7 Things You Should Never Do After Booking a Cruise

This is a sponsored post for Holland America.

Booking a cruise is a lovely feeling. The hard bit is done, the holiday is in the diary and you can start thinking about sea views, cocktails and not having to cook for a week.

But booking the cruise is not quite the same as finishing the planning.

There are still a few things worth doing early, whether that means sorting the boring paperwork, checking what you’ve actually paid for or making sure you don’t arrive in port with absolutely no idea what there is to do.

1. Don’t Assume That Once You’re Booked, You’re Done

Once you’ve paid the deposit, it’s very tempting to close the browser tab and mentally fast-forward to embarkation day.

Unfortunately, there are still a few less exciting jobs worth doing first.

Travel insurance should be near the top of the list. Ideally, you want it in place as soon as you book because, depending on the policy, it can cover you for problems that happen long before you actually go away, including having to cancel the trip altogether.

It’s also worth checking your passport now rather than three days before departure, along with any visa or entry requirements for the countries you’ll be visiting. Make sure the names on your booking match your travel documents too, because correcting a mistake is much easier several months out than it is at the cruise terminal.

If you need flights, transfers or a hotel before the cruise, this is also the time to start thinking about those. And if you’ve booked well in advance, make a note of important dates such as your final payment deadline and when online check-in opens.

None of this is particularly exciting, but neither is discovering at 11pm the night before your flight that your passport expired last Tuesday.

2. Don’t Assume Everything Is Included

Cruises include a lot, but exactly how much varies enormously between cruise lines and fares.

Your accommodation and main meals will usually be covered, but drinks, WiFi, speciality restaurants, gratuities, fitness classes and other extras may or may not be. Shore excursions are normally extra too, and those costs can mount up surprisingly quickly if you don’t think about them until later.

So once you’ve booked, take a few minutes to work out what your fare actually includes and which extras you’re realistically likely to want.

Holland America Line is a good example of why it’s worth doing the sums rather than automatically choosing the cheapest-looking option. Its Have It All package bundles several popular extras together, including a drinks package, speciality dining, WiFi and shore excursion credit, so for some cruisers it can make more sense than paying for everything separately.

If you book early, you can sometimes get an upgraded version too, with perks such as a better drinks package and faster WiFi. Worth checking out!

Read more: Holland America Have It All Package: Is It Worth It?

That doesn’t mean a package is always the right choice. If you barely drink, quite enjoy being offline and aren’t bothered about speciality restaurants, paying as you go may suit you perfectly well.

The important thing is knowing before you sail, rather than discovering halfway through the cruise that the extras you want are quietly eating through your spending money.

3. Don’t Leave Your Shore Excursions Until the Last Minute

You don’t need to have every port day planned down to the minute, but I definitely wouldn’t wait until you’re onboard before researching what there is to do.

Popular excursions can sell out, particularly if they have limited capacity, and some destinations are much easier to explore independently than others. A little research beforehand will tell you whether you need an organised tour, can jump in a taxi, walk straight into town or simply head for the beach.

The Caribbean is a perfect example.

It’s easy to look at a Caribbean itinerary and think you’re getting a week of fairly similar sunny islands, but the ports can offer completely different experiences. One day might be all about snorkelling or a catamaran trip, while another could involve historic towns, waterfalls, rainforests, local food or simply finding a particularly beautiful beach and doing very little at all.

Holland America Line has a wide choice of Caribbean itineraries, so if you’re considering one, it’s worth looking closely at the individual ports rather than choosing purely by the number of nights or the ship. Two cruises of the same length can feel very different depending on where they stop.

You don’t necessarily need an excursion in every port either. Sometimes knowing that a great beach is ten minutes away by taxi is all the planning you need.

Check out this 8-night Caribbean cruise from £859pp!

4. Don’t Ignore How Long You Actually Have in Port

Seeing a destination listed on your itinerary does not automatically mean you have a full day to explore it.

Some ships arrive early and stay until evening. Others may leave in the middle of the afternoon, which makes a big difference if the place you want to visit is an hour or two away from the port.

Tender ports need a bit of extra thought too. If the ship can’t dock alongside and passengers have to travel ashore by smaller boats, getting on and off can take longer than you expect.

This matters especially if you’re organising your own day ashore. You need to allow enough time to get back comfortably before departure, because the ship is not going to wait while you sprint dramatically down the pier waving both arms.

Cruise line excursions usually give you more reassurance here because the ship knows where you are if the tour is delayed. If you’re exploring independently, give yourself a generous buffer rather than trying to squeeze every last minute out of the day.

5. Don’t Wait Until You’re Onboard to Think About Dining

You could quite happily board a cruise ship, eat in the main dining room and buffet all week and never think about anything else.

But if your ship has a restaurant you really want to try, it’s worth knowing about it before you sail.

Speciality restaurants can be very popular, especially on sea days and around the most obvious dinner times. Some cruise lines allow reservations well in advance, while others release availability closer to departure.

Have a look at what’s onboard, decide whether anything sounds unmissable and book accordingly.

I wouldn’t necessarily reserve every meal before you’ve even packed your suitcase, though. One of the nice things about cruising is being able to change your plans because you’ve met someone at the bar, stayed ashore longer than expected or realised you’re still ridiculously full from lunch.

Know what you want to try. You don’t need to create a spreadsheet for Tuesday’s pudding.

Check out this 7-Night Caribbean sailing from £754pp!

6. Don’t Forget to Research the Ship

People can spend hours investigating every tiny detail of their itinerary and almost no time looking at the ship they’ll actually be living on.

It’s worth fixing that before you go. Have a look at the entertainment, restaurants, pools, live music, spa, gym, kids’ facilities and any adults-only areas. Check whether there are unusual venues, classes or activities that you might otherwise miss.

On some cruise ships, it’s surprisingly easy to spend most of the cruise in the same few places simply because you don’t realise what else is there.

And while there’s something quite nice about discovering a hidden bar or quiet deck by accident, it’s considerably less satisfying discovering your ideal spot on the final night after spending the previous six evenings somewhere you only thought was OK.

Sea days make this even more important. If you’re going to spend several full days onboard, you want to know which parts of the ship are likely to suit you rather than waiting until halfway through the cruise to find them.

7. Don’t Try to Plan Every Minute

There is another danger once you start researching your cruise: going completely the other way.

You can end up with breakfast at 7.32am, an excursion at 8.15am, lunch at 12.47pm, trivia at 2pm and dinner reserved for precisely 6.30pm, leaving approximately six minutes in the entire week to stare at the sea.

You really don’t need to do that. Book the things you genuinely don’t want to miss, make sure you understand the important practical details and then leave some gaps.

You might find a port you love and want to stay ashore longer. You might decide you’d rather skip an activity and sit by the pool. You might make friends onboard and suddenly have completely different plans for dinner.

That flexibility is part of what makes cruising so enjoyable.

Here’s a 10-night Caribbean cruise from £1,209pp!

A Little Planning Goes a Long Way

The aim isn’t to turn your holiday into a project that needs its own colour-coded spreadsheet. It’s just to sort the things that are much easier to deal with before you sail, so that once you’re onboard you can actually relax.

And this is one of the things I like about the way Holland America Line cruises are put together. There’s plenty to research if you want to make the most of the trip, from choosing a Caribbean itinerary that suits the kind of ports you enjoy to deciding whether Have It All makes sense for the extras you’d probably buy anyway.

Do that bit of homework before you go, and you can spend far less time onboard wondering what you should have booked and far more time enjoying the cruise you already chose.

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