Royal Caribbean Cruise...Help!

I have been on 2 cruises, both with Royal Caribbean. I loved them both!

Here are some tips I recommend:

1. Eat dinner in the dining room rather than the buffet on top of the ship. It is more formal so if this isn't your thing, don't do it every night but at least try it. The food is awesome! We ate breakfast and lunch on the go but enjoyed a relaxed slow-paced dinner every night.

2. We only did a couple excursions. You don't want to fill up every minute of your schedule because you will want some time to relax and just do your own thing. I recommend picking 1 or 2 things you definitely want to do as a group. Book the excursions as soon as you make a decision because some sell out quickly.

3. Take comfortable shoes. Even just exploring the ship requires a good amount of walking.

4. Bring a versitile sweater/jacket. Evenings can get chilly on the ship and I also froze in the airconditioned shows.

5. Speaking of shows....I really enjoyed the after dinner shows! I know some people opt out of these to go to the casino, etc. The casino is always there so enjoy the scheduled shows when they are available.

6. Use sunscreen even if you don't normally here in the US. I made this mistake on cruise #1. I never put sunscreen on my legs and they never got burnt. Well...my legs fried as did the tops of my feet. I couldn't even put shoes on because my feet were so swollen!

Enjoy your trip!!!

We did a royal caribbean cruise once, very fun. If any of the excursions include something called SNUBA, I highly recommend it. It is a cross between snorkeling and scuba diving, SO much fun. But yeah, don't fill up every day with an excursion get too hectic!

My wife and I love cruising. We are going on our 18th in January.

Most of the cruise excursions you can get less expensively on shore. The one exception was the sugar train ride. Its cheaper when purchased from the ship. It was very interesting if you like trains. It gives you a trip around the island and they narrated while you are traveling.

Get your souvineers on shore away from the dock. Never take the shore vendors first price. If you do they will laugh at you behind your back and call you stupid. Its their culture to negotiate prices. So negotiate. I usually offer half their price. I usually pay 60% to 75% of the origional price.

We always ask our fellow travelers where they are going to go on the next island while at the dinner table. If they are wanting to go to the same places we want to go we teamed up with them and then went ashore together and negoiated a better price from the tour operators on shore.

If they have the "Chocolate melting cake" at dinner time, be sure to get that. (If you like chocolate.)

Go to the next island talk whenever they do one each evening. Sign up for the ship's tour if they offer one if you want to see what goes on behind the scenes. They won't take you to the engine room, but they will take you to other interesting sights the passengers never get to see.

Meals: They offer all kinds of food. This is the time to try something new. You can also have more than one item on your menu. If they offer 6 appetizers and you can't decide between two of them, order both. Go look at the menus posted on the door of the dining room. If you like what is being served, eat in the dining room. If you don't look to see what is being offered on the buffet. Then chose where you eat.

If you are a juice and soft drink person. (We don't do alcohol.) Wait until you are out of port and buy their "all the juice and soft drinks you want" program. It costs about $50, but then you never pay for soft drinks or juice at the bars through out the cruise. (Tips are included) Its a real good deal.

Sea sickness: If you can read a book while someone is driving on a curvy road you won't need anything. The big cruise ships have gyroscopic stabilizers weighing tons. Cruise ships are so stable now that they have miniture golf courses and bowling alleys on board. My wife cannot read a book while I'm driving on mountain roads, but she can read on the freeway. She has been sea sick only twice on 17 one week cruises and that was on one ship that we sailed on right after a huirricane went through. The sea was really rough.

You will have a wonderful time. If you are sun sensitive, bring a hat and sun block. If you normally use spf 30, bring spf 50. Have it packed in your suit case. If you have it in your carryon bags it will be taken from you. Sunscreen, batteries (camera, etc), and other common items are much cheaper here than on the ship or on the islands.

I brought an empty quart ocean spray juice bottle with a wide mouth with me. It is very useful in taking drinking water from the ship to the shore. They will charge you $5 for ship supplied water to take with you.

If you have other questions, e-mail me. Good luck to you and yours.

Every that has already been posted along with some medicine for motion sickness and headaches. If they even think you are sick you maybe stuck in your room for 24 hours.

Use the Cruise Critic website boards. You can find people there who know not only your ship but your itinerary. I used their boards a lot when planning our last cruise to Alaska and they're a super resource. The website itself also has a lot of useful information about specific ships and itineraries.

Have fun!

First of all, you are going to have a TERRIFIC time. Royal Caribbean is the BEST. I love it. The camp is amazing - my daughter would cry when we would pick her up. She would ask to go! The kids pools are great. You'll love it.

What I recommend doing is a bit of planning. And it's super easy. Go online and see what the ship is offering (shows, comedy club, etc.) and sign up if you can ahead of time. Then you will begin to set a schedule for yourself. Then, check out the excursions. They can be a bit pricey but I recommend booking through the ship. That way, if there are any issues, RCI will take care of it for you.

You didn't mention the ages of your kids. Assuming they are not really little - they will love snorkeling. It's really fun and not too expensive. So book away. Also, if you can swim with dolphins or sea turtles or sting rays - do it. It's expensive but is something that everyone should do in their lifetime.

What you should do is go through all of the excursions in every port and pick some and schedule them. If you feel like a beach day - get some and "excursion" that includes floats and lunch. If you are actions people - you might find zip lines which will be fun. There is so much to do and RCI makes it really easy to plan everything. Call them with questions - they are great! And one thing - make a little calendar of the activities that you book. No one is going to remind you that you planned a show on a Wednesday night at 10:30. And you will not want to miss any of the shows on the boat.

Enjoy - I'm so jealous.

We've done two cruises and our last was with Royal Carribean and it was fab! We stopped in St. John too and it's gorgeous!! I would make sure you get to the beach, it was one of the most gorgeous beaches I had ever seen! St. Maarten is great too and yes I'd go to the French side. We ate a little pastry shop that was seriously to die for. There is a nude beach but it's only a small part of the island. There is still plenty of non-nude beach to enjoy if you have kids or aren't into that. On our first cruise we did the excursions and they were fun, but we felt it was a lot of hurry up and wait. This last one we opted out of all excursions and were really happy to do so. We did travel with a large group of friends on this last one so maybe that made a difference. If it's your first cruise I'd probably pick at least one or two excursions but be on your own the other times.

As far as feeling the ship move...you will feel it. I don't understand people who say you don't!! I doubt it will make you sick unless you have a history of motion sickness (and if you do then definitely get the patch), but you can certainly feel it moving. Sometimes at night it gets worse b/c the captain drives faster during the night and if the seas are rough at all it can get pretty rocky, but again, nothing you probably can't handle.

Make sure you fill out all your paperwork on line first. It will make your stuff a lot easier. Also, make sure you print out your luggage tags or check the box that says you want them shipped to you. I was confused about this and it will make things a lot easier and faster for when you get there!

Cruises are really fun, I'm sure you'll have a blast! Enjoy!

1. sunscreen :)
2. Do the excursions!!!!!! The only thing I regretted was one time we picked an excursion that included a VERY LONG bus ride...it seemed like such a waste of time! Plus, if the bus would have broken down or something, we wouldn't have made it back to the ship on time!

I've taken several cruises with different companies, twice to the Caribbean out of San Juan. Royal Caribbean was one of my favorites! St. Lucia is beautiful, St. Maarten has lots of shopping, but can be expensive food/drink-wise, St. John has a cool ocean aquarium called Coral World where you can do a helmet-dive (think old fashioned diving helmet, walking around on the ocean floor outside the aquarium) and I found the yummiest rum cakes in Barbados. We did excursions at each port, because we wanted to get into the ocean and snorkle as much as possible. That adds a lot of money to the trip, but it's well worth it and you still have time to wander and shop before boarding the ship. Have a ton of fun! I really want to go back!

St. Maarten is a fun place to shop. Hubby and I went there for our honeymoon and I got my wedding band down there, it is beautiful. The beaches are cool, both the Dutch and French side you can go topless so if you have kids stay away from them. The food on the French side was decent, on the Dutch side there was some local food but more fast food places.

Great advice in these posts! I have a couple of tips that were not mentioned. Be careful about all the add-ons vs. what is included. They are constantly "offering" you opportunities to spend more money. The big thing that can really add up is alcoholic drinks or soda (which someone talked about below). Iced tea and lemonade is always free, so during the day I just drank that--yum!. When you first step onto the ship, they are there to greet you with a gorgeous drink in a fancy glass at a "Welcome Aboard" photo opportunity--that drink is expensive, including its commemorative fancy glass. Be wary of the price!! Another tip, in the little news flyer you get in your room every day, check what the drink of the day is (usually something fun like a margarita, rum runner, tequila sunrise, etc.) That's the drink I would go for each evening. Also, we did the later seating at dinner every night, but would go to the buffet for a snack to hold us over until the later dinner. There is a happy hour before the early dinner seating and the later dinner seating. If we really felt like whooping it up, we would go for the early happy hour, and then nurse our drinks through to the second pre-dinner happy hour, and then head over to the late dinner seating. Between the lower happy hour prices and the drink of the day, we still felt like we were living it up, but at a discount. :-)

We did RC and stopped in St. John, St Martin and St. Croix. We shopped in St. Croix, then took their excursion to Trunk bay on St. John for snorkeling.
We shopped a little in St. Martin and spent the rest of the time on the beach.
We stayed on the Dutch side in St. Martin - the french side has a nude beach. My children were 8 and 11 - not the beach for them.

I highly recommend you spend time on St. John's - half of the island is a National Park and it is beautiful. I wish we had done a little snorkeling there and done the carriage ride on the island

My husband and I have been on two Royal Caribbean cruises and they were great - you will love it! Here are a few pointers:

* They offer all kinds of portrait opportunities throughout the cruise. Almost every night there were probably 3 or 4 stations set up throughout the ship with photographers and different back drops and you just go and get your pictures taken. You can go to as many of the photographers as you want and go every day if you want. Then they just put all the pictures on display in the photo lab area and you can go look at all of them and buy any or none of them. We have gotten some really nice photos taken on our cruises.

* In the booklet that we received in the mail in advance of our cruise, it told us that we were not supposed to get to the ship and begin boarding until 2pm. However, I had read some travel reviews that said you can ignore that and get on the boat earlier. We got to the port at about 12:30 and were on the ship by 1pm. So, I wouldn’t worry about the time that they have given you in your booklet.

* We never wore jeans in the dining room, but people definitely did. Some people didn't get very dressed up for dinner at all. I think the booklet from Royal Caribbean is more strict regarding the dining room dress code than all the people on the cruise actually follow.

* We probably didn't get our bags delivered to our stateroom until about 8pm on the first night of the cruise, so you'll want to take a carry-on bag with you when you board the ship with any toiletries or clothes that you might need that first evening. Or swimsuits if you think you'll want to hit the pool that first afternoon.

* I'd recommend taking a backpack with you to carry onto shore when you go to do your excursions or site seeing.

* On both of the RC cruises I've been on there were no alarm clocks in the staterooms, so you may want to bring a travel alarm. We tried to use the alarm on our cell phones but did not have service on the ship.

* As far as the excursions go, we did 1-2 during a weeklong cruise but as mentioned, we didn't want each day to be fully scheduled. And if there is a port that you aren't overly interested in seeing, that's a good day to hit the pool on the boat as it is much less crowded while everyone else on the ship is in port. We did this when we stopped in Cozymel.

Have a great trip!