4spring9

How much cash do we really need to bring? Just curious since we are pretty strapped right now and although we have paid for our cruise and have our S&S accounts set up we are wondering how much spending$ we'll need to bring. Family of 4 - dont' gamble, don't do sodas and only minimal drinks (we'll probably buy the drinks card) we've already paid our onboard gratuities pre-paid.

 

I am thinking cab rides on excursions - tips for bag porters - tips for other people that we don't realize they require a tip until they are standing there with their hand out and we don't have anything to give them.

 

If anybody could give me a ballpark figure on what they have spent on tips, cabs, or anything else that was an incidental unthought of expense... that would be most helpful.

 

Thanks a lot!

We don't tend to spend that much while on a cruise either. And we still have a great time. Just returned from a 7 night cruise to Nassau, St. Thomas, San Juan & Grand Turk. We are a family of four. Not including the cruise/taxes/fees & insurance or the getting to & from the ship (travel, hotels, parking), it cost us less than $600 for the week:

Gratuities: $280 (4 x $10 x 7 days).

$20 (room steward) - had open seating so never had the same table wait staff.

Nassau $15 (we did our own walking tour of Nassau - see Frommer's website) & bought 2 baseball caps as souvenirs.

St. Thomas: $10 souvenirs (4 t-shirts for $10)

$172 (catamaran/snorkel excursion w/r. punch afterwards)

San Juan: $5 admission for adults into Fort Cristobel & El Morro

free trolley to both

$80 in souvenirs

Grand Turk: $0 - after the rum punch from St. Thomas, I had no desire to drink any more. the beach area is beautiful & fun for the day. If you wanted to snorkel, you could rent equipment for about $15/person.

Didn't buy a soda card - brought our own 12 pack & didn't drink all of that. Didn't buy drinks on the ship (brought two bottles of wine on with us - Carnival lets you do a bottle per adult). We attended the farewell party & past guest parties Carnival offers (but didn't drink that much). Didn't play bingo. Didn't gamble. Told the kids from the get go that if they wanted to bring their own money then fine but that I wasn't going to give them $ for the arcade.

I don't consider myself cheap. I just don't care about a lot of the stuff others might find appealing. Now if I had seen another excursion that I really wanted to take, I would have. Some of it just depends on where your ports of call are.

Hope this helps.

Just back from GT (& cruise) Sunday. As you come off the ship, you'd go to your right. don't walk under the dock though as security doesn't like it.

Its a fun area to walk around & there are a bunch of shells, most broken to some degree. Wear beach shoes or risk cutting your feet as there are also a lot of rocks.

My son brought one shell back with him - in our suitcase - wrapped in a towel. I debated about letting him bring it back for some of the reasons TubaSteve suggested. It looked like there were a million of these shells getting broken up on the rocks with more arriving I'm sure daily/weekly. So I decided to let him bring it back. My thought is that he will cherish it, it will remind him of far off places, & in particular of that one family vacation. If the shells weren't getting broken on the rocks, I might have felt different about it.

Beautiful picture Bishop35 - it started raining while we were there & I didn't want to get my camera wet. Oh what a beautiful place!