We recently chose and booked our first cruise. Our first decision was general region, and that was based on interest, cost/ease of getting there etc. Since we are from Barbados (and still live there), we weren't interested in the other islands close to us because we have been to many of them already. We considered Alaska, and might do it one day, but it was pretty far for us to go to try out cruising. We weren't looking at Europe or anywhere that far at this time. So we were left with Western Caribbean/Mexico. Florida ports are easiest for us to fly to, so we decided to look at all cruises that went from a Florida port over to the Western Caribbean region, with at least one Mexican or Central American port. Then we looked at spring dates. We know how unpredictable travel can be in the Hurricane Season, so we ruled that out (at least for our first time cruise), and winter and summer seasons are generally busier and more expensive. Based on all these parameters we then did some searches on Cruise Critic, Expedia etc. to check what cruises qualified and the approximate cost of each (I had a spreadsheet lol). The most cost effective cruises were the older Carnival ships, and I was going to choose one of them, but then this is where the ship choice took over - my husband thought we should splash out for our first cruise and choose an amazing ship with lots to do on sea days. The Carnival Mardi Gras ended up ticking all our boxes at a price we could manage. It took a fair amount of time and research to arrive at that choice. If we decide to cruise again the decision will likely start with region again (probably Alaska) because I'm not sure we'd want to do Caribbean ports again for obvious reasons. I don't see us falling in love with cruising and wanting only cruises from now on, regardless of where they go - we both still work full time and have a bunch of land based vacations still on our list. There's only so much vacation time (and money)!