How have you handled time changes?

[Spot]

I'm curious to know how people handle time changes as they cruise.

For us in Texas, headed to Hawaii, our change will be 5 hours (back).

Two of those hours will be in heading to our port of embarkation in San Diego and then an additional 3 hours headed to Hawaii.

 

I'm just curious about the way different people handle this traveling issue.

[Karynanne]

Other than flying from 1 time zone to another...on the ship it is a gradual change. Usually 1 hr. ahead, or behind...whatever the case may be. The only time I felt a significant change, was on an Eastbound Transatlantic. Almost everyday was 1 hr. ahead change.

 

Karyn

[dmk]

The only time I felt a significant change, was on an Eastbound Transatlantic. Almost everyday was 1 hr. ahead change.

 

Karyn

 

Now you have to try a Westbound Transatlantic. It seems that each day we had to put our time 1 hour BACK. It made the cruise feel so much longer!:D

[Karynanne]

Now you have to try a Westbound Transatlantic. It seems that each day we had to put our time 1 hour BACK. It made the cruise feel so much longer!:D

 

 

We are...in Sept.! Can't wait.

 

Karyn

[signman]

The only thing I do is adjust my watch.

[raudacruise]

Agree that the Eastbound Transatlantic was kind of tiring. The fifth 23 hour day we sort of had pent up "ship lag" vs. jet lag.

 

Westbound sounds better as long as you go a couple days early to get over the real jet lag. We could live with 5 25 hour days.

 

If you go on a westbound cruise around the world do you get 24 25 hour days? ;).

[basso]

Studies have shown the body can readily adapt to one time zone per day. Cruising won't create a change of more than one time zone per day so that is a very good way way to go. Flying from Central Time Zone to Pacific Time Zone is only two hours time change so that shouldn't be a great problem. When it comes to flying a number of time zones, like ten from San Antonio to Beijing, flying west is better than flying east. At first you want to wake up very early because your body thinks it is much later in the day than it is in China (where you are physically). But it's not that hard to wake up a bit later each day. Going east you want to stay in bed, but it's later than your body feels it is; and you have to get up anyway. Then it's hard to wake up earlier every day. My advice is to try to go to sleep at the time of night you usually do in the time zone in which you are physically located. Wakening will start to come somewhat automatically. By the way, that worked better for me when I was young that now.

 

Bill

[JanineM]

We travel east to west across the continent fairly frequently. It's only a 3 hour time change, but it can take a day or so to adjust.

 

When we get on a plane, I always change my watch right away. I have always found that the airlines feed you according to the destination time zone (it may be lunch time in Orlando, but it's breakfast in Vancouver, so we get breakfast), and that seems to help with this small adjustment.

 

We normally cruise in the Caribbean and just leave our watch on ship's time. I'd do the same if we were cruising to Hawaii. Your body will have plenty of time to adjust to the time change.

 

DH travels to Asia and finds that to be a much more difficult transition. The poster to said one day per hour adjustment is pretty well dead-on, especially travelling east to west. But then, that's a 13 hour time difference, so it is MUCH more dramatic than most of us will experience.