10 Tips for Taking an Awesome Cruise!

Cruising has become our favorite vacation! From Texas, you can cruise Carnival Magic or Triumph to great destinations in the Caribbean like Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Jamaica and more.

As a couple, we've been on two cruises (one with kids and one without). Amazing husband loves cruises and has been on several more while he was growing up.

I was a skeptic before our first cruise. Don't get me wrong - I love the water and the beach and the pool - but the idea of being on a ship at sea for days always made me a little nervous. I have to tell you, though, I absolutely loved it.

We didn't do a lot of excursions on our first cruise. With the kids we opted to do one excursion that we would all probably agree to skip the next time. We waited until we were on the ship to decide, and truthfully, that was too late. Most of the ones we were interested in were full. They were also pricey with five people in our family.

We learned a lot in two trips on the same ship. What we came up with are 10 Tips for Taking an Awesome Cruise, because knowing these things ahead of time would have been helpful to us! Here are these tips in no particular order.

Staying on the ship means the best lounging spots and empty pools. 

1. Forego the excursions and stay on the ship. We stayed on the ship for two of the ports on our cruise. We had the ship to ourselves and enjoyed the amazing water slides and pools for hours almost completely alone. We literally climbed up, slid down, climbed up, slid down and repeat for hours. The peacefulness of the crowds being gone made it a great morning for our family to have the water park to ourselves. On the other hand...

2. Book your excursions quickly before they fill up.  As a parent, I don't need much entertaining. A lounge chair, my iPad or a good book, and the pool keep me pretty well entertained. Since one of our cruises involved our three kids, some excursions were requested. By the time we booked our fun, the ones we REALLY wanted were full. We ended up on a semi-submersible cruise that was nice, but not fantastic. Our kids are pretty well traveled thanks to generous grandparents, so the semi-submersible was something that we had seen and done before. They just wanted to do something. So, if you are going to book an excursion, do it early.

AND - book with a reputable excursion company. You don't have to go through the cruise line, but there are scammers out there. Be careful when booking. On our first cruise, we booked through a website beforehand just to take an island tour on a bus. When we arrived they couldn't find the company we booked through or our reservation. My husband was able to get it worked out, but it was frustrating and inconvenient. I would rather have been on the boat.

3. Take quarters for laundry and pack less! Each of us had a suitcase. While that seemed like a manageable amount of luggage, I realized we could have condensed some of it and just did wash. Now, I know that it's a vacation and laundry is a chore. So take this tip and do with it what you will, but I would rather pack less and have less work when I get home even if that means an hour or two of laundry while I'm on vacation. Every floor on Carnival Magic has a laundry room. Use it. Or don't.

Plus I work out every day on vacation, so I couldn't wear sweaty running clothes. That would be gross. And people would stare. Or fall overboard.

4. Enjoy the complimentary room service at night. The kids thought it was super cool to order a plate of cookies or fruit at 10:30 even though it was well past bedtime. And I enjoyed a cup of decaf coffee. Yum.

5. Pack your own flavored coffee creamer. Yep, this warrants a tip on my top 10 list. I love coffee. I love flavored coffee. Hello, Coffeemate Sweet Italian Cream. So, I realized on the first cruise that I needed to bring my own. If you like anything other than plain cream and sugar in your coffee, bring it with you.

*And yes, I have since broken this habit and I don't indulge in Coffeemate any longer. I can't ignore the ingredient list. :(

6. If you need internet throughout the week, buy the week package. It did go up in price from the time of our first cruise to our second cruise 9 months later. With work, it was necessary.

7. Select the dine anytime option. I can't remember the exact terminology for this. It has a catchy name, thank you Carnival. On our first cruise we had 6 p.m. seating for dinner. We were assigned a table with people similar in age to us. It was fun and nice to meet new people. The first night was awkward, and by the end of the week we could tell the people at our table didn't like us very much. We look young, and technically, we aren't old. But they were babies. Newlyweds. When we told them we had been married 12 years and they were on their honeymoons, all of a sudden they didn't seem like our BFFs anymore. Darn.

So with our kids, we decided for the option of choosing to dine anytime. Bonus. We loved it. We had the same table every night, but at any time that we wanted. We LOVED our waiter - Pongsak. The kids still ask about him. I hope he got a raise. And I hope he gets to retire soon. He was awesome and made my kids feel like superstars every night.

8. Take advantage of the options for kids. Newsflash: I am one of the most paranoid, over-protective, careful, cautious and nut-so parents. Yep. I parent like it's my job. Oh, wait. It is. So, I was more than skeptical about leaving my kids at Camp Carnival. We signed them up anyway, just in case we wanted to do it and they wanted to. As usual, the first time we went, they were nervous and unsure about staying. After that, they were begging us to go back. I do wish they had been able to keep all our kids in the same age group, but obviously they're different ages and they have policies for a reason. Sincerely, our kids loved it. Loved it. For example, sweet Wonder Woman made a friend a Camp Carnival that she still keeps in touch with even now...10 months later.

We were very impressed. And that is huge.

9. You can order as many entrees at dinner as you want. I don't think that they wanted us to know this, but we learned on our first cruise that we could order everything on the menu that we wanted if we wanted to. For example, you might have 5 choices for appetizers. If you really want to try all 5, you can. Just order them. And expect for dinner overall to take longer if you're going to do this. With dessert on Carnival Magic, the warm chocolate souffle is my absolute favorite. I mean, it's just delicious and comforting and chocolate. But there were days I wanted to try something else on the menu as well. So I ordered both. Yep, I did. Two desserts. You can do that. You're welcome.

10. Get an exterior room. The interior rooms are smaller, and they feel much smaller without a window or balcony. You will use the balcony. It is nice to sit outside while moving at night or early in the morning with a cup of coffee.