Anyone gone on a Cruise?

Veebyes wrote:
As you can see different cruise lines are like different hotel chains. Many of those lines are owned by one company, Carnival.

One thing that is important are the shore excursions. Do your research long before you get anywhere near a ship. The ships concierge will hard sell whatever they have an association with, mainly because typically a ship gets at least 35% commission on the excursion. Do your own research & you will find excursions not offered by the ship. Often you can find better excursions same money or ship offered trips for less money.

Yes, you can find less expensive shore excursions without booking through the cruise line, BUT if you get back late, you may find an empty slip at the dock! RCI will work with the excursion to get you back to the ship before departing.

Something else that many don't include in planing, as I see your are in Illinois plan to arrive at the cruise port location at least one day before your departure. This will protect you from delayed flights. I can't tell you the number of times flying to South Florida, and have a flight delay, and people going crazy because they planed to arrive in the departure city 6 to 8 hours before denature, only to have a major flight delay. Keeping mind cruising outside hurricane season, is late fall winter and early spring, many land storms affect flights.