Carnival Cruise to Bahamas / Turks and Caicos (June 2024) – Day 8

Home Safe
We awoke the next morning as the ship made its way into Baltimore Harbor, offering another look at the destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge, and closing in on our departure pier. The dining area was a mob scene, and we settled on eating whatever we could get from the continental station since it was long lines for everything else.
Passengers were assigned specific waiting areas to congregate at as they prep the ship and customs area for disembarking, and ours was one of the bars on the lower decks. Everyone there were either snacking on whatever they purloined from the dining area or downing bottles of water as we waited for our group to be called. Fortunately, we paid a little extra for early departure (WORTH EVERY PENNY), so we didn’t wait too long before walking off the boat and snaking our way through customs (the rum we bought was dropped off at the stateroom before we woke up).

Lessons Learned
This being our first cruise, there was a definite learning curve and some take aways to keep in mind for future trips…

Avoid Over Packing: Michelle likes to tease that I pack like a woman, bringing clothes for any number of situations I think I might get into while traveling. Cruising doesn’t come with that problem. Unless you’re enjoying the ship’s nightlife, chances are you’ll spend most of your time in a swimsuit or casual clothes, especially once you hit the tropics and don’t want to sweat to death. Keeping a sweatshirt or sweater for whenever you get chilled inside happens, but you’re packing for mostly tropical weather. Our deck included a launderette that we used toward the end of the trip to freshen up clothes and minimize chores once home, so that meant not needing a different outfit for every day. And besides water shoes for the beaches, a good pair of sneakers and sandals are about all you need onboard (though if I had a dime for every guest I saw walking barefoot…). Of course, this is from a practical guy’s point of view, so your personal preferences may vary.

Water is Your Best Friend: Whether healthy as an ox, seasick, hung over, or due to a bad reaction to whatever you ate the day before, water is uber important. Between the tropical heat and humidity and/or near constantly moving around, we made it a habit of always toting around a water bottle (which are allowed as long as they’re empty when you board) and filling up at the always-open dining area, when needed. I saw more than a few people looking under the weather from drinking heavily in hot and humid weather without hydrating, and they really didn’t look pretty.

Watch Your Spending: Like most cruise companies, Carnival offers guests to set up and pay for some things ahead of time. Not only can you square away wifi packages, but excursions and Cruise Cash and drinking packages. Carnival sets a $500 dollar limit on Cruise Cash per person, which I went ahead and did, assuming that we’d buy stuff or treat ourselves to more than a few extras. But since you’re using your cruise card for any purchase and not your debit or credit card, it’s DECEPTIVELY EASY to lose track of how many times you’re charged for anything. Come time to disembark, you might find settling the bill to be a bit of an unpleasant surprise if you aren’t paying attention to your spending habits.

Avoid Over Packing: Michelle likes to tease that I pack like a woman, bringing clothes for any number of situations I think I might get into while traveling. Cruising doesn’t come with that problem. Unless you’re enjoying the ship’s nightlife, chances are you’ll spend most of your time in a swimsuit or casual clothes, especially once you hit the tropics and don’t want to sweat to death. Keeping a sweatshirt or sweater for whenever you get chilled inside happens, but you’re packing for mostly tropical weather. Our deck included a launderette that we used toward the end of the trip to freshen up clothes and minimize chores once home, so that meant not needing a different outfit for every day. And besides water shoes for the beaches, a good pair of sneakers and sandals are about all you need onboard (though if I had a dime for every guest I saw walking barefoot…). Of course, this is from a practical guy’s point of view, so your personal preferences may vary.

Shore Excursions: While planning our trip, we toyed with trying a few excursions, but the reviews for them were very mixed on the Carnival website. Most of the complaints were from the “clearly they’ve never been outside of the U.S.” types, but others included enough similar complaints that we opted for just getting some beach time. Talking to some of the guests we saw going on excursions, many said they felt very rushed given the short amount of time on shore. Also, in this day and age of Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, watch out for the would-be content creators taking selfies and videos. There were a handful of times where they bumped into us or gave us ugly looks because we accidentally photobombed their video shoot.

Shore Days: As the old saying goes, a good day at a beach is good enough. But if there’s any cautionary tale about Carnival’s beach stops, it’s to bring only what you need and keep some cash on hand to avoid any issues or scams from using a debit or credit card. Our shore time felt a little like a Disney ride where you couldn’t arrive or leave without going through the shopping areas, and I was dismayed that we only enjoyed a few hours before needing to pack up and get on board again.

Think Ahead About the Kids: Being on a ship means a lot of down time, especially en route to your destination. And while ships offer lots to do, every kid has their own moods and interests, and you never know what will grab their attention or a disinterested shoulder shrug. Also, think of the on board daycare as a temporary fix, at best. There’s only so much to do with only so many kids, and eventually, they’ll want to explore/do something else. And the ship is a foreign place, so the younger ones will reasonably want to stick close to mom and dad. The pools are a godsend that will keep kids occupied for hours, though eventually the sun will set or they’ll tire out. But whatever you plan for, bring activities – games, arts and crafts, their tablets, favorite toys – because sooner or later all you’ll want is to sit still and chill in the room, balcony or a common area.

Rooms: Despite our luck, the choice of available rooms for this trip was painfully small. In retrospect, we probably should’ve booked far earlier if we wanted something more strategically desired (i.e., closer to the dining and pool areas). However, we were pretty happy with the room we landed and I’m forever grateful we nabbed one with a balcony – allowing light in and a private little outside area to chill on if we didn’t want to be around other people. One personal disappointment for me is I hoped being out at sea would provide better star gazing than found in the hopelessly light polluted DC area. In truth, between the humid air, ship lighting, and haze from the exhaust, star gazing wasn’t much better than when at home.

Final Assessment
As I said at the beginning, I’m not a big fan of resorts, and cruise ships are basically traveling resorts. While you’re pigeonholed by their rules and restrictions and need to make do with whatever entertainment they provide, you don’t have to worry about paying for every meal or checking into a pool area. The tradeoff is they pick the destinations and there’s limited time to spend at them. Also, we benefitted from amazingly great weather on this trip, so I can only imagine what it must like while going through a storm or around a hurricane.
I know people who love cruising and go on a voyage at least once a year or so. Just like my one trip to Vegas, I don’t feel a burning need to try another cruise, but if I do, it’ll be a different ship with different destinations, and I’ll do a bit more preplanning on what to do while on it.