on the ship, and usually stop being sold online about 24 hours before your sail date.
Pre-booking cruise extras also helps so that your bill at the end of your cruise isn't a shock to the system. You can choose what extras you want to pre-pay for and when you want to buy them, so you can spread out the cost over the course of the months leading up to the cruise.
Reserve Transportation or Parking
If you're driving to your cruise terminal, you'll need to make reservations ahead of time to make sure you have parking and aren't paying a day-of rate. If you've flown in, you'll need to see if your hotel has a shuttle down to the cruise terminal, or if not, make sure you have the cruise terminal information so you can reserve an Uber or Lyft. Make sure you take your baggage into consideration when ordering a car; just because a car can fit the number of passengers in your group does not mean that the car can also accommodate all of the luggage.
Pre-Cruise Purchases
You honestly probably have the basics of what you'll need for a cruise: swimsuits and cover-ups for daytime, shorts and t-shirts for the day, summer dresses or pants and polos for casual dinner night, cocktail happy hour dress or pants and button-up for formal night, closed-toed shoes for on-board activities and excursions, sandals for the beach, heels or dress shoes for dinner, and travel toiletries. But if there's anything that you don't have, start buying now so that you don't forget anything.
Related: Cruise Packing Favorites and also What Not to Pack for A Cruise
Find Your Cruise Facebook Group
On Facebook, search for "cruise line" + "ship name" and a whole bunch of groups will show up. They usually have the sailing date in the name, but I don't type that in the search because some do the date and July 4 - July 7 and others do 7/4 - 7/7. Instead, I just look through the groups to find the one with my sailing date. Joining a Facebook group is great before a cruise. Probably any question you would have about your cruise will be asked, so you can easily find answers to frequently-asked questions. Or, if not, the group will be full of seasoned cruisers who can give you advise.
The most common things I look for in the group are excursion recommendations and sale notifications. People also get really social with the groups. I've seen them schedule meet-ups for sea days, usually either all chipping in money to do a slot pull in the casino or playing some kind of group board or card game.
Check In
About a month before your cruise, you can check in online for your trip. This will allow you to choose your boarding time. Personally, I always choose the earliest boarding time possible, because someone who boards at 11am and 3pm paid for the same cruise, but the former gets to enjoy their vacation for 4 more hours than the latter. Plus, there's free food so the sooner you get on the ship, you can avoid paying for lunch. However, the rooms aren't ready until later that afternoon, so some people prefer to get one of the latest boarding times to minimize how long they have to wait until their room is ready.
Don't forget to print out your boarding pass and your luggage tags, I recommend you try to find a color printer to make things easier. Even if you aren't flying to your cruise, you'll need luggage tags. When you check in for your cruise, they will take all of your luggage from you and board them onto the ship for you and deliver them to your room for you. This makes it easier on you from having to drag a week's worth of clothes around the ship with you until your room is ready, and clears up congestion since no one has any luggage with them on boarding.
Your cruise line will have an app, so you'll want that downloaded to your phone before the trip. The app will have a daily schedule on your phone so that you know what's going on each day.
Related: All about cruise embarkation day
Get Cash
Make sure you add a credit card to your account when you sign in to make Day 1 easier. Once you get onboard, all of your purchases will be charged to your room through your room key. But, you'll still want several $1 bills for tipping as you go, and smaller bills for purchases off your ship at each port. Most ports will accept major credit cards, but some smaller shops may not. It's also a lot harder to barter with a card than cash. We typically bring about $200 each trip for tipping and cash purchases, but put as much as we can on our credit card (hi, points!) or charge to our room. These days, most credit cards don't even require you to notify them of international travel before you leave.
Related: All about cruise port days
Download Entertainment
Even if you get the internet package, I promise you it will be worth it to download some Spotify playlists to your phone, some movies on Netflix or Amazon Prime, and some books to your Kindle. It is just so much faster and easier to have those downloaded and ready for your trip than to be killing battery waiting on slow download or streaming speeds.
