Yay! First cruise booked!

[kylielkinnaman]

Finally, finally we have a cruise on the books! I've wanted to try one for a longgg time but the circumstances never really lined up and I'd go on other trips with various travel partners. But now that my husband and I have decided we'll travel over Christmas every year and he pretty much picked last year's destination (Vegas), I rallied hard for a cruise for 2019 and he agreed! He's not as excited as I am but I really do think/hope once we board the Norwegian Bliss on December 20th that he'll be floored and have a great time. I can't wait!

[crystalspin]

Congrats Kylie, and welcome to Cruise Critic!

 

Head over here for NCL specific tips and tricks:

Norwegian Forum

And here to join your roll call (group on the same cruise) which is pretty small so far:

Your Roll Call

[puppycanducruise]

Congrats on booking your first cruise.

I hope you have a wonderful time.

[paul929207]

Congratulations. Lots of time to plan your activities

[Lvscruzn]

Congratulations! Hopefully your Hubby will surprise you and end up loving it! Then you guys will be addicted. Best vacations ever!

[kylielkinnaman]

Thanks, everyone!! I sure am hoping my husband loves it 😄

[Kate P.C]

Congratulations! You will both enjoy it and might even get hooked on cruising. I bet your husband will mention next cruise first 🙂

[Organized Chaos]

19 hours ago, kylielkinnaman said:

I rallied hard for a cruise for 2019 and he agreed! He's not as excited as I am but I really do think/hope once we board the Norwegian Bliss on December 20th that he'll be floored and have a great time. I can't wait!

 

A couple members of my wife's family, who cruise often, kept trying to get us to go, but it just wasn't something we ever considered. But a few years ago, we agreed. I wasn't excited at all, but her and our son were, so I went along with it for them. It took me about a day to get out of my "this isn't for me" funk, but after that, I really started to enjoy it. In the end, I (we) loved it. We went again last year, have one booked for next March, and are considering booking an "in-between" for this winter just so we don't have to wait so long. There's still plenty of land-based vacations I want to do, places we've been that I want to go back to or others we haven't been to yet, but we'll also continue to cruise. Hopefully your husband goes into it with an open mind. There's all kinds of things to do on a cruise, he just needs to find the things he enjoys. If he liked Vegas, there's always the casino on board. Good luck and have fun.

[TNcruising02]

A first cruise is very exciting.  I remember how excited and nervous I was when I booked my first cruise.  I tried to imagine what it would be like, but nothing really compared to actually doing it. 

To make things go more smoothly, I would definitely recommend reading reviews and doing a little research.  Since NCL requires reservations for some shows, you might want to see when these can be booked online.  When I went on my first Norwegian cruise, I didn't do any planning so I didn't realize until we boarded the ship that we had to have reservations for shows.  I had to take a quick trip to guest services, but some shows were full for certain nights.

If you both end up enjoying cruising as much as many of us do, be warned that it's a passionate addiction.  I never even thought about cruising until my co-worker mentioned going on a family cruise.  I booked my first cruise in 2013 and have been on many cruises since then.  We try to do two or three a year now.

I hope you have a wonderful time.  The people posting in the Norwegian section can help you with cruise-specific questions.

 

[Krazy Kruizers]

Congratulations on booking your first cruise.

 

Christmas is a magical time of the year and so many ships are decorated so beautifully.

 

I would be surprised if your husband doesn't like his first cruise.

[KBS1607]

Oh a Christmas cruise is an exciting first cruise!  We loved the Christmas cruise we took. 

[kylielkinnaman]

We actually don't celebrate Christmas, but it'll be fun to be around people who are in festive and jolly moods! We sure will be feeling excited just to be there! 

 

I have been reading a ton of reviews and definitely plan on booking speciality dining and the shows as soon as we can. I'm a huge type-A overplanner and wish we could pre-book laser tag and the go-karts, too! We will have a few things to pay for onboard (go-karts, upgraded WiFi, laser tag...probably a few Starbucks!) but really want to have as much pre-paid and pre-planned as we can!

[clackey]

9 hours ago, kylielkinnaman said:

We actually don't celebrate Christmas, but it'll be fun to be around people who are in festive and jolly moods! We sure will be feeling excited just to be there! 

 

If you want festive you need to try a Halloween cruise.  We did one on Royal Caribbean 3 years back and it was a hoot.  We saw at least a hundred of the neatest costumes in a parade down the Promenade.  

[Mona-Lisa]

On 6/12/2019 at 10:32 PM, TNcruising02 said:

A first cruise is very exciting.  I remember how excited and nervous I was when I booked my first cruise.  I tried to imagine what it would be like, but nothing really compared to actually doing it. 



 

Same with me. You love it or hate it, but most probably you will love it and after you are back home, you will find yourself searching for the next one immediately.

 I was also very nerovus, but planning and reading helped a lot.

One of my unanswered questions, with the answer I already know after cruise. Might help you:

 

How the on/off the ship works when you arrive at a port?

There is lot of embarkation and disembarkation info tips but I could not find much on the ports.

When you book a cruise you can see if the port is docking or tender.

 

Docking is easy, cruise director is announcing when you can get off and you just simply walk off from the ship.

Listen to the announcements.

 

Tender ports are more tricky. On Carnival they distribute small stickers in the morning in a designated area (bar).

You need to go there, queue and pick up these stickers. Cruise director will announce the nr of the sticker and also where to go to get in the small boats.

For us the first occasion was a nightmare. (Gran Cayman)There was a massive line and ppl looked at you like sh** (I was wondering around trying to find our what is going on here) and aggressively notifying you to go to the end of the line.  We also lost each other with my friends...  We got nr 11, but that was still the first tender boat. (We thought we will have to wait a lot) Overall the tender get off, was fast. But the process really bad.

So I would suggest that if you dont want all of you to stand in line for long time, agree to meet in your room or maybe at a table in the Lido, and send one person to the bar very early to pick up stickers.

My personal opinion is that: I would not choose any cruise where there is more than 1 tender port in the itinerary, but preferably 0.

 

Maybe other cruise lines work with different system but this was really bad and I could not find any review about this process prior to our cruise.