Garment bags

[donnysmom]

We're sailing on the Explorer on 3/11 and, rather than pack our dressy clothes (dresses, tuxedo), I purchased lightweight garment bags. My question is, can we put our luggage tags on the garment bags and check them along with the rest of our luggage?

[Happy ks]

That depends on the garment bag. Would you check it onto an airplane? If the answer is yes, then it is probably sturdy enough to be tossed around in and out of luggage bins.

 

If they are garment covers (not built like a piece of ballistic luggage, rather more like thinner nylon),they may be ripped by handling. In that case, I would hand carry them. If you're flying, the garment bag has to be folded down to the regulation size of a carry on, folded and put into the overhead bin.

[kmjjdj99]

We were on Explorer in October and we have his and her garment bags and did check them. It was much easier than having to carry them around until 1:30, when you can get into your cabin.

 

Have a great time, she is a great ship!!:D

[cruisegirl1]

We placed the room tag on a standard suit bag – the thin nylon kind you get when purchasing a suit. ( not real luggage) We removed all the paper areas from the tag and affixed the entire strip to the suit bag. It arrived with NO PROBLEM. We did not put it through on a plane.

 

M

[awboater]

This has been quite an experiment for us.

 

We started out with a horizontal wheeled full sized garment bag, which was a pain when we had two more wheeled pieces of luggage and two backpacks.

 

In our quest to lighten the load, we tried using two Eagle Creek Garment Packing Sleeves for our formal wear. The idea was to pack our formal wear inside our main luggage and forget taking the garment bag.

 

They worked well enough, but are a bit narrow so that you have to fold the shoulders of my tux in, which ended up putting wrinkles in it. But hanging in the shower overnight (after taking steamy showers) got the wrinkles out.

 

For our next cruise, we have purchased a WallyBags light weight garment bag - the kind made of heavy-duty ballistic nylon that we plan on simply hand-carrying with us. This requires us to put just one item into the bag for each of us (my tux and wife's gown). Hopefully that will result in being light enough to hand carry.

 

Our normal carry-on consists of a combo backpack/wheeled luggage, and we have a commercial sewing machine that we made some straps so we could attach the garment bag handle to the trolly bail on the wheeled luggage. So after putting the stuff through the metal detector, I can affix the garment bag to the wheeled backpack and not have to lug it all around the ship until we get to our stateroom... at least that's the plan.

 

Any other wrinkle-prone items can go into the Packing Sleeves and into our main luggage as the sleeves are OK for dress shirts and pants (just not a tux jacket).

 

I keep thinking it would be better to not take this stuff, but my wife wants to dress up. I am thinking a nice Guayabera (Mexican Wedding shirt) would suffice for formal wear for me, and she can wear whatever she wants.

[cb at sea]

You can check the garment bag, but don't expect it to be "hung up"....they will toss it around until it gets to your cabin, and then it will be hung in the closet.