Category: Trip Planning & Advice

A tiny typo on your reservation can keep you off the ship. Not might. Can. Cruise lines are strict about this for a simple reason. The name on your booking has to match your travel document exactly. Celebrity puts it plainly. The name on your passport should match the name on your reservation. Royal Caribbean…

Every major cruise line bans surge protected power strips. Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Princess, MSC, Celebrity, and Holland America all pull them at embarkation security. If one is in your bag, it is coming out of your bag. The reason is fire. A surge protector has a little component inside that absorbs voltage spikes. That…

The main dining room on a cruise is included. The steakhouse down the hall is not. That upcharge is where most first timers get surprised. Cruise lines sell a specialty dining package. Buy a set number of meals up front and the per meal price drops below what you would pay walking in. The trade…

Your phone becomes a very expensive camera the moment the ship leaves port. No signal. No texts. And you still need to tell your teenager where to meet for dinner. Every major cruise line has a fix, and it lives inside the ship’s app. There is a chat feature that lets everyone in your group…

Every cruise has a safety drill you must finish before the ship leaves the dock. Skip it and the ship cannot legally sail. It is the one item on embarkation day that is not optional. The old version was a group event. You stood in a crowd with a life jacket while a crew member…

Every major cruise line will sell you a plane ticket. Norwegian, Carnival, Princess, Holland America, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and more all run their own air programs. Most people either ignore them completely or book them without reading a word. Both are mistakes. Here is the whole thing in one sentence. Cruise air comes in two…

Most cruise lines no longer mail you luggage tags. You print them at home from your booking. Nobody tells you this until you are staring at a PDF the night before. Here is how the system actually works. When you arrive at the terminal, you hand your big bags to the porters standing outside. Those…

Your onboard account is not billed the way you think. The ship does not charge you as you spend. It places holds on your card and settles the whole thing at the end. That difference matters more than it sounds. A hold is a temporary lock on your available money. The cash is not gone.…

Everybody plans the first day of a cruise. Almost nobody plans the last one. That is the morning that turns a great week into a stressful blur. Here is what happens if you do nothing. The night before you get off, you put your bags in the hallway. The crew collects them. You will not…

Cruise wifi got more expensive in 2026. Several major lines quietly raised their internet prices in late 2025 and early this year. Some did it without telling anyone first. Here is where things actually stand. On Carnival, plans now run roughly twenty dollars to twenty five dollars per person per day, and the four device…