How to Plan for Your First Cruise

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Last Updated on October 6, 2025 by Carolyn

Why a Cruise?

Cruising has become a popular way to vacation, and it’s not surprising. Cruises provide travelers with a wide array of affordable, all-inclusive options to enchanting destinations, all while offering entertainment and convenience that make the journey just as enjoyable as the destination itself.

Planning for your first cruise is daunting! If only it were just a matter of showing up and climbing on board. But alas, it’s not so. 

When planning for our first cruise this year, I thought it would be a snap. We already knew when and where we wanted to go, how complicated could it be? Then I started the process of selecting a cruise, and I was shocked at the multitude of options I had to choose from. The process was much more involved than I had bargained for.

Lots of Questions

Many, many questions will arise as you plan for your first cruise vacation.

You might wonder:

Are all meals included?

What drinks are included? 

What will I have to pay for on top of my cruise fare?

Are excursions extra or included?

How many people do the cabins accommodate? 

What on-board entertainment is there?

Should I book shore excursions through the cruise line?

Will I have Wi-fi access?

 In this post, I share the process I used to plan for my first cruise and the information I gained along the way.

Selecting Your Cruise Destination

The first thing you’ll need to decide is where you will cruise to. Sounds simple enough, but there are so many destinations and combinations that this task is unbelievably daunting!

If you know where you’d like to cruise to you are one step ahead of the game. But if you don’t have a destination in mind, you have your work cut out for you.

A good place to start is to browse a site like TripAdvisor.com to read about the various cruise lines and what cruise destinations they go to. A few destinations may pique your interest; jot them down and keep on reading. Once you’ve made a short list you can start narrowing the destinations down by:

• Learning about the climate, culture, and wildlife of the destinations. If you like hot weather and palm trees, an Alaska cruise is probably not your best pick. 
• Price: For most of us, price is an important factor. The National Geographic Expeditions will appeal to wildlife enthusiasts, but they are expensive and not affordable for everyone.
• Length: If you have never cruised, I wouldn’t recommend a cruise of more than a week or 10 days for your first foray into cruising. If you book a 3-week cruise and find that you get seasick on the 1st day, it’s sure to be less than an ideal vacation experience. 
• Dates: Many cruises only voyage at certain times of the year. If you’re not flexible with your cruising dates, no matter how appealing these cruises sound, you’d better strike them off your current list, as they won’t be changing their dates to accommodate you.

Hopefully, after applying the criteria above, you will narrow your destination options down considerably.

Choosing a Cruise Line and Route

Now that you’ve narrowed your choice of destinations down, there are still a lot of variables to consider before you book your cruise.  You’ll need to decide which ports of call interest you most and which cruise lines port there.

To find out more about different ports, I suggest reviewing some cruise itineraries and noting what ports they stop at. Most cruise port cities have a visitors’ website. This is a good place to review what activities and things of interest are in that city. Tripadvisor.com is also very useful for researching activities and places of interest within the port towns.

When I was planning for our Alaska cruise, cruising Glacier Bay National Park was a must for me. This narrowed down our cruise line selection tremendously as there are only a few cruise lines with permits to sail Glacier Bay National Park.

Take note of how much time is spent at sea and how much time is in port. 

Embarkation and Debarkation Port

Many but not all cruises are round-trip.

When choosing a cruise take into consideration time, cost, and ease of access to the embarkation and debarkation ports.

It’s a good idea to plan to arrive at the embarkation port the day before your cruise and allow plenty of time at the debarkation port as well.

What Time of Year to Cruise

Avoiding Crowds

The timing of your cruise will greatly impact your cruise experience.  When the weather turns cold and frosty, many of us start dreaming of sailing to warm destinations therefore, cruises to temperate destinations tend to be more expensive and more crowded from December to April. Christmas week and Spring Break are particularly busy weeks.

If you can be flexible, you’ll find that the weeks following holidays tend to be more reasonably priced and less crowded.

Nature and Wildlife

 If one of your goals in cruising is to see the Aurora Borealis ( Northern Lights), you’ll want to book your cruise when your chances of viewing this phenomenon are best.

We booked our Alaska cruise in August, as one of our top interests was to see bears fishing for salmon. In Southern Alaska, the salmon run starts at the end of July and continues through August. We were thrilled to see bears fishing at two different ports, Juneau and Ketchikan.

Now, if seeing the Aurora Borealis was high on our list, we would have been sorely disappointed. I don’t think we had a single starry night while on board. We knew it was the rainy season and thus had little expectation of viewing this spectacle.

So if nature and wildlife are your thing, be sure to know when are the best times of the year to view what you want to see.

On Board Activities

Many people choose specific cruise lines for their on-board activities. If you’re traveling with kids, they’ll delight in meeting Disney characters and Disney-themed entertainment on a Disney cruise.

Foodies will enjoy the S.A.L.T. (sea and land taste) luxury dining experiences offered by Silversea Cruises.  On these cruises, the guests can connect with the destinations they visit through food and drink.

Royal Caribbean is rumored to have the best overall entertainment. 

If you are a fitness fanatic, look into what fitness facilities and activities each of your prospective cruise lines offer.  You’ll find that some fitness classes are included, while others have an extra fee.

Which Kind of Room to Select

You’ll find you .have several types of rooms to choose from: starting with the base-priced stateroom, rooms with a view, rooms with a balcony, and finally luxurious suites.  

Staterooms are fine, especially if you have someone who might get seasick in your party.  There were three of us sharing a stateroom on our trip to Alaska, and we didn’t find it ridiculously small.  There was plenty of storage space for all of our belongings, even in the bathroom. I don’t think I’d pay extra for a room with a view, but a balcony that afforded a covered private viewing space where one could eat breakfast in private would be a nice benefit.

How Far in Advance to Book

There isn’t really a “best time” to book your cruise. You can book it over a year in advance, or you can book it just a few weeks out.  Some cruises do sell out so if you’re set on a certain cruise line and itinerary, I’d recommend watching the price and being on the lookout for special offers. If you see an appealing offer, book it.

Most cruise ships are fairly flexible on crediting your deposit to a future cruise should you have to cancel or change itinerary, but be sure to read the details for your selected cruise. A few weeks before sailing, most deposits become non-refundable.

Budget 

Cruise extras

You’ll find when comparing cruises that you are often comparing apples to oranges – no two cruises offer the same basic packages, and the add-on packages are all bundled differently.

Drink

While most cruises will have food included, drinks are often extra (even non-alcoholic drinks). You will pay about $4-5.00 for sodas with gratuity, and alcohol normally starts at about $7-9 for beer and $10-15 for cocktails plus gratuities.

Each cruise line will offer drink packages where you pay an upfront fee and all your drinks will be included. On my Holland America cruise, I was surprised that if one of the room’s occupants wanted a drink package, then all the occupants had to purchase it. I guess they didn’t want us smuggling drinks to our roommates

Wifi

Wifi access is normally an extra charge on cruises, ranging from $15-35.00 per day. WIFI is often included in upgrade packages. A little tip for Verizon users: Verizon offers a cruise package for $20.00 a day, not cheap, but may be cheaper than your cruise pricing. 

Most major cruise lines have proprietary apps that can be used on board to communicate with members of your travel party, create itineraries, review menus, and receive notifications of upcoming activities on your itinerary.

Shore Excursions

Most cruises don’t include excursions in their base fare. The cost of excursions can easily add up to be more than the cost of the trip.

Gratuities 

A daily gratuity ranging from $16-25 will likely be automatically added to your basic fare. Some add-on packages include the gratuity.

Packages

Every cruise will offer upgrade packages called “have-it-all, plus or premier”. These packages will include a variety of perks such as drinks, special dining, wifi, and credits for shore excursions.

It’s a matter of math to determine if purchasing a drink or “have-it-all” package will save you money or not. For our group of three, it did not as we are not soda drinkers, nor did we anticipate much alcohol consumption.

On Board Credit

Before finalizing your booking, it’s wise to look into onboard credits. When my family booked, we were able to secure 2 $50.00 credits as 2 of us were AARP members and a $100 teachers’ credit as my Mom is a retired teacher. We were only able to use one AARP credit per booking, but we now have that $50.00 to use on a future cruise.

We were able to use our onboard credits to offset the gratuities due at the end of the trip.

It’s important to note: For our cruise line, the on-board credits had to be applied for at or before booking. And then we had to transfer the credits to the booking so we could use them.

Shore Excursions

I thought all the hard work was done when I made my choice and booked our cruise. Again, I was wrong. I couldn’t believe how much effort I had to put in to get our 3 port days planned!

I researched on Tripadvisor.com, as well as each town’s visitor website, and above all read personal reviews left on Reddit and Facebook by former cruisers.

The easiest but most costly method is to book shore excursions through the cruise ship. These excursions have been thoroughly vetted and will be sure to get you back to your ship before “all aboard” time.

For better deals, book directly with tour providers, but make sure you have transportation and tour times booked so that you’re not in a panic to deboard or reboard.

For me, shore excursions were the best part of the trip do make sure you spend some time finding things you and your travel party will enjoy doing.  

Final Thoughts

I recommend starting your planning for your first cruise early so you’re not overwhelmed with making so many choices at the last minute. When I was planning our trip, I was worried about the limited rental cars at our port destination getting booked up as well as some of the special excursions like the White Pass Scenic Railway being sold out. Happily, even though I was finalizing bookings 3 weeks before the trip, I was able to book our excursions of choice.

Another consideration is if you need a hotel at your departure or arrival destination, book it well in advance. Cruise ports have lots of travelers passing through, and the hotels do book up.

I’ll share our experience sailing to Alaska on Holland America’s Zaandam in an upcoming post.

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