What To Bring

What you bring on your cruise is totally up to you! Enjoy yourself!

Clothes

For most of us, a cruise is a "fantasy" vacation. We conjur up visions of the TV show "The Love Boat" with lavish dressing up and the whole nine yards. However, others are just looking to get away from it all for a while and find cruising a simple means to transport themselves to a nice sunny beach.

Also, a lot has to do with the ship you are traveling on. A general rule of thumb, the more expensive the cruise cost, the more formal it is going to be. You might want to ask your travel agent how to pack clothes. Most cruises have at least one or two formal nights where men will be expected to wear jackets and ties and women wear a formal dress. However, this is mainly a photo session where all the ships photograpers come out to take pictures.

As for the rest of the time on the cruise, if your heading toward hot weather (e.g., the Caribbean), everyone goes around in shorts and casual shirts. On the deck everyone wears bathing suits. At dinner, most cruises require men wear long pants.

Fun stuff

I like to be prepared. I also like to have fun. So, with this in mind, on my first cruise, I brought everything I could think of. I went with a group of fun people, and I remember jumping in the pool with this bright orange inflatable raft that made me the envy of the pool. Everyone kept asking me where did you get that?

You can bring a lot of fun things. Remember, you are going on vacation. Here's some ideas:

Radio, camera, piniata', song book, telescope, snorkeling equipment, swimming goggles, sunglasses, inflatable toys, blender, bubble gum, swimming frog, comic book, computer programming book (for nerd fun), - oh there's a lot of things! I'll keep adding to this list later.

On our last cruise, we brought a blender. We purchased some drink mixes in the various islands and made our own bar in our room. We asked the cabin steward to provide ice in our rooms every evening. Needless to say, we saved a great deal on our bar bill!

For those of you who are organized, like me, and like to have a list to check off of what to bring, try one of the lists at the links below. I made both adult male and adult female lists. Some of the items are the same on both lists. As most of the times people cruise as couples, if one item that both of you can use is on one list, you might consider bringing only one (i.e., shampoo, asprin, blender, etc.)

Adult Male

Adult Female