Planning for a Crystal World Cruise

[CruisePfan]

Keith:

 

Given the many informative docs you have published over the years, especially the one for first time cruisers on Crystal, did you ever put one together for sailing on a Crystal World Cruise? Do you start with a spreadsheet or two, one for home, and one for the actual itinerary? I'm sure you have tips that many of us would never think of that in hind sight are no brainers.

 

i'm especially interested in must brings and what not to bring, best worldwide cell phone provider, luggage forwarders, etc. Planning begins in earnest this summer to avoid the last minute rush.  For Americans, first tip is apply for passport now if you need a new one.  The regular process is taking 12 weeks, and you will need additional time for visa processing.

 

Warmest regards, Adelina

[Keith1010]

Adelina:

 

We do a few spreadsheets and word documents.

 

I make a spreadsheet which has each date, port or sea day, for port average highs and lows, arrival time and departure time, specialty restaurant reservations, shore excursion bookings and using magnets we bring we hang this on the wall.  

 

We also have a word document of all the clothes we will bring.

 

We also sort this by the suitcase it is packed in and number this and number the suitcase.  It is a lot of work but very helpful should a suitcase or more go missing.

 

We try to bring all of the cosmetics and toilerties so we do not have to shop for it in port. There are a few items we pick up at the port of embarkation and if there are other USA ports we might supplement that.  These are items such as liquids that we don't want to carry on the flight.

 

My wife thinks through the clothing as much as possible so she can minimize things we bring so she's not taking a pair of shoes just for one outfit.

 

Think through medications in case you need to get larger quantities for the trip.

 

When we did our first world cruise I automated all of our bills so they are all paid either from checking or from credit card and the credit card is automatically paid too.

 

Think about taxes. We would just extend them.

 

Think about how you will deal with the mail. Most of the time we either forwarded it to a family member and the years they were not here we forwarded it to a P.O. Box. If you forward such as a temporary move make the effective date a couple of weeks before you leave because more often than not it doesn't start for a few days or something goes wrong.

 

I also kept a major things to do list. Each time I thought of something it went on the list. Anne Marie did the same.

 

Plan. Plan. Plan.  

 

Hopefully, this is a good start for you.

 

Keith

 

[Cruise-y]

Just a note on forwarding mail to a PO Box…. yes that will work but keep in mind that bulk mailers (with no specific address) or mail sent to “resident” or “occupant” or the like will still get put in your old mailbox. Also, a few pieces here and there will get through as the forwarding just fails. You’ll still have to have a neighbor or someone check your old mailbox, if for no other reason than to toss the junk mail. That’s my experience.
 

We used to have the same mail person every day who might know you are gone and not deliver the junk - but those days are over. Unless maybe if you live in a small town  
 

You can hold all mail for up to 30 days - that works better unless you are gone longer of course. 

[bayonejoe]

We normally have a neighbor get our mail.

It is less complicated that way.

[Leejnd4]

I have an excellent suggestion for how to handle mail: use a mail service like Traveling Mailbox. That's what we do. We live full-time aboard our sailboat, currently cruising the Pacific Coast of Mexico, and have for the past 4 years. We have all mail sent to our Traveling Mailbox address. They scan it in, and you simply log into your account and see all of your page scans. They don't scan obvious bulk mail - it gets shredded immediately so we never see it. (We do still get some junk mail that filters through, but not much.)

 

You scroll through your mail, read it, then shred/delete it. If it's something you want to keep, they will hold it for you. You can also have them forward it somewhere, such as a relative's address. They will receive packages for you and forward them as needed.

 

We've been doing this ever since we moved aboard our sailboat and left the US. It works great, and is quite reasonably priced. 

 

I'm sure there are plenty of World Cruisers who do this.

[Keith1010]

7 hours ago, Cruise-y said:

Just a note on forwarding mail to a PO Box…. yes that will work but keep in mind that bulk mailers (with no specific address) or mail sent to “resident” or “occupant” or the like will still get put in your old mailbox. Also, a few pieces here and there will get through as the forwarding just fails. You’ll still have to have a neighbor or someone check your old mailbox, if for no other reason than to toss the junk mail. That’s my experience.
 

We used to have the same mail person every day who might know you are gone and not deliver the junk - but those days are over. Unless maybe if you live in a small town  
 

You can hold all mail for up to 30 days - that works better unless you are gone longer of course. 

Good idea to have someone check the mail because things sometimes fall through the crack and I'll explain in a moment.

 

All I can say is I have done the forwarding of the mail many years for most of our world cruises out of two different addresses and never had that problem.  Bulk mail was not delivered to old or new address. Actually quite nice with less mail to deal with.  

 

We only encountered two issues.

 

One as I mentioned earlier sometimes it take a couple of weeks for all to work and you might get mail to the original address for a few days which is why we learned to make the effective date very early and to turn in the notice (on line these days) about two weeks before the effective date.

 

The other issue is that just as when one puts a hold on the mail it is more manual than people realize and a back up person might bring the mail so to your point to have someone check the mail once in awhile that is good. With that said, we've only gotten a few pieces of mail that we shouldn't have gotten. I would say three or four pieces.

 

Where I live we get from our association a magazine like monthly mailer and no address on it and we didn't get any when we were away. You don't get it to the old nor the new address.

 

Your post also is a reminder to me about mentioning good idea if one has a regular post person to speak with them ahead of time.

 

Keith

 

[Keith1010]

Another couple of items to mention.

 

At the time we opted to automate our bill paying we eliminated getting paper copies of invoices/bills. Aside from the benefit to the environment when we get home from even four or five months away we get about one full postal tote of mail whereas if we didn't do that we would likely have three to five of them.

Bill paying. We use a card for that which we don't use anywhere else. While there is always the possibility of it being compromised it is less likely since we aren't using it day to day at merchants.

 

Be sure you have a list of contacts if you need to reach them just in case something happens while you are away from insurance companies to a plumber. One year we were away (2013) on a World Cruise and a few weeks before getting home a hail storm hit. After our neighbors told us how bad it was we used the listing we had to contact the insurance agency so they could have someone come out to check the roof out. Before we got home we knew we needed a new roof and before we got home we had roofers scheduled to give us quotes starting a few days after we got home.

 

I recommend having someone walk your house.  We left plumbing on so toilets could be flushed every three weeks and water could be run down the drain from each faucet.  If it got very cold there were a couple of faucets to drip.  If we didn't have a neighbor who could do that there are other options. In our area there are people who have businesses to check homes but we were fortunate to have good neighbors and we do the same for them.

 

We also had them run our car(s) but you can put something on the battery connecting it to an outlet to keep the battery charged.

 

Hope some of these items help.

 

Keith