I am a big time cruiser and it is definitely my favorite way to travel. My wife and I book all our trips through mega discount websites such as vacationstogo.com and travelzoo.com and our rule of thumb is to get an inside cabin with no view and target $100/person/day for the cruise. In other words, we only book the one week cruise if it is $700/person or less. This upcoming year will be my 12th cruise. I have done Princess, Holland America, Celebrity, and Norwegian ships multiple times on each line. Each is upper middle class (4 and 5 star ships) with only Norwegian having ‘free style cruising’ (i.e. no formal nights). We have done the Eastern and Western Mediterranean, Baltic Region, Eastern Canada and the St. Lawrence, Mexico, the entire Caribbean, Central America, and Alaska to date. If you want dirt on any particular cruise, cruiseline, or port, I highly recommend checking it out on cruisecritic.com
We need very little room and only use the cabin for sleep and sex. Every other moment we are on the various decks, so why pay for an expensive cabin? Food is excellent, and they have healthy options, as well as a gym and plenty of other exercise options. As others have stated, this is a great way to see lots of locations without the headache of packing and unpacking. While this sucks for something like Spain, Turkey, Morocco, Germany, Russia, and other countries with may more than a day’s worth of stuff to see, it is PERFECT for places like Alaska and the Caribbean. Why? Because most of the cities in Alaska and islands in the Caribbean don’t offer much in the way of activities, so each individual town town/island really only has one day’s worth of activities anyway. Oh sure, you could do a different hike every day in say Juneau, but really? Why not do one in a different city each day? TV is limited to pre-programmed stuff, but increasingly, the ships have DVD players in the rooms and video rentals in the library with very large collections. With e-mail and phone calls, you can do them from the ship, but connectivity is slow and expensive. We did all our calls and e-mails from ports. Internet cafes are everywhere, even in 3rd world countries, and I always manage to find an open wireless network anyway. Another added bonus of the ship is that it serves as a ‘home base’ for your travels. You always leave your passport and valuable onboard safely and just need your cruise ID card to get back on, even in foreign countries. Even if you get pick pocketed and lose everything (which I have seen happen in multiple stops), the cruise has excellent support and will still get you back on and help you. That’s particularly useful in countries like Italy and Columbia which are notorious for this crap.
As far as the bad things go, you will only get a small taste of a given port, drinks are expensive, and some of the tours are a rip off. The first won’t affect you in Alaska, but if you are a heavy drinker, my best advice is to ‘buy in advance’. They will have prepaid limited cocktail, limited wine, and unlimited soda cards they will offer you the first day of the cruise for an outrageous price, but they are well worth it versus buying them individually. Only water, ice tea, hot tea and coffee, and juice (in the mornings) are free. I should also add that you cannot ‘sneak on’ liquor in the ports, which many people try to do as they will x-ray your bags when you return and confiscate any liquor until the last day when they will give it back to you. The only way around this I have seen is if you bring a water bottle back with you that is filled with liquid, they let you keep that. Is it water, vodka, or tequila you have in there? Only you know the answer to that…Almost every port on the cruise will offer the same tours for 50% of the price (or even less) at the dock that the cruise ship offers onboard. A classic Alaska ripoff is in Juneau where they will charge you upwards of $50 to go on a ‘tour’ that takes you to the Mendenhall Glacier. Meanwhile, if you step off the cruise ship, there will be buses leaving every 15 minutes for the glacier everywhere you look that will cost you $10 or less. The only exception I have seen to this rule is for trips where there is a considerable distance between the ship and the site. For example, if you ever take a cruise that stops in Egypt, it will stop in Alexandria and it will be a 3 hour bus ride each way to Cairo to see the pyramids. I would not recommend trying to do that one on your own. Likewise, if you want to see the Alhambra in Southern Spain, that requires advanced reservations that must be made by the ship. Also, if you ever go anywhere where you want to dive, that will always be substantially cheaper, and arguably better to do through a local dive shop. This is especially the case if you ever go to Bermuda or the Caribbean. Even in truly awful countries like St. Lucia, I have found the diving equipment rentals and shops to be top notch.
