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What do you do prior to a cruise?


lisa431965
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I have trouble staying off cruisecritic & tripadvisor planning and over planning :) And just reading about cruising!

 

 

Hotel, flight, transport bookings then I spend time researching / booking excursions (some through Carnival, some private).

 

By the way, love your screen name. Frank Burns was a great character on MASH!

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I have trouble staying off cruisecritic & tripadvisor planning and over planning :) And just reading about cruising!

 

This is my everyday life. I live for travel planning. If travel agent wasn't a nearly obsolete career, I'd be doing it.

 

So now I just do it for me, and brag about all the great deals I find by spending time doing research. It all works out in the end.

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I spent about 4 hours last night on Carnival's site and on Expedia trying to figure out how we could do another cruise in the next 16 months as I start a full time program at school in January that runs consecutively with only a few one week breaks. I think we will be able to squeeze in a 4 day to Key West/Cozumel at the end of April. Yay!!!

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Line up clothes for packing, get docs in order, read CC and bug my traveling companions about what I've learned, and dieted to lose enough weight to afford WCMC for dessert!

 

Oh yeah I also bone up on my Trivia so I can win a few more ships on a stick! I play name that tune with the radio!

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Start making a packing list, type up an itinerary, start setting aside clothes/items for cruise (especially as I start putting summer clothes away), put together a vacation playlist, make sure my iPad is stocked with a couple movies for our daughter on the plane, and get a pedicure, run to the dollar store and find a few small toys for DD to play with. Then the night before we leave we usually order in and finish with last minute packing. I also try to make sure the house is nice and clean before we leave, nothing more depressing than coming back from vacation to a messy house. Then of course there's all the obsessive reading of the boards here. Wow that's a long list!

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I usually do longer cruises. I put together cruise wardrobe a month out, stash on hangers back of closet. Get out travel books on area. 2 weeks prior will get out clothes, go thru, take out around 30%, especially shoes.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I obsess obsess obsess - in a good way! Once we decide on the cruise, what to do in the ports of call gets my full attention - deciding what to see in each port and whether to do it fully on our own, or book a private tour or go with one of the ship's excursions. I look at reviews on CC along with Trip Advisor, Fodor's and Frommer's - for restaurants I look at Zagat's and Michelin. Trip Advisor, though, I have to say is probably my primary source for trusted information - I have my own personal algorithm for judging the veracity of each review!

 

Arranging transfers to and from the airport to the hotel to the port, etc etc, is another big to-do item on my list, along with researching and booking hotels on either end, if need be. My husband always takes care of the airline details.

 

Throughout the entire process of planning, we keep a personal itinerary - what ultimately becomes a huge WORD document - replete with maps, details about each port specific to our needs, along with our own personal touring information, such as addresses, the phone numbers of absolutely every single place we are planning to see and businesses with which we have contracted. We include information about the rates of exchange in each country. When we went to Capri, we even included the times for high and low tide as seeing the Blue Grotto hinges on the tide - we could only go during low tide, so we planned our day accordingly. This document becomes our BIBLE, our SURVIVAL GUIDE, for that cruise. We print a copy for each family member that we are with on that particular cruise (a copy for each of our adult children). I also send a copy to my mother, so that she can follow along, day by day, from her retirement home - she then vicariously, is traveling with us, knowing exactly where we are and what we are planning on seeing, day by day, she loves it! We print our mega-itinerary single sided, and then the blank sides become my travel journal where I take extensive notes throughout the trip. This helps me then be able to write reviews when we get home - plus, if I don't write it down, the way my memory is, if I didn't write it down (or take a photo of it!) it never happened!:rolleyes:

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  • 1 month later...

Here are a few things that we do to make coming home from vacation a lot easier.

 

1) I put the amount of money that we will need for the airport parking, in a sealed envelope in the locked glove-box of the car. We then don't have to worry about exact change to pay for our stay. Our airport has a cash line that runs pretty quick but the credit-card line is always backed up forever, so cash-ready to go, it is. I also put our parking lot# and row# in my cell phone. That way, after a week or so away, We will know what shuttle stop to get off at.

 

2) Starting a few weeks before vacation, I make a little extra on my dinners and then freeze some individual servings. This makes it easy for the first few days home. I also freeze a loaf of bread. By doing this, all we have to do is pop in the convenience store for fresh Milk and eggs. The grocery run can wait a few days.

 

3) The day before our vacation, I change the sheets on the bed. It is always nice to come home to a clean bed and not to have to worry about changing them again for a few days. I also do a good house cleaning before I leave as well.

 

4) I pre-buy gift cards and Thank-you cards for the neighbor-couple that are also my cat sitters. They always refuse any $ but I know that they love to eat at Cracker Barrel so I buy them a few gift cards so they can enjoy a few meals. I also pick them up a small something from one of our port stops.

 

5) I leave a take-out menu to our favorite Chinese restaurant in the car along with two $20 bills. It has become kind of a tradition to call in the order when we are a few miles away and then have Chinese take-out upon first returning home.

 

6) We dedicate one suitcase to our dirty laundry. We bring along a draw-string garbage bag and then just tuck the bag in the suitcase. When I get home, it is easy to empty it and sort out the colors from the whites and do a few quick loads of clothes.

 

7) Prior to leaving for the trip, I always make a list to stop the newspaper, hold the mail, notify my AmX card that I will be out of the country and to note which ports. Call my cell phone carrier and have them put on a temp. Global plan. Free for Verizon customers in good credit standing and leave the phone # of our vet with our cat sitter and then call the vet and tell them that my pet sitter has permission to bring in my cat(s), if necessary, and to bill my credit card for any treatment.

 

 

That about sums it up. I hate coming home to dissary so I really do try to do what I can in advance so I don't have any uneeded stress upon returning home.

 

 

:) :)

 

 

 

 

.

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We have a group of 8 women (mom's in need of vacations)!! We cruise with a huge group called "Hair Show at Sea" It's a great CE program for hair dressers!!! Only 3 of us are hair dressers!!! We book almost 9 months in advance!! I read CC almost everyday and get great ideas for our excersions. I'm a travel agent by heart!! We have hot pink T-shirts we've worn every year this year will be our 4th. The front of shirt "What happens with the girlfriends, stays with the girlfriends" the back "Cruzin with the Girls" 2010, 2011, 2012 and finally 2013 (February 10th). Weeks before we book our flights, book our hotel for the Saturday night, we make special luggage tags for each girl. The weekend of the cruise we fly in to Galveston, shop for our liquor at "Specs" this liquor store is huge and we're like kids in a candy shop!!! We get all our liquor in it's appropriate containers and head out for our pre cruise dinner!!! This year we're hitting the Pleasure Pier and eating at Bubba Gumps!! When we get on the ship the first stop is the Atrium Bar where we meet up with great friends we've met in the past few years that also cruise for the Hair Show. We have a blast and make great memories!!!:D

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snip... we make special luggage tags for each girl. snip..... We have a blast and make great memories!!!:D

 

What sort of special luggage tags do you make? would love to see some pix if you have any

 

Sandy in Spain

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

:) Just booked bermuda/July and realized we havent been on a cruise in 6 years. Wife and I alawys used cruise as a way to diet and shape-up. I used to be able to pack in 1 day haveing nice clothes ready to go. Living in the north those spring cruises would get us in shape for summer......well 6 years have past and I havent had that pre-cruise diet & excersize ritual:( Life got alittle buisy and now my nice clothes all packet away DON'T FIT:eek: I've got till July! I do miss the pre-cruise winter work-out ritual!:D

Jim

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