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First-Time Cruisers
Our first ever cruise is the Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas Mediterranean tour. Seven days of cruising around the Mediterranean. Seven days of visiting different Mediterranean cities and countryside. I’m very excited about the travelling parts, but a little nervous about the cruise itself!
I’ve heard a lot about cruises and it’s definitely a little nerve wracking knowing that Symphony of the Seas is the second biggest cruise ship in the world – will we get lost?! And then there’s the thought that a lot of people like to dress up for meals. We’re not exactly a dressy family, my kids often have the same jumper on in every photo! Then there’s the environmental issues, I know cruises have been in the news for problems in the past. So I definitely want to look more into what Royal Caribbean do to protect the environment.
Booking Experience
Let’s go back to the beginning of the whole booking a cruise process. Starting with the booking experience with Cruise Circle. I had a phone call with the lovely Joy at Cruise Circle who went through the whole process with me. It took around 30-40 minutes for the booking phone call.
This takes in all the important information you require, from personal details to book the cruise, to what type of meals package and what time you would like to book a table each night (we chose not to have a specific time). Any questions that I had were answered, including the best way to take shore excursions, which activities are onboard and remembering something magnetic to put on your door to remember which is yours!
There was definitely a lot of information and I’m not sure I remember everything. However, Joy has sent over everything in PDF’s to confirm the booking and details. So hopefully we will work it all out!
Expectations
We have quite a lot of expectations as first time cruisers, although there are also a lot of unknowns for us too! Our first expectations are that there will be a lot of queuing and waiting. The ship is huge and there are going to be a LOT of people on board. So I imagine that will involve a lot of waiting about, whether it’s for meals or flumes at the pool.
Despite all the waiting around I imagine we’re going to be pretty overwhelmed by the sheer size of the ship. Potentially getting lost on the many levels and spending the entire first day exploring the ship! The kids are already very excited about the activities onboard, there certainly seems to be a lot available. So we are definitely looking forward to trying out various new things.
Then of course the main reason for cruising, the ports! We have visited Spain, France and Italy before, however there’s always something new to visit. So we are very excited to see more of them. The most exciting one for the children will be Naples, as we hope to travel to Pompeii, the ancient town that was covered by layers of ash. We’ve chatted about Pompeii previously and so it sounds particularly exciting.
I am a little worried at how easy it is to leave the ship when everyone else is leaving at the same time. But I assume there will be some sort of organisation to this?! Then making sure we are back so the cruise doesn’t leave without us! Fingers crossed we don’t get left behind!
Concerns About Cruise Travel
I have two major concerns. The first is that it’s not the most environmentally friendly, however I have also noted that Royal Caribbean have a variety of environmental projects on their pages, reducing plastic, reducing the waste produced etc. So I will look into this whilst we are on the ship too and let you know what they are really like.
Secondly I’m worried that there will be too many people around that we won’t be able to enjoy our time on the ship. What if it’s too busy to do rock climbing, or the flow rider or no space at the pools? I’ll have to report back on this when we’re home!
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