Looking for advice for a royal cruise out of Shanghai on July 4

My wife and I are coming from Colorado, we just booked a Royal cruise out of Shanghai.

Our ports of call are:

Shanghai, China

Seoul (Incheon), South Korea

Fukuoka, Japan

Nagasaki, Japan

We will be on the Quantum Of The Seas.

How much time should we play on to arrive before the cruise? I've been looking and it seems the flights are up to 24 hours long....

When's the best time to book airfare? (Cruise has been paid for).

What are the best activities/shore excursions to do at each port?

Our last cruise, our honeymoon, was on Carnival. So we're both really excited.

Any other things to think about?

Book as much time as you can before your cruise. There is lots to see and do in Shanghai.

Also consider booking extra time in Japan, perhaps taking a train to Tokyo and flying home from there.

I would have booked my tickets months ago. Book them now.

You have several places to search for port information:

1. Look at the top of the Port of Call page for Asia for the blue bar. To the right of it look for Forum Tools and find the search feature. There will be many previous threads on these ports.

2. Go to Trip Advisor and do a search there and ask questions.

3. Look up cruiseportwiki dot com

4. See toms port guides (google is your friend!)

I notice that this Quantum of the Seas cruise begin and end in Shanghai.

Please be aware that the targeted passenger for this type of cruises are the Mainland Chinese citizen. The onboard facilities such as food, entertainments and language are geared towards this group of passenger.

Furthermore, most of the passenger will be of group tours and/or incentive tour group and many of them will/may be first time cruiser.

I am not saying there are badly behave in their own environment but it can be very alien to Western people not familiar with their way of life. The onboard experience is VERY different from western norm.

If you are aware of the reservation I mentioned above and wanted to experience it. Then go. otherwise think it over.

I am a Chinese myself from Singapore, I cruise regularly in Asia as well as other parts of the world.

If your intention is to see Asia with a cruise.

You can consider repositioning cruise, such as one from Singapore to Japan or China or Hong Kong. The ambience onboard is more suitable to western passenger.

Celebrity, Princess, Holland America and Royal Caribbean have this repositioning cruise regularly.

slogam gives you sound advice. Change to a cruise with fewer tour groups and a language and food you are more familiar with.

Mainland Chinese - and slogam only insinuates it - have rough behavior patterns created by decades of living through shortages (I think).

Shanghai is a great city with creative new architecture. Two days minimum!

There are so many interesting villages and cities to see outside of Shanghai as well. You could easily spend a week and still not see everything. Be aware of the squatty potties. A lot of ladies did not like them and we found in some places no western toilets.

Please, please, please take slogam's advice and really research and think about whether or not this is what you want to do.

We were on Mariner recently and it was absolutely NOT what we expected. Sailings out of Shanghai are definitely catered 100% to Chinese nationals, and they will outnumber (especially Americans) in record amounts. Out of 3400 passengers, 3000 were Chinese and 55+. "Unrefined" is the most polite word I can use. We literally had less than 25 Americans on board.

Here is my review. I get very bashed for my honesty, but this is precisely the reason that I wrote it - to inform others so they can make informed decisions on whether or not to cruise these itineraries.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2191719

As for flights, I believe the magic number now for international flights is 171 day, but that depends on the review you read. I'd say to start pricing, and you will see a big drop at some point. I just bought our tix for Asia at Christmas, and they were much cheaper than they were a few weeks ago (I check often, if not daily). Here is one of many articles on when to buy:

http://www.cheapair.com/blog/travel-tips/how-far-in-advance-should-you-book-an-international-flight/

We had a wonderful cruise from Beijing to Tokyo a couple months ago. Since we spent two nights there, we were able to tour for 3 days. We spent two days touring in Shanghai and on the middle day, we went out to Suzhou and Tongli Water town to get a different look at the area. I could have easily spent more time in Shanghai, but didn't have that option. We instead spent 4 days in Beijing before the cruise. You can see where we visited on our website. There is a link in my signature.

Definitely plan on spending extra time in Japan. What a wonderful country with such sweet people.