How did you decide to take your very first cruise ?

[SmoothFlying]

10 hours ago, SRQbeachgirl said:

In 1992 my parents gifted me and DH and 7-day cruise on the Carnival Holiday. They had been on several cruises and thought we would enjoy it. We definitely did! We went on two more before starting a family and then life kept us much closer to home for vacations for many years, but we moved to the beach to satisfy our love for the sea. 

 

Finally got around to cruising again years later and don't plan to ever give it up! 

It's a small world, indeed !! 🙂 I took my wife on her 1st cruise on the Holiday in 2207. I had my 1st cruise on the OLD Marti Gras way back in'87but we didn't till '92 and marry in 1995. Took me over TEN years of almost begging het to try cruising, finally I just gave up, went behind her back in the summer of 2006 and booked a five day cruise on the Holiday to Freeport/Nasssau out of Mobile ! But it almost back-fired ! Stupide me, I forgot to tell her, till Xmas of 2006. Boy ! Was she ever shocked and a bit curious, and finally agreeded to go. Long story, short ( I know, too late LOL !!). Fifteen mins, top deck at the sail away party. she yelled in my ear,' When can we do this AGAIN !' Tweny+ cruises, she still LOVES it She's truly a 'cruise addict' ! 🙂

 

Mac

[ldubs]

21 hours ago, mom says said:

Throughout much of our married life DH refused to vacation on a cruise. Since his career was flying helicopters off navy ships, fair enough.  But with our 25th anniversary approaching,  he had a shore posting and I reminded him of the saying "happy wife, happy life". And a cruise was cheaper than a divorce. So we had our first cruuse- a  7 day eastern Caribbean on the QM2. Of course he loved it, and we've enjoyed many happy cruises in all the years since.

 

"And a cruise was cheaper than a divorce"

 

😄😄😄

[CavePearl]

In 2000, my parents mentioned that they were taking a 14-day transatlantic cruise on Splendor of the Seas. We’d never cruised before, but my husband and I invited ourselves anyway. It was love at first sight, and cruising became one of our favorite vacations.

 

(Side totally-random story follows... ☺️)

 

My parents cruised a lot after my dad retired in the late 80s. They were never really "loyal" to any specific cruise line, and their favorite size ships were “the-smaller-the-better” class, so you can imagine the size of the staterooms. And always interiors. Always. They really enjoyed Commodore, and I remember how surprised to find out they were something called “Diamond” on Royal Caribbean!  Anyway, which ship may not have been important, but they were always very clear about how they never saw any reason whatsoever to pay for anything but the cheapest cabin since after all, they were rarely in it. (I heard that speech more than once!)

 

After my aunt retired in the 90s she started cruising with them. And I mean with them… together in one interior cabin! They cruised and traveled the world as a “threesome,” which gave a lot of people a lot of laughs - and the three of them milked it for everything it was worth. Their joy in meeting new people and just living was something to behold, and we were blessed to join them on many occasions. My parents have gone on now, and my dear aunt is 96 years old. She still laughs when she reminisces about their adventures.

 

When I grow up, I want to be just like them.

 

[ontheweb]

16 hours ago, CavePearl said:

In 2000, my parents mentioned that they were taking a 14-day transatlantic cruise on Splendor of the Seas. We’d never cruised before, but my husband and I invited ourselves anyway. It was love at first sight, and cruising became one of our favorite vacations.

 

(Side totally-random story follows... ☺️)

 

My parents cruised a lot after my dad retired in the late 80s. They were never really "loyal" to any specific cruise line, and their favorite size ships were “the-smaller-the-better” class, so you can imagine the size of the staterooms. And always interiors. Always. They really enjoyed Commodore, and I remember how surprised to find out they were something called “Diamond” on Royal Caribbean!  Anyway, which ship may not have been important, but they were always very clear about how they never saw any reason whatsoever to pay for anything but the cheapest cabin since after all, they were rarely in it. (I heard that speech more than once!)

 

After my aunt retired in the 90s she started cruising with them. And I mean with them… together in one interior cabin! They cruised and traveled the world as a “threesome,” which gave a lot of people a lot of laughs - and the three of them milked it for everything it was worth. Their joy in meeting new people and just living was something to behold, and we were blessed to join them on many occasions. My parents have gone on now, and my dear aunt is 96 years old. She still laughs when she reminisces about their adventures.

 

When I grow up, I want to be just like them.

 

Our first cruise was also on Splendor of the Seas, though 2 years later in 2002.

[lynncarol]

My first cruise was a 20th anniversary surprise gift from my husband thirty seven years ago.  On this round-trip sailing from NYC to Bermuda the seas were rough and I got so sea-sick it took 10 years for him to get me back on a ship.  So glad he did as I now love cruising (even though I still require dramamine at times). I've lost count of how any cruises we have taken, not only on our own, but with kids, parents, grandkids and friends, all of which have significantly enhanced our lives.

[XBGuy]

We were married in October 1976.  Being the typical clueless dude, I was happy to let the future Mrs. XBGuy handle all the planning.  Sometime in September when everything was, pretty much, under control, she started talking out loud about a honeymoon.

 

"Well, I don't know.  What do you want to do?"

 

This went on for a couple days when the idea of a cruise popped up.  I have to believe that she was the one who proposed it, but I really don't remember.  Neither of us had ever been on a cruise.  In fact, neither of us even knew anybody who'd ever been on a cruise.

 

The following Saturday we were in a travel agent's office, and it only took about 45 minutes to max out my credit card on a Western Caribbean cruise on Norwegian Caribbean Line's MS Southward.

 

The fare included air transportation (Los Angeles-Miami) that left at midnight (Pacific time) and arrived pre-dawn.  The fare also included a hotel room where we could shower and nap for a few hours prior to being bussed to the port.  Needless to say, I did not feel particularly chipper.  Stand in line in the terminal, to check in.  Then stand in line to board the ship.  I remember telling my new bride as we were standing on the gangway, "I'm not having fun, yet."

 

That all changed when we stepped on board and were greeted by multiple white-uniformed personnel.  "Oh, Mr. and Mrs. XBGuy, your are in Cabin number something-or-other.  Please enjoy a glass of Champagne as you are escorted to your cabin."

 

Pretty cool.

 

We had an inside cabin, and it was great.

 

We were pleased that we could get a two-top table in the dining room.  We loved all the port stops.  However, I had no idea that the routine was to buy excursions at the stops.  I guess I had enough cash and credit to do it.  We loved visiting Tulum in the Yucatan, and I thought that docking at Dr. No's lab at Ocho Rios was awesome.

 

On the last sea day my throat started getting scratchy, and, sure enough, the next day I had a raging infection.  I'm sure that many of you know how miserable it is to fly when you have serious congestion.

 

Well, after that we decided we would do lots of cruising.  However, work and finances slowed us down a lot.  We would cruise every seven or eight years.  However, we quickly upgraded form an inside cabin to one with a port hole,

 

It wasn.t until 2004 that we cruised in a balcony cabin,  That same cruise was the first that offered a specialty dining restaurant.  It took us a few days to discover that, but once we tried it, we were hooked.

 

Since retirement, happily, we have been able to cruise more often.

 

n

 

 

[GrannyJ]

1967.  My sister and I, both teenagers, were returning from three months of bumming around Europe.

 

We sailed home on the old Queen Elizabeth.  It was an eye-opening experience.

[DarrenM]

Friends convinced us to go on a Disney Cruise when our kids were 6 & 3.

 

It put me off for years.

 

I love my kids but I hate being surrounded by hundreds of others.

 

Nightmare.

 

And mine are adults now.

[Mike981]

Back when I used to occasionally smoke a cigar, I would frequent a cigar forum online. One of the gentlemen on the forum mentioned that he was going to put a a cigar cruise together. When he put the details out on the cruise I jokingly asked my wife if she would like to go and she said "YES!" I was floored, and my next thought was "now what am I going to do". I found a local travel agent who could help but I was worried about, "how the heck do you cruise?" I had never traveled before. The more I thought about it, the more worried I got.

 

Fast forward to when I was doing a promotional fishing boat show with a friend (we fished tournaments and had the same boat) during a lull in the show, I asked him if he had ever gone on a cruise and he said yes, so I asked if he and his wife would like to go on a cruise. And just like my wife, he was like "SURE!" We met up a couple of times before the cruise to plan and pick their brains and it was such a relief.

 

It was a lot of fun and my wife and I were able to finally take a much delayed honeymoon ten years later.

[lenquixote66]

On 3/5/2023 at 1:14 PM, lynncarol said:

My first cruise was a 20th anniversary surprise gift from my husband thirty seven years ago.  On this round-trip sailing from NYC to Bermuda the seas were rough and I got so sea-sick it took 10 years for him to get me back on a ship.  So glad he did as I now love cruising (even though I still require dramamine at times). I've lost count of how any cruises we have taken, not only on our own, but with kids, parents, grandkids and friends, all of which have significantly enhanced our lives.

Our first cruise was 50 years ago to celebrate a significant birthday for one of us,also round trip NYC to Bermuda with seas so rough that our next cruise was 21 years later.We have since cruised with friends,by ourselves ,our kids and grandkids.

[9tee2Sea]

First cruise n 1976 was a HS graduation gift from my folks ( we all went to Greek Islands).  My first cruise as a paying adult, was 1999 ( I think)  Trans-Atlantic on QE2. 10 days, Ocean view for $799.  So to answer your question, price was the deciding factor ( and still is, sort of)

[Capt_BJ]

dateline 1983ish .... Mrs was doing the books for a travel agency (Miami) who was having cash flow issues. In lieu of pay one week they offered a pair of tickets for a 3 night cruise. We went and loved it.  This happened several more times over the next few years expanding to 7 night cruises.

 

Fast forward we've 60 some in the book and going <back> to Norway and Iceland via Viking Ocean this summer .....

 

In the beginning

 

 

 

[SPacificbound]

We were going to Australia and New Zealand, and decided to check out cruises to not have the long flight twice. Had never really thought of cruising previously. Our flight was to Auckland, we spent 10 weeks touring on our own, then went out of Sydney on RCCL Rhapsody of the Seas. I was hooked before the ship left the dock.

 

[HardToPort]

2009. 50 years old. I had just left one job when the US parent downsized the Canadian position (me). I already had another job lined up and a nice severance check. Called my Dad who I’d never spent significant time with because my mom divorced him when I was very young. Asked him if he wanted to go on a cruise.

 

We did Carnival out of Miami in a junior suite. We did a cruise every year for 8 years until he got too old to travel. We moved up from Carnival pretty quick (we loved Carnival, just too young family friendly for us) and developed a close bond that had never previously existed. 
 

Cruising gave us the one on one time we needed to clear the air, discuss the difficult father / son things that needed to be discussed, forgive and move forward.

 

I do a solo cruise every year and still wake up expecting to see him in the cabin.

[Sea Hag]

There was going to be a solar eclipse back in 1991. I wanted to see that, and my first notion was to fly over to Hawaii. My husband said that he'd looked into things and he thought there might be a cruise ship in path and if there was then he'd rather do that. I called the travel agent that handled all the travel for the company I worked for at the time and asked her about that possibility. She looked it up and said that the Carnival Jubilee was going to be in Mazatlan that day, spang in the middle of the path of totality. Sold!

[hallasm]

in Denmark, going on cruises is not that common, and especially not in the 90s.  I had never thought about a cruise when in 1996 I got an offer from my favorite airline for a 7-day Caribbean cruise from Miami with Sovereign of the Seas - traveled a lot in Europe and had a lot of air miles.  
My first cruise was an offer for air miles - it's now been more than 30 cruises.

[klfrodo]

For me, plain and simple,,, The Love Boat.

 

Growing up dirt poor, The Love Boat allowed me to dream big and see the possibilities outside of my current situation as a youngster.

[Mike981]

On 3/21/2023 at 4:09 PM, Capt_BJ said:

dateline 1983ish .... Mrs was doing the books for a travel agency (Miami) who was having cash flow issues. In lieu of pay one week they offered a pair of tickets for a 3 night cruise. We went and loved it.  This happened several more times over the next few years expanding to 7 night cruises.

 

Fast forward we've 60 some in the book and going <back> to Norway and Iceland via Viking Ocean this summer .....

 

In the beginning

 

 

 

 

Love your smiles!!

 

On 3/21/2023 at 8:45 PM, HardToPort said:

2009. 50 years old. I had just left one job when the US parent downsized the Canadian position (me). I already had another job lined up and a nice severance check. Called my Dad who I’d never spent significant time with because my mom divorced him when I was very young. Asked him if he wanted to go on a cruise.

 

We did Carnival out of Miami in a junior suite. We did a cruise every year for 8 years until he got too old to travel. We moved up from Carnival pretty quick (we loved Carnival, just too young family friendly for us) and developed a close bond that had never previously existed. 
 

Cruising gave us the one on one time we needed to clear the air, discuss the difficult father / son things that needed to be discussed, forgive and move forward.

 

I do a solo cruise every year and still wake up expecting to see him in the cabin.

 

This brought a tear to my eye.

 

On 3/22/2023 at 11:13 AM, klfrodo said:

For me, plain and simple,,, The Love Boat.

 

Growing up dirt poor, The Love Boat allowed me to dream big and see the possibilities outside of my current situation as a youngster.

 

Agree. When I finally made it on my first cruise I couldn't believe how much better than the TV show EVERYTHING was. But I still laugh at the huge size of the cabins on the show. 

[sparks1093]

With 5 boys to raise vacationing consisted of tents and campfires. Our first non-camping vacation was a road trip to DC when most of them were teens. Everyone behaved and we had a great time, so vacationing options started to expand. A friend at work started talking about a cruise he was going on and I mentioned it to DW, saying something like "I've always wanted to cruise". She said "me too, but I figured you wouldn't be interested since you were in the Navy." I told her I didn't think she'd be interested because she was afraid of water. 

 

So we talked about it and we were concerned about our middle son who is on the autism spectrum. We decided to do a short cruise for just us. Found a 2 night CTN out of Boston on NCL that fit the bill and we both fell in love. The weather sucked, the service was slow, but we knew that we loved being on the ship. We then booked a 4 nighter out of Miami for the 7 of us. We drove from Vermont to Miami. The kids had a blast. We haven't looked back. Leaving in 22 days and we have cruises booked for 2024 and 2025. 

[Heidi13]

On 3/2/2023 at 12:43 PM, lenquixote66 said:

In 1973 my wife and I having vacationed by car,bus and train decided to try a ship vacation .

 

My experience is a little different, as I had no choice in the cruise line, ship or dates. I received joining instructions and flights to board SS Uganda of the British India SNC (BI) in Malta, back in January 1976.

[ilikeanswers]

I don't have an interesting story as to how I started cruise it was just the destination I wanted to visit was easier to get to via cruise. My reason was so boringly practical😂. 

Edited March 26, 2023 by ilikeanswers

[lifes-a-beach]

Our first cruise was in October of 1992.  One reason I remember is because my wife was pregnant with our daughter who was born in February of 1993.  3 nights from Port Canaveral to Nassau and Freeport aboard the Carnivale.  This was a tiny ship by todays standards and undoubtedly not equipped with a stabilizing system comparable to today.  Boring as heck trip and 30’ seas on the way back convinced me that cruising wasn’t for me.  But then the fun started.  Our return flight to Houston concluded with the plane having a hydraulic system failure.  After several turns back out over the gulf which my wife informed me was to dump the fuel, we landed without steering or brakes on the emergency runway.  Fire trucks, ambulances, guys spraying that foam all over the plane.  People were freaking out!  (Not me, of course.). Now it’s still pretty hot in Houston in October, and since the plane was shut down there was no A/C and very little ventilation. The plane smelled like exhaust mixed with puke.  We had hit the ground so hard that the overhead bins had come open and bags had fallen out on people’s heads.  People were crying.  It was just a mess.  But we couldn’t get off the plane since we were on the far east runway, which I presume they use for emergency landing so everybody in the terminal can’t see you burn to death in the crash.  Anyway, they brought a piece of heavy equipment out there, hooked it to the front of the plane, and towed us back to the terminals.  It took 2-1/2 hours!  Needless to say, it was years before I would let her talk me into a second cruise.  Something like 50 cruises later I’m good. 

[MJC]

During high school I would babysit on Saturday night and watch The Love Boat, so my impression was that cruising was mostly for singles. I didn't think we would like it. Then in 1997 some married friends our age went to Alaska, and then an aunt and uncle went to Alaska, and they all raved about it and said we should go. So we went on Princess and loved it so much we were planning our next cruise on the flight home.

[babs135]

We're in the UK but have good friends who live in Orlando. In 2000 we were due to spend a fortnight with them when they rang to say they'd seen a 4 nights cruise out of Port Canaveral and were we interested in doing it.  A tentative yes (had never ever considered cruising before this - it was only for the wealthy!!) saw us enjoy every second and we've never stopped cruising since then.

[hancock]

My parents cruised.  They had a cruise booked over Easter.  I decided to join them last minute.

 

DH promised me a cruise for our 25th anniversary.  We have been cruising ever since.