How do I learn more about my specific cruise

I've recently booked my first cruise and would like details. Tons of questions. Any suggestions for this newbie??

Welcome to Cruise Critic!

What ship are you going on? If we know that we can help you more. You said you have tons of questions but didn't ask any. Ask away!

Do join your roll call here on cruise critic and meet others who will be on the ship with you.

It will help if you let us know what it is you want to know about your ship or just about cruising. I'd be glad to help. My husband and I are cruise-a-holics!

There is a roll call section on Cruise Critic.

You go to the roll call section. Look for your cruise line. Then look for your cruise ship and your date of sailing and that is where you can find other members from cruise critic on your cruise and a great way to learn about the ship and places you will visit.

The ports of call board and the cruise line boards are great sources too.

Keith

I've recently booked my first cruise and would like details. Tons of questions. Any suggestions for this newbie??

Welcome to Cruise Critic. Go to your Meet and Greet site for your cruise..

Welcome to Cruise Critic! :)

Which ship & date is your cruise?

Once we know this, many of us will happily help you more.

LuLu

I've recently booked my first cruise and would like details. Tons of questions. Any suggestions for this newbie??

Don't know about your cruise line - HAL has a before you board section on the website that answers a lot of questions, so maybe start there for your cruise line. Then....

Before you jump into the cruise line specific board - read a LOT of threads about your cruise line, find out who is helpful and follow their threads. Find threads about your particular ship - even different itineraries because there will be a lot of helpful [and conflicting] information.

I learned a lot from reading the reviews of my ship/itinerary and the "live from" thread for my ship. Or I should say I'm learning a lot - still have 40 days to go! There is good basic info about what time to get to the ship, what the real dress code is, sometimes you can see recent past copies of menus and daily activities.

Also very helpful are the separate forums for departure cities and ports of call - a lot of good suggestions about what to do on port days there.

Hot topics are smoking, bringing alcohol on board, tipping and the dress code [there are others but those seem to be the biggies]

I think just about every cruise line has a FAQ section on their website. That'll be a great source of info. You can also find info about the specific ship and usually deck plans to look over (find where the main dining rooms are: we call them MDRs fro short).

Then write down any questions that occurs to you and go to the section of Cruise Critic for your cruise line. Go here and scroll down til you find the board: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/?src=nav

Next: check out the ports you're scheduled for. You have a few ways of doing this:

1) get a guidebook for the area. Often your local library has some. I will look through and see if there's some local sites I want to see. If there's a guide book that I especially like I'll try to buy a copy (Amazon if the one local book store doesn't have it) as I don't like to take library books on vacation.

2) google each port. Many will have an official website that's a good source of info, including pinpointing where the cruise ship dock is. There should be plenty of tourism websites too.

3) go on Cruise Critic and to the destinations board (Caribbean, Alaskan, etc.). You can check out the threads and/or ask questions. Also go on the board for the city you're sailing from (your embarkation port) and check out info on hotels you can stay at the night before (unless you live within driving distance, you should consider staying near the port the night before).

4) go back to your cruiseline's website. Many will have info about each port they sail to. I also like to look at what shore excursions they offer. Most of the time we don't do excursions at all, but sometimes I get ideas of interesting sites to see that are listed on the tour descriptions.

Every once in a while we'll book an excursion, usually through the cruiseline. Other people may research excursions to do through independent companies.