Most memorable experience of first cruise?...

[walker1887]

The most memorable part of our first cruise, and probably all cruises since, was everyone throwing their streamers out as the ship took off. I still get chills thinking about it. I actually had tears in my eyes. This was 25 years ago (May 1985), at San Pedro on the Carnival Tropical.

[AlanFromFL]

Our first cruise was aboard Caribbean Princess during the very busy hurricane season of 2004, the last week of August. Due to Hurricane Frances, we learned upon arrival at the pier that our Eastern Caribbean itinerary was swapped with a Western Caribbean itinerary. No problem, we thought, we actually gained a port call, it's all good, we're on vacation. Of course, Frances made a track directly toward S Florida at the end of the week...Port Everglades closed to all traffic on Friday, remained closed until sometime Sunday, so our return was ultimately delayed by two days - - 9 nights for the price of 7! We finally got home on Monday - Labor Day. We were a little concerned with what we would find when we got home (we live in S Florida), but aside from a few downed trees in our neighborhood, no damage at our place, didn't even miss a day of work. So all in all it worked out great, we had a wonderful extended vacation and we caught the cruise bug! :D

[papajak]

Our first cruise was on the Nordic Empress in 1995. We were celebrating our 5th anniversary. After dinner, we took a long walk and found ourselves at a quiet spot at the front of the ship. We looked down as a pod of dolphins joined us, swimming along beside us for a good 10 or 15 minutes! It was a magical moment!

[ddgleason]

On our honeymoon on the Viking Serenade. We happened to really hit it off with one of the other couples at our dinner table and on our sea day, the 4 of us went up to the Viking Crown lounge, which was completely deserted, to chat and have a couple of drinks. While we were there, the jugglers from the show came up and rehearsed their act so we got a free show. We also got to see whales as we were there hanging out.

 

And like others have said, nothing compares to the "wow" factor when you first board. I remember thinking the ship was so big! Kind of funny to think of it now; Viking Serenade was tiny!

[Philly Steve]

Skeet shooting on the SS Norway. :cool: