We're Sailing Away

This was our family’s first cruise! We’ve traveled by car, by plane, by train, but never by boat. Since we were clueless as for what to expect, and as several readers have mentioned wanting to go on a cruise, I’m going to lay out all the details, so the rest of you have a leg up 😊

Cruise Line

There are a handful of cruise lines to choose from. We knew that we wanted a line that was family friendly, not trashy, and didn’t require a second mortgage to travel on. After a decent amount of research and talking to friends who have cruised before, we landed on Royal Caribbean. We were on a 3 night cruise from LA to Ensenada, Mexico on the Navigator of the Seas. Since this was our first cruise, we wanted to start with something short in case we didn’t like it.

Getting on the Boat

This is the area that I felt most clueless, and my Type A personality experienced a little anxiety. So read this portion carefully to be set up better than us 😉 

45 days before your cruise departs, you will get a check in notice on the app. Go ahead and check everyone in with name and passport so you can get the earliest arrival time possible on the boat (the app will tell you your check in time). I believe the first boarding time is at 10:30, and we got the dock at 11 for our boarding! One thing that we upgraded to was the Key Pass. This was essentially a fast pass on the boat on departure day, a plated lunch on departure day, priority deboarding at ports and on the last day, expedited luggage delivery, and wifi for each day. Additionally, it gave priority time for the waterslides and surf simulator.

When we got to the dock, we had to show them our boarding tickets. We were then escorted to a much shorter and quicker line to scan passports, take pictures for our room key, and then get on the boat. At this point they also took our luggage on the boat, and would deliver it in a few hours to our room.

We got on the boat and the first thing they instruct you to do is to go to your designated muster station to attest that you have watched the safety briefing videos in the app. Once you do that, you are free to peruse the boat at your leisure. Because we had the Key Pass, we were able to go to the 3rd floor Main Dining room and enjoy a plated, 3 course steak lunch. I believe the other option if you don’t have the Key Pass is a buffet lunch at the Windjammer.

While at lunch we realized that we had no idea where to get our room keys or how we were to get into our rooms. We decided to do a bit of exploring after our meal and headed towards our room. Each hallway was blocked off with a sign that said that rooms would be available after 1pm. When 1pm rolled around, we headed towards our room and found that room keys were located next to each room, one card for each person with a specialized barcode for each person.

One thing I had read before the cruise was that suitcases are placed in your room by 4pm on the first day. However, since you are able to enjoy all the amenities once you get onboard, it’s best to bring a beach bag with swim stuff so you can jump in the pool without having to wait for all your items.

Room

There were several different room options to choose from when booking your cruise. It’s hard to know what the “best” option is, that doesn’t break the bank. We opted for a balcony room on the 8th floor. This room felt spacious enough for 4 people, and to be honest, we didn’t hang out too much in the room anyways. The room had a queen-sized bed, pullout couch, small bathroom and balcony overlooking the ocean.

Food

The food aspect I wasn’t clear on before the cruise as some items are included, some aren’t and I didn’t feel like it was clearly outlined, or I was struggling to understand it. Here’s the easy answer: the Windjammer buffet, Café, taco bar, and Main Dining room are included in your cruise fee. The buffet, Café, taco bar, breakfast and lunch in the Main Dining room are a free for all with no reservations required. Dinner time in the Main Dining Room is a different story. When you book your cruise you can either choose a specific reservation time for each night, or you can do “My Time” dining which allows you to walk up between 6:45-8:30. We chose My Time dining, but once we were on the boat, we realized that was a little late for our 4 year old and 2 year old. We ended up walking up to the Main Dining Room around 5:30 each night and got seated within 20 minutes each.

There are a few specialty restaurants that aren’t included in the all-inclusive aspect. There’s a sushi, Italian, and steak restaurant that you can go to and choose either a la carte dining or a prix fix meal. There also was a Starbucks, Johnny Rockets, and a bar and grill that wasn’t included in the all-inclusive dining. We went to the sushi restaurant one night and honestly weren’t impressed for the price, but that was us.

Drinks

Drinks, that’s where they get ya 😉 So before the cruise we kept getting emails and pop ups on the app about the different drink packages that were available and the special prices they had each week. There was a soda type package and a specialty drink package that included cocktails. The price was a little deceiving and a little extreme in my opinion (think $60-85/day per person!). There was no way we were going to get a drink package on top of what we spent on the cruise. No thank you! If you don’t get any drink packages, you can get black coffee, water, lemonade, milk, and juices at breakfast. We figured if we wanted a drink a day, we could just charge it to the room. However, once we got on board, we were quickly and easily encouraged to purchase the drink package. We learned the specialty drink package included more than we realized: specialty coffees, milk shakes, soda, cocktails, and mocktails. I’m a numbers person and a pretty open book so I’ll break it down for everyone for future use!

We spent $75/person/day on the drink package. A cocktail cost about $16 + 18% gratuity (almost $19 total). A milkshake was around $6 + 18% gratuity ($7ish). Iced Coffee was about $6 + 18% gratuity ($7ish). They also had Redbulls and a freestyle soda machine. So when you do the math and think about starting your day with iced coffee, milkshake during the day, redbull or soda, cocktail or two, maybe a second coffee, it adds up. This allowed us to not have to check the app each day to see how much we had charged each day and let us feel like we had more freedom. We also had two little kids that were up at the crack of dawn each day, so imagine how many times we went to the coffee shop 😉 (Note, the Starbucks is it’s own thing, and doesn’t count towards to drink package, but there is a coffee shop attached to the included Café.)

They do offer sales quite frequently, so you can probably score a better deal than we did.

Wi-Fi

One thing that was slightly surprising to me is that wifi wasn’t included, and was an extra cost. As mentioned previously, we upgraded to the Key Pass, and that included wifi for each person in our party. However, there is free guest wifi that you can use to purely access the app and use the intranet to communicate with fellow cruisers. This is great since when going to other countries, a lot of phone plans don’t include international data plans. Though notifications of messages on the app lagged at times.

Things to do

There is no shortage of things to do on a cruise ship! Eat, eat some more, drink a milkshake, and eat some more. Ok, on a more serious note, there are a lot of general activities, along with a schedule of actual planned activities for the week. We ended up going to the ice-skating rink to do some family skating (we were awful at it), did some mini golf before dinner one night, went to the pool a bunch, checked out the night club, and spent some time checking out the casino. We didn’t get to the water slides, rock wall, or surf simulator, but my brother-in-law can attest that they were great! There also were a bunch of shows and outdoor movies that happened each night, we just didn’t get to them. The planned activities were things like cupcake decorating, learning to make sushi, spa tour, making charm bracelets, trivia, bingo, etc. Note, some of those planned activities did have extra costs associated, so we passed on those. (I already paid enough for this trip! 😉)

Travel documents

Thankfully everyone in our party had valid passports (that are valid for 6 months past return date), but it’s good to know the options required for cruises. We were told that original, legal birth certificates were also valid aside from passports, but the line for birth certificates typically takes longer to get through and can cause issues if something happens like you miss the boat at a port. You cannot travel internationally via air with a birth certificate, so you’d be screwed if you missed the port call. Thankfully with a passport, you would be able to fly back home. Obviously not an ideal situation, but we try to make sure all T’s are crossed beforehand to lessen any anxiety on the trip.

Anyone that follows me on social media saw that we brought my brother-in-law to be our Manny. He is a minor, which means that we had to get a notarized permission slip to bring him out of the country. If you are planning on bringing a minor that is not yours or you share custody with, you will need the other parent(s) to sign a notarized permission slip ahead of time!

Gratuities

This aspect threw me for a loop, and I’m glad I saw something about it on a Facebook page before we went on the trip. If you do not prepay gratuities (this is done when booking), you are charged $18/day/person onboard the ship. Now, don’t come at me for not wanting to tip the wait staff, maids, etc. That’s not it. I assumed that tips, their wages, whatever you want to consider it was included in the cost of the cruise already. I was surprised to say the least that even though the cruise was fully paid for, I was going to be paying $360 on top of that when I got on the boat. I assumed, silly me, that this was part of the payment I made when booking the cruise. I don’t feel that they made this clear (I went back and it’s in the small print of the booking confirmation), so don’t be surprised when there is a big charge on your room at the end of the cruise!

Tips

·       I recommend the Key Pass upgrade! It was barely more expensive than just purchasing internet and came with a handful of benefits. The early access on the boat, nice lunch on the first day, and priority luggage handling made it worth it to us! Plus, it included wifi that we would’ve wanted anyways.

·       Bring a beach bag with your pool stuff as a carry on so you don’t have to wait for your luggage to arrive to hit the pool!

·       Prepay the gratuities when booking so you don’t have an “oh crap” moment at the end of the cruise with a large bill due.

·       If you are planning on having more than 2 cocktails a day and any other non-free beverages, I highly recommend the drink package

·       If you start to feel seasick, head to guest services immediately and they can provide medicine for you!

·       Get cash before getting on the boat! The ATM fees were $6.50!!!

·       As a reminder, it’s all inclusive, so you can order more than one dish when eating.

Overall Opinion

Overall, we had a great time on the cruise! There were some aspects that were a learning curve, like how to get our room keys and getting stuck with exorbitant ATM fees. But every trip you take will have a few hiccups or two. We had so much fun that we are already looking at cruises for a few years down the road, with a few more days included. We had heard great things about Royal Caribbean and would recommend this line to anyone interested in cruises.

As always, any questions, feel free to reach out and I’m happy to provide answers and assistance!