How or Why Did You Decide to Take Your First Cruise??

[ldubs]

First cruise how and why?   Of course everything we had heard about cruising was good.  So Mrs Ldubs and I decided to give it a try about 22 years ago.  It was a 4 day out of San Pedro on RCI.  We likely selected it based on low price and that we could drive there.  I guess we must have liked it because we have been on a few more since then.  😄

[Pale Gail Sails]

17 hours ago, Shmoo here said:

When we decided to give cruising a try, we jumped in with both feet - a 15 night Panama Canal cruise.  We had a good price offer and we took it.

I started with a 7 day cruise but I have since heard from a number of people that they opted to start with a 14 day cruise. All in!

 

[getting older slowly]

First cruise...... well the rest of family and extended family had all gone cruising... and kept on saying you should go on a cruise.......   we said too many people and not our thing.

 

Then realized there were cruises from our home town.....  as the better half does n't like flying..

 

So for a significant birthday.....  decided take the plunge and go on a cruise ... as no driving or cooking for me.....

 

Went to the TA.... 2 1/2 hours later.....( our TA was great with a great knowledge of cruises and wanted to get our expectations met )

 

in the end we had settled on Princess..... on a 13 night cruise... in a suite...

 

well if you are going to do it... do it... we would either love it or hate it 

( this was meant to be a one off ).

 

Well by the end of the second day we where hooked it was a great cruise had a wonderful time....

rough seas....  missed three ports....  great food.... slept like a log ... all the crew were wonderful..

 

Well we have now completed 80+ nights on board and love cruising... we really enjoy the ship..

and have 3 cruises book for late this year.....

 

Cheers Don

 

 

 

[Shmoo here]

29 minutes ago, getting older slowly said:

Well by the end of the second day we where hooked

I was hooked just walking up the gangway to board the ship.

[getting older slowly]

1 minute ago, Shmoo here said:

I was hooked just walking up the gangway to board the ship.

I must admit, seeing the ship at the dock and knowing you are going on board then walking up the gangway, always gives a big buzz...

 

Cheers Don 

[jeremyosborne81]

Carnival literally paid me.

My first cruise was a Cruise Staff.

I took my first cruise as a passenger on Norwegian Cruise Lines and that was because I love the ocean and things were super cheap after the Carnival Triumph disaster in 2013.

[iancal]

First cruise was on Crystal.  Med cruise.  Sales achievement cruise.  My employer chartered the ship.

[marco]

Wasn't really a cruise...early 60's, as a kid,  sailed to Italy to visit family with my parents. What an experience for a kid and it got me hooked on traveling on a ship, and have been every since.  Sailing on a "ship of state" with all officers, staff and crew from that country was like going to that country for 8 days.

[dreadpirate3]

Back when we started cruising (2008), you could find last minute cruises easily. We booked our first one for $50 per night, per person and right out of Port Canaveral, 1 hour from our house. We loved it! Took another one 3 months later and brought our son. The cruise bug bit us and we have no regrets.

 

My next cruise in May might get cancelled, or I may have to reschedule it to a weekend in September, but that's a risk I knew going in, and I booked full insurance. 

[Ava79]

Well, travelling and overall marine aesthetics were always with me and I always liked it very much 'cause it's close in spirit. I was 20 years old and we were traveling in Scandinavia. Since then, I have fallen in love with the Nordic countries!

[slidergirl]

I did watch The Love Boat, mostly because it was so over the top with pompous people and dumb games.  I still remember Charo!!!  I swore that I'd never go on a vacation where I was with those kind of people, told when to eat, what to wear, play bingo and horse races...  

When I got married, we were both of the same mind.  I mean, our honeymoon was a 2 week camping trip to Devil's Postpile National Monument and Yosemite National Park.  Getting on a ship with a bunch of strangers and strict rules and only having a couple of hours in a place - no thank you.  

Cut 30 year ahead.  Newly divorced, a year out of physical therapy for a nasty injury the year before (happened on my "Eat, Pray, Love" vacation).  NCL had just started the Freestyle thing.  Since I was pretty non-active still at that point, I figured I'd try a cruise.  I did like that it was unregemented, wasn't the "old fogey" group like the Love Boat, and I wasn't forced to eat when I wasn't ready.  I decided that a cruise wasn't too bad, but I still am a MUCH bigger fan of land-based vacations.  I'll do a cruise when I'm not really interested in much but relaxing and recharging my batteries.  

[pacruise804]

2 minutes ago, slidergirl said:

I did watch The Love Boat, mostly because it was so over the top with pompous people and dumb games.  I still remember Charo!!!  I swore that I'd never go on a vacation where I was with those kind of people, told when to eat, what to wear, play bingo and horse races...  

When I got married, we were both of the same mind.  I mean, our honeymoon was a 2 week camping trip to Devil's Postpile National Monument and Yosemite National Park.  Getting on a ship with a bunch of strangers and strict rules and only having a couple of hours in a place - no thank you.  

Cut 30 year ahead.  Newly divorced, a year out of physical therapy for a nasty injury the year before (happened on my "Eat, Pray, Love" vacation).  NCL had just started the Freestyle thing.  Since I was pretty non-active still at that point, I figured I'd try a cruise.  I did like that it was unregemented, wasn't the "old fogey" group like the Love Boat, and I wasn't forced to eat when I wasn't ready.  I decided that a cruise wasn't too bad, but I still am a MUCH bigger fan of land-based vacations.  I'll do a cruise when I'm not really interested in much but relaxing and recharging my batteries.  

 

I was very young when Love Boat aired but do remember it some.  Apart from a few ladies that I think were regulars, weren't most of the passengers younger? 

[George C]

My first job was for U S Lines in 1967 , I was a computer operator, they owned SS United States and the America, heard great stories from the other staff that sailed these ships , also office was located at 1 Broadway in nyc which had a perfect view of the Statue of Liberty and could sometimes see cruise ships passing it , I was 17 at the time. 
  Then did a cruise to nowhere in 1975 followed by a SS Rotterdam 7 day cruise in 1977 then I was hooked have done almost 70 cruises.

[slidergirl]

8 hours ago, pacruise804 said:

 

I was very young when Love Boat aired but do remember it some.  Apart from a few ladies that I think were regulars, weren't most of the passengers younger? 

I remember them being old with a few young people.  But, I seemed to remember mostly those "stars" from the 50s and 60s were the guests on the ship.  They would have the obligatory young newlyweds, but it was not the majority.   If you search the IMDb database for "guest stars" on The Love Boat, you'll see a list of people.  I mean, even back when the show was on, these actors were old...

[cruisemom42]

17 hours ago, pacruise804 said:

 

I was very young when Love Boat aired but do remember it some.  Apart from a few ladies that I think were regulars, weren't most of the passengers younger? 

 

The show usually focused on the staff/crew and they were younger. So of course you'd have an obligatory love interest for Doc, or Julie....and yes, they'd be younger. But a lot of the passengers were older. Actually I thought the demographic match to real life cruising was pretty good at that time -- what was unrealistic was the size of the cabins. 

[RocketMan275]

I needed a way to celebrate my retirement.  Arranged retirement date so I would also celebrate my birthdate while on the cruise.

 

Worked well because employer wanted me to work a "few more months".  Told them I couldn't because I couldn't cancel the cruise.  

[Pale Gail Sails]

On 3/23/2020 at 2:57 PM, pacruise804 said:

 

I was very young when Love Boat aired but do remember it some.  Apart from a few ladies that I think were regulars, weren't most of the passengers younger? 

I recall a mixture of both. There were some actors that would be described as old school Hollywood  such as Lillian Gish, Dorothy Lamour, Eddie Albert, Joan Fontaine etc. but there were also younger stars of the day such as Soctt Baio, Courtney Cox, Tom Hanks, Emmanuel Lewis, Kirsty Alley.

[Pale Gail Sails]

On 3/24/2020 at 8:12 AM, cruisemom42 said:

 

...

what was unrealistic was the size of the cabins. 

LOL, yes, I forgot about the cabin size. On my first cruise, the small cabin and balcony were a bit of a shock and I don't think they ever showed the buffet. It was always the dining room.

[George C]

2 hours ago, Pale Gail Sails said:

LOL, yes, I forgot about the cabin size. On my first cruise, the small cabin and balcony were a bit of a shock and I don't think they ever showed the buffet. It was always the dining room.

Balconies didn’t even exist for many of my cruises, first cruise that had one was a Princess and it was tiny that was in 1990’s 

[Sancho_proudfoot]

It was that dull 'nothing happening' phase between Christmas and New Year. I was sat idly flicking through the colour supplement of the Sunday newspaper and saw a full page advert for a cruise on a brand new ( in fact, still at the builder's yard) ship.

 

We discussed it, and ummed and ahhed for a day or two. The eventual decider was a line in the advert which offered free parking at the port if we booked by 31 December.

 

We took a deep breath and booked it, in an inside cabin, reasoning that, if we found we hated it, we were going to have 'wasted' the lowest amount of money!

 

We spent the next four months anxiously studying the progress of the build (at one point saying "it'll never be ready").

 

In the event, of course, the ship was completed, had her sea trials, and l remember driving to the port; we passed one cruise ship docked, and DW said "Is that our ship?".

 

No, l replied as we rounded a bend and saw it, dwarfing the first ship we'd seen - THAT'S our ship!

 

At the time, that new ship was officially the biggest cruise ship in the world, and that first moment of stepping aboard a brand new ship is still fresh in my memory.

 

Sailing a first cruise, on the brand new Independence of The Seas, with the semi-legendary Ken Rush as CD got us well and truly hooked!

Edited April 11, 2020 by Sancho_proudfoot

[MedicKenK]

Our first cruise was on the Costa Riviera (pre-Carnival). I won this as a prize for my store, retail electronic, making quota for December and January. This was a 7 night, all expenses paid in April of 1987. Adequate inside stateroom on the lowest deck, beds welded to the walls. There were "hair-drying" rooms in the passenger decks as the electrical system couldn't handle hair dryers. [ours was up one deck] It went ok but we were on a ship with company folks who were different degrees of jerkiness. Fast forward to 2001. Our son who was 5 months old for the first cruise, he stayed with his Aunt and Uncle then, was now 14. We thought that we should give it another shot and booked a 4 night from NYC to Halifax. It was really nice. My DS & BIL were going on a Southern Caribbean out of Santo Domingo. My DW had just started to use a scooter for mobility so we thought it would work fine. After we got a proper cabin for the scooter. We fell in love. After that we tended to cruise two, or three, times a year. 

[cruisemom42]

On 3/28/2020 at 10:27 AM, Pale Gail Sails said:

LOL, yes, I forgot about the cabin size. On my first cruise, the small cabin and balcony were a bit of a shock and I don't think they ever showed the buffet. It was always the dining room.

 

I'm not sure ships had dedicated buffets then. At least not at the beginning of the show's run. 

 

On my early cruises I recall that on sunny sea days they would set up a temporary buffet out on the pool deck, but only for lunch. And of course they had the famous "midnight buffets" in the MDR.

 

[navybankerteacher]

2 hours ago, cruisemom42 said:

 

...

And of course they had the famous "midnight buffets" in the MDR.

 

Interesting choice of adjective:  I might have used “infamous”.

[XBGuy]

4 hours ago, MedicKenK said:

Our first cruise was on the Costa Riviera (pre-Carnival). I won this as a prize for my store, retail electronic, making quota for December and January. This was a 7 night, all expenses paid in April of 1987. Adequate inside stateroom on the lowest deck, beds welded to the walls. There were "hair-drying" rooms in the passenger decks as the electrical system couldn't handle hair dryers. [ours was up one deck]

 

Our second ever cruise was on the Costa Riviera.  I remember the hair drying rooms.

[Sea Hag]

In 1991,  there was going to be a total eclipse of the sun. My thought was that we'd fly to Hawaii to see it. Hubby had a different notion. His grandmother had gone on cruises, so cruises were on his radar. He said that if it would work, he'd rather go on a cruise to see it. The cruise path cut right across Mazatlán, Mexico, so we went on the Carnival Jubilee to see the eclipse. It was a great choice, and it was a wonderful eclipse.