Cruising Quest

When someone mentioned cruising I used to get a mental picture of cute white haired old couples decked out in white linen pants, Hawaiian shirts, and big floppy hats playing shuffleboard and swarming the buffets. Besides being a really bad stereotype this image is not particularly true; so when Rich and I went on our first cruise I was surprised to see lots of people from all age groups and backgrounds.

While my mental stereotype of cruising may have had some truth to it at one time, today cruising is becoming a wonderful vacation option for the whole family. Many cruise lines are adding children’s programs, or beefing up their existing programs, to accommodate the needs of the traveling family. In addition to simple family vacation programs some cruise lines are also implementing schooling programs which are wonderful to supplement a conventional education or to be a part of alternative schooling methods (like homeschooling).

The coolest part about vacationing with your family on a cruise is that mom and dad can have quite a bit of time to themselves knowing their children are safe and cared for and having a good time. Cruise lines are really going all out to give the kids some great on board programs to keep them busy and entertained. What could be better than an experience where everyone has a great time, plenty of family together time and plenty of alone time for mom and dad?

Some of the programs you might be interested in for your kids are as follows:

• Carnival: Carnival has several programs that are based on age groups. Some of the bigger programs include Club O2 for teens 15-17, Circle “C” for teens 12-14, and Camp Carnival for kids 2-11. The Camp Carnival is further broken down into three age groups 2-5, 6-8, and 9-11. Age appropriate activities, parties, movies, and tons of other entertainment is available for the kids in each of these programs.

• Disney: For kids 3-12 Disney has the Oceaneer’s Club, for children 13-17 there’s the Oeaneer’s Lab. Both of these programs offer activities separated by age, as well as offering special teen only areas and family play areas. In addition Disney has pools that are reserved for families only including a pool for the little ones wearing swimmers. Another cool feature Disney offers is a pager for the parents so that they can feel confident that they are within reach should their children need them. True to Disney style their cruises have so much for families to do it is hard to list it all here.

• Royal Caribbean: Royal Caribbean has a parent participation program called Fisher Price Playgroups for kids between 6 months to 36 months old. This program offers activities for small children to do with their parents that will help them learn while they have fun, each session is 45 minutes. This cruise line also has another program for children who are 3 (and potty trained) to 17 called Adventure Ocean. Adventure Ocean splits the children into the following age groups: 3-5, 6-8, 9-11, 12-14, and 15-17. The activities will be age appropriate, and the older teens will have a little more freedom to come and go and to participate in the teen only night club. Adventure Ocean is a great program that is fun but also engages your children in educational experiences.

• Celebrity: For children under 3 there is a parent participation program called Toddler Time where parents can accompany their toddler into the Fun Factory to play with toys, participate in activities, and interact with other children their age. For children 3 (and potty trained) and over there are several programs to chose from; program name and age group are as follows: Ship Mates 3-6, Celebrity Cadets 7-9, Ensigns 10-12, and Admiral Ts 13-17. Celebrity tends to cater less to families than the other three cruise lines listed.

Cruise lines are going the extra mile to make cruising family friendly and that is evident in the programs they offer for the youth experience. One thing I might suggest would be to consider waiting until your child is potty trained before bringing them along on a cruise as both you and your child will have a better experience for it. On many ships, those children who are not potty trained will not be able to get into the pools or participate in some activities without their parents. Most cruise ship will cater to your needs should you bring your toddler with you, however, if you want some alone time with your traveling companion you will have to make use of the babysitting services that most cruise ships offer which will incur a per hour cost.

Having said that, cruising, no matter how old your children are, is a great way to expand your families world, to learn new things, and to spend some quality time together.

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Have you ever planned a great vacation only to end up spending half of it in your room because of bad weather? All of that planning wasted due to rain or snow or another sort of vacation dampening weather. So one of the most common cruise questions is “when is the best time to book a cruise to avoid bad weather”?

Most people would think that being in a ship on the water would cause weather to be of even more concern than if you were visiting a land resort or other inland vacation spot. This is not so. If you look at your options for cruising you will likely notice that most cruises are not available year around, there are specific seasons for most destinations. The seasonal aspect of most destinations is due to strategic scheduling done by the cruise lines in effort to guarantee their cruisers the best possible vacation.

In addition to strategically scheduling their cruises around locational weather patterns, cruise liners track current weather patterns and if they see a weather event that has even a slight chance of interrupting the cruise for their customers they reassess whether the route needs to change, or even the itinerary. The object is to offer their cruisers a great time, so if they have to cruise around the bad weather to avoid it they will.

So with all of this planning the cruise liners do, and the versatility they have with route and itinerary it is very unlikely your cruise will even encounter bad weather. However, if your ship does encounter a storm of some sort, you are on a cruise ship! You can just move the party indoors and still have a blast! So, while there is no guarantee that bad weather won’t find you, there are plenty of contingency plans in place to make sure your vacation is still just as fun and safe as it can be.

But still, some of you will still want to know when the bad weather is. I will give you a few rules of thumb to consider when scheduling your cruise.

The first rule of thumb is to pay attention to destinational seasons, if you book your trip in the middle of peak season you will likely not have to worry about weather. The Seasons are as follows (approximately):

• Alaska - May through September

• North America/Canada - May Through Early November

• Caribbean - October through April

• Europe - April through November

• Mediterranean - Mid January through December

• Africa - November through March

• South America - November through April

• Asia - October through April

• South Pacific - Year around with off peak season cruising from March through October

• Antarctica - January through February with an off peak season cruising in December

With the exception of the South Pacific and Antarctica, which have off peak seasons stated, the off peak season cruising times will be the first and last weeks of the seasons listed for each of the above destinations. (If price is a factor for you the off peak seasons will be less expensive).

The next rule of thumb is to remember that if you cruise during the off peak seasons there is a greater chance of seasonal weather impacting your vacation, but usually it will not be greatly impacting.

The final rule of thumb is to check with the cruise line or a good weather service like The Weather Channel to find out what the local weather is expected to be during the dates you are planning to travel. The Weather Channel has an online Vacation and Travel Planner that has great information about when to travel various destinations around the world.

If you follow these guidelines weather should be the least of your concerns during your trip, which will leave you plenty of time to worry about whether to go snorkeling in the crystal blue Caribbean or perhaps whale watching in the cold wild of Alaska. Either way, sounds like an adventure to me!

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Although cruising is typically has all-inclusive pricing, at the end of your vacation on many liners you will be expected to leave tips for the various staff members that have served you during your stay.

The subject of gratuities can be and interesting topic of conversation. Many people like to debate whether gratuities should be left if the service was not up to your expectations. In my opinion, on a cruise, tipping has less to do with gratuity and is, more to the point, payment for adequate services rendered. So it is our position here that minimum tipping should be done in any circumstance, over-tipping is appropriate when the staff you are tipping has surpassed your expectations.

If you do run into a circumstance where the service is poor, rather than eliminating a tip, talk to management to get the problem corrected; this will make your stay more pleasant in the long run as well as eliminating a situation where you may question weather a tip is deserved. Of course if the service is extremely poor your judgment is going to be a better guide to follow as to how to proceed.

Having said that let’s get down to the business of how much to tip! The first important point to make is that not all cruise lines require or even expect tipping. It seems that some of the very posh and expensive luxury cruise lines don’t expect gratuities for their staff; however since I have no experience with those lines (money being a definite object) I will focus my guide on four of the cruise lines that I can afford frolicking on and this should give you a good idea of how gratuities are figured. I have taken this tipping information directly from the website of each cruise line so this information should be good for a while at least.

Carnival

On Carnival Cruise Lines they will automatically charge gratuities from dining and stateroom staff of your onboard account in the amount of $10 per guest per day which is their recommended guideline (you can adjust these gratuities at any time). The official breakdown is as follows:

• $3.50 per day for stateroom services

• $5.50 per day for dining room services

• $1.00 per day for alternative services (this will be divided between other kitchen and hotel service staff)

If you book a “Cruise-To-Nowhere” your $10 per guest per day gratuity must be prepaid.
If you order a beverage that is not covered in the all-inclusive pricing a 15% gratuity will automatically be added to the bill. Also, you may tip your maitre’d at your discretion.

*Something you may not know! If you participate in any tours while vacationing on a cruise, no matter where you are visiting, it is customary to tip the tour guide $1 per person for a half day tour. Double that if it’s a full day tour. This tip does seem to be more of the gratuity type so if you enjoyed yourself tip away, if not than don’t stress about it, no tip is necessary.

Disney Cruise Line

Disney’s gratuities change based on how many nights you are cruising. I am just going to paste in the guidelines I found on their website.

• Per Guest per cruise 3-Night 4-Night 7-Night

• Dining Room Server $11.00 $14.75 $25.75

• Dining Room Asst. Server $8.00 $10.75 $18.75

• Dining Room Head Server $2.75 $3.75 $6.50

• Stateroom Host/Hostess $10.75 $14.50 $25.25

• Dining Manager Your Discretion

• Room Service Your Discretion

• Palo Gratuity included

• Vista Spa & Salon Your Discretion

• Babysitting Gratuity not expected

• Shore Excursions Optional; not included in shore excursion price.

For your convenience, a 15% gratuity is automatically added to bar, beverage, wine and deck service tabs. All gratuities can be charged to your room charge.

Royal Caribbean

Royal Caribbean is pretty straightforward with their tipping guidelines, and they are as follows:

• Suite attendant: $5.75 USD a day per guest

• Stateroom attendant: $3.50 USD a day per guest

• Dining Room Waiter: $3.50 USD a day per guest

• Assistant Waiter: $2.00 USD a day per guest

• Headwaiter: $.75 USD a day per guest

A 15% gratuity will automatically be added to your bar bill or wine check when you are served.

Celebrity Cruise Lines

Celebrity Cruise Lines is also very straight forward. This is the cruise line that my husband and I sailed for our honeymoon and their service is fantastic!

• Waiter: $3.50 p/day

• Assistant Waiter: $2.00 p/day

• Butler (suites only): $3.50 p/day

• Assistant Maitre’d: $0.75 p/day

• Stateroom Service: $3.50 p/day

• Stateroom Service (ConciergeClass): $4.00

• Assistant Chief Housekeeper: .75 p/day

As you can see, the gratuities will vary from company to company. Some companies offer special auto-programs, some do not. Others will just give you envelopes to put cash in, or allow you to credit the gratuities to your account. The best way to get the exact information you need is to contact the cruise line directly to see what kind of programs they offer and what their guidelines are.

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The concept of vacationing is an interesting mix of attempted relaxation and an exercise in flexibility and change resilience. Think about how many vacations you have meticulously planned only to have to change your plans completely when you got there. Maybe it rained the whole time, maybe your lodging was completely less than you expected, or maybe reservations got lost. And then there are activities. Do you plan those ahead? And if you do will they be what you expect, or should you just figure it all out when you get there?

I can remember going on vacations with my family where all we planned was to go to the beach, how to get there, and where we were going to stay. We spent a lot of time driving around trying to figure out what to do because if we didn’t we would spend our time sitting in the sun or in the hotel. And while sitting in the sun is great it tends to get boring after a while, especially for kids, and when that happens the fighting starts.

I recall a vacation where my mother, hitting the last straw, got really mad at me for fighting with my sister. My mother, sister and I (I was 14 at the time) took a train from Ohio to California to visit some friends, and for a good portion of the train ride I complained that my sister was touching me and that I wanted it to stop. Later as a full grown adult I can look back at the situation with more mature eyes and say that I was totally provoked, it was all my sister’s fault for being younger than me and therefore completely annoying; I was a saint for putting up with her as well as I had.

After vacations where we try to cram a bunch of fun stuff into a week or two we get home exhausted and ready for a vacation from our vacation! There has to be a better way! I am here to tell you there is and Cruising is it. Cruising is a vacation option that has absolutely amazed me.

The first cruise my husband and I went on was for our honeymoon and what impacted me most was the total flexibility we had to make the vacation exactly what we wanted, and the resources to change our minds about what we wanted on the fly with little to no fuss. We went with the idea that we would relax and just see how things went but once we saw how many options we had our cruise became a big adventure for us. We saw new places, tried new things, and never once did we feel rushed or as though we had do certain activities out of obligation. Our vacation was all about doing what we wanted to and it was great.

Another aspect of our cruise vacation that I thoroughly enjoyed was the service. During the day our cabin was kept clean with fresh ice water no matter what time of day we went back to freshen up, at night the bed was turned down. The wait staffs in the restaurants and buffets were fantastic. All of the people where were there to make sure our vacation ran smoothly knew what they were doing and did it well, and honestly that made all of the difference. Since we didn’t have to worry about the small details like cleaning, cooking, and itinerary all that was left for us to do was have a great time. And because cruises are all inclusive vacations we didn’t have to worry about incurring hidden extra costs, we knew exactly what we could spend. If I have a choice, cruising will be the way we vacation from now on, I was so impressed.

So the purpose of this blog is to provide information about cruising for people who would like to know. There are a lot of things to consider when picking out your cruise, how to behave while on the cruise, and what to do when the cruise vacation is coming to an end. My husband and I want to make this a great place for you to find answers to all of your cruising questions, we hope you enjoy this site!

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