Getting Ready to Sail: A Quick Course to Demystify the Basics

Whether you’re planning your first cruise or your 15th, here are some tips to ease your trip.

Getting ready to go: Pack lightly, and when in doubt, leave it out. All of today’s cruise ships have laundry service--some even provide on-board laundermats--and most offer dry cleaning as well. Other passengers don’t usually notice if you wear the same outfit several times. Although a cruise line doesn’t care how much luggage you carry aboard, the airline that gets you there can be sticky about overweight luggage. Also, space in cabin closets and drawers may be limited on smaller ships or in lower-category accommodations.

Anticipate lost or delayed luggage if you fly to the port. Only a small percentage of baggage actually gets misplaced or fails to make it to the ship by sailing time, but if you’re the unlucky one, you can save yourself some grief by packing a couple of emergency outfits in your carry-on baggage. If you’re heading from a cold climate to the Caribbean, for instance, stash a pair of shorts or a bathing suit and sandals in your carry-on.

Don’t succumb to shopping pressures to buy a “cruise wardrobe.” There is no such thing. If you walk around a ship wearing an admiral’s cap, navy blazers with anchors on them and white slacks, you’ll be taken for a member of the cruise staff. Everything you need for a cruise is probably already in your closet. If you feel the need to rent a tuxedo rather than take a dark suit for formal nights, have your travel agent check to see if the ship you’re boarding provides a rental service.

Arriving at the pier: You’ll be ushered into a large hall where a lot of people are standing in line or milling about. There will be counters with letters of the alphabet (or sometimes deck or cabin numbers for the ship). Queue up in the correct row, making sure that you have filled in all the necessary forms first. You will turn in your tickets, passports and the forms, offer a credit card to imprint for on-board charges and receive a boarding card and perhaps a cabin key. (Sometimes the key is waiting in your cabin on board.) You will then proceed to the security point and go through metal detectors.

Then you will follow a line of people carrying their hand baggage along an interminable walkway, perhaps up an escalator or some steps, until you reach a point where a strip of tape has been stuck across the floor and a person with a camera will ask you to stop by a life preserver and smile. Try to look as cheerful as you can, because this photograph will be put up on display the next day for everyone on the ship to see.

When you cross the threshold from the gangway into the ship, you will simultaneously be greeted with a smile, handed some sheets of paper that you don’t have anywhere to put, told to watch your step and watch your head, and have a white-gloved steward try to wrestle your hand luggage off your shoulder while asking you your cabin number. He’ll lead you to your cabin, where you may or may not be greeted by your cabin attendant, who introduces himself or herself politely and explains how to turn on the TV and flush the toilet.

On board: As soon as possible after boarding, do the following five things in sequence: On entering your cabin, look at the shipboard program to see what time your obligatory lifeboat drill is scheduled and what time the welcome-aboard buffet lunch service shuts down.

Next, if you’re on a ship with assigned dining room seating and your embarkation papers don’t designate your table and seating time, check the dresser in your cabin. If you still don’t find a table assignment, go directly to the mai^tre d’ho^tel (the program will tell you where to find him) and get in line.

Then go to the spa or beauty shop in person to book appointments for styling, manicures, pedicures, facials, massages and other services for the entire cruise. The best times go quickly. The busiest are formal nights and days at sea; lightest are daytimes in port.

From there, walk to the ship’s library and browse through the books and videos (they will probably be in locked glass cases), making a mental note of what you want to check out first. Then check the shipboard program so you can be there when the library opens for its first checkouts.

Disembarking at the end of the cruise: Cruise lines usually request that you put your checked baggage in the corridor before you retire for the night. When packing, especially if you do it just before bed, be certain you put aside the clothes you plan to wear for the trip home before setting your bags outside the door; some passengers have been forced to disembark in their pajamas. Then take a good long look at your bags so you’ll recognize them on the pier.

Don’t try to be the first person off the ship unless you have an early flight home (in which case you’ll be assigned to the first disembarkation). Some passengers become anxious and try to get off before their designated time, only to spend the next hour or so standing around in a terminal waiting to get to their luggage or for transportation to the airport.

Make sure you have all your hand baggage and checked luggage with you before you leave the customs area; you will not be permitted to reenter. If something is missing, go to one of the cruise line employees in the baggage area and describe the missing piece. Sometimes a passenger picks up someone else’s bag by mistake and may not discover the mistake until arriving at the airport. If a similar piece of baggage is still in the shed when everything else is claimed, an employee holding the master checklist of passengers and flight numbers can usually reconcile passenger and bag before they leave the port city.