hello everyone my name is zach i am the traveling man and i have been busy and i have been excited
preparing for my upcoming cruise there are so many things to do once you actually book your cruise
vacation there's so many things to consider and i'm going to walk you through all those i have 15
things to do before you cruise so let's just jump right into these number one is an important one
especially today when we're living in a pandemic world and there's a lot of changes going on
there's a lot of testing going on there's a lot of requirements that you're just not guaranteed that
you're going to meet to be able to sell and that number one priority uh the top thing you should do
the first thing you should do after you book your cruise is immediately consider purchasing travel
insurance so travel insurance will protect you from a whole host of things just depending on what
plan that you get and there are so many out there you just have to go online and do your research
i know a lot of the cruise lines also offer travel insurance those however only cover the cost of the
crew so i would suggest that you especially if you're flying flying a long distance with
expensive airfare find some travel insurance that covers the entire cost of your trip you
also want to purchase travel insurance as soon as you can there are time limits on certain
coverages on the insurance i know sometimes the insurance plans will include a cancel for any
reason however sometimes you have to book within like 14 day window after you book the cruise or
made the initial deposit on your trip in order for that to be covered and the second thing you
need to do after you book your cruise is to book transportation and i'm talking about airfare and
i'm talking about ground transfers now you want to start looking for airfare as soon as possible
typically airlines release their schedules about 350 365 days in advance so just short of a year
out but start looking as soon as you book your cruise however you may not want to book airfare
right away because know that prices do fluctuate and i do have a recommendation for how to find
the best price for your airfare and that's an app called hopper and i am not sponsored by hopper at
all but i do use hopper on all my trips when i'm going to book airfare and it'll actually watch
uh the prices it's a an app that you can put on your phone it'll watch the prices of the airfare
that you're interested in you just put in the dates you know if you want non-stop whatever
options and if the price goes down it'll send you an alert to your phone and it'll say hey there's
been a price drop however you want to wait because we think there's going to be a better price drop
later on and then it'll tell you exactly when you want to purchase your airfare to get the lowest
price so make sure you look into hopper and make sure that you're constantly looking for the lowest
airfare because those prices change multiple times a day they don't even change daily they change
sometimes hourly so keep on the lookout from the moment you book your cruise for airfare
you also want to be in consideration of ground transfers and what i mean by this is if you're
flying to an airport let's say in miami how are you going to get from the miami airport over to
the cruise board now i often take lyft or uber or other ride share program like that
but if you want to take cruise line sponsored transportation most cruise lines do offer
they'll have a bus that'll pick you up at the airport and take you over to the port so
you want to make sure that you have all that lined up and know how you're one flying or getting to
the port city and two how you're going to actually get to the ship from the airport the third thing
you need to do after booking your cruise is make sure you have a current passport or birth
certificate this is very important because these are identification documents that you're going to
need in order to set sell and often once you check in online days in advance or sometimes weeks and
events of your cruise they're going to ask you for this information you also want to make sure that
your passport doesn't expire within six months of your selling date your passport has an expiration
date and six months before that expiration date is actually when it's no longer good you actually
probably won't be let out of the country without some serious questioning with a passport that's
set to expire within six months if you are using your birth certificate you're going to
want to make sure that it is the original raised sealed copy from your state wherever you were born
so make sure you do have that if you've lost it it does take time to get a replacement so
that's why you want to make sure that you have a valid passport at the time of sailing or a birth
certificate and make sure these documents are up to date so as soon as you book your cruise make
sure you have these documents in hand and ready to go also check your driver's license especially if
you're taking your birth certificate you're going to have to have a photo id and a lot of people use
driver's license so whatever form of photo id make sure it's still going to be valid at the time you
sell also that's very important so number four now that we've got some of the bigger logistics things
out of the way the fourth thing i recommend that you do is join a facebook group for your cruise
most of the time years in advance because cruise lines right now you know this is 2022 cruise lines
have already released their schedules all the way up to the end of 2024 a lot of them so people will
go on as soon as they book a cruise and create a facebook group for that cruise so if you're
on facebook i highly recommend you search and find your cruises facebook group that someone's created
it's a great community to join folks are going to be posting all sorts of information it's a place
for folks to ask questions a lot of folks i see in these groups talking about short excursions hey
i'm going here i have room on my tour available for a few people if someone wants to join
so go out and check out your facebook group for your cruise it's also a great way to make friends
ahead of the cruise if you're into that and want to meet up with some people on the ship
i know a lot of these facebook groups they'll actually set up meetups on the ship and slot
polls and different things like that activities throughout the sailing so go find and join your
facebook group for your upcoming cruise who likes to save money i do i love to save money
especially on travel and i think i'm pretty good at it so my fifth one is check for price drops
and it's important when you book your cruise to know what rate that you book under there's a
certain rate or a certain promotion that you book under make sure you know the rules of that and the
restrictions of that often if you book early enough you're going to be booked under a rate
where you can actually apply for price drop so all the cruise lines do this a little bit differently
so you're going to want to make sure that you understand based upon the fare the promotion and
the cruise line that you're selling with what the rules are on that but what i do and i do
it pretty religiously it's like one of the first things i do in the morning when i get up is i go
online and any cruise i have booked i pull it up and you know i go to carnival.com and i look for
that cruise like i'm gonna book it again and i see what the current price for the room that i booked
is and if it's lower i apply for my price drop so make it a habit whether it's weekly uh whether
it's daily just go on and check the current price of your cruise because folks i've saved thousands
of dollars and i do mean thousands i just saved like 1500 on a cruise a couple weeks ago doing
this very same thing you want to be checking for those price drops number six the sixth thing that
you want to do before your cruise is upgrade your cabin and there are many different ways
to do this i just talked about price drops if you did look at your cruise and see there's currently
a large price difference in what you booked and what it's currently being offered at you
could call the cruise line and ask to move to a different cabin because the cabins are all priced
differently but they usually flow together like if there's a price drop in one category usually
there's a price drop in all so say you're in an interior and your price drop was great enough that
if you do a mock booking and look and see that you actually could be in a balcony well you can call
carnival we're going to go with carnival still and tell them hey please move my room
to a balcony because i see that current price for balconies the same price i paid for an interior
and you can do that however you can also upgrade through other avenues you can always call and pay
the difference in whatever the fare is from what you're currently booked what you want to book in
however some cruise lines do offer bid upgrade programs and i'm going to use royal for this
example because royal has the royal up program and essentially how that works is uh within a
month or so of selling they're going to send you an email and they're going to say do you want
to roll up and essentially they're going to show you pretty much every category of cabin above you
so let's say you're in ocean view they're going to show you a balcony they're going to show you
their low end suite they're mid suite they're high suite and they're going to say the minimum bid
is 100 per person so there's a little scale and you can bid you know 100 per person is a
weak bid or you can bid 600 per person to go into that balcony so that's how you place your bid you
actually give them your credit card information right then and then you'll hear usually within
the week of your cruise whether or not your bids been accepted and uh you have no room at that
point to approve it or not once you put in your credit card information if they accept your bid
you're in that state room so there's bid up there's move up on celebrity and i think some
of the other cruise lines also offer those type programs so make sure you be on the lookout for
that and consider upgrading your cabin before you sell number seven is a big one especially
in the pandemic world that we're living in right now you want to check the latest health protocols
and testing requirements for your sailing and these all differ now for cruise line per cruise
even down to the port that you're leaving from so make sure one of the first things you do
after you book your cruise in addition to making sure you have your identification documents and
your airfare and all that it is so imperative that you understand what the testing requirements are
and the health protocols are and the reason i say this is you might have to schedule some type of
a test and have it done might need you to make an appointment within a day or two of your crew
so you want to be on top of that and make that appointment as soon as you can also you might have
to show some type of health documentation such as a vaccine record you want to make sure you have
all that up to date and have what you need and plenty enough time before you're sailing because
there are no exceptions on these things if you don't have the testing requirements down or the
health documentation you will not be required to sell so make sure you have all that covered
in plenty enough time my next tip is to figure out what you're going to do in the port of
calls it's so exciting to go on a cruise because you're going to get to see so many destinations
that you've likely never been to before and you want to maximize your time in port so i know as
a frequent traveler as an avid traveler it's a lot of pressure sometimes to pick an excursion
in a port because you only have eight hours and you can only go on one excursion most of the time
so you want to make sure you pick the right thing so make sure you go online use google use youtube
uh you know me and a lot of my other friends that make travel related content we have
so much content about the different ports of call so go on and do all your research and
about the port of calls you can just do a google search for that and maybe
add excursions at the end let's say you're going to puerto rico san juan puerto rico excursions
you'll have a lot of information coming up that will be able to help you decide what you want to
do now the cruise lines all offer excursions on their website you can also go through and look at
all the excursions available for your cruise via the cruise line however there are also independent
tour operators in each of the ports that can take you on excursions separate the cruise lines so
these are usually cheaper so there are a lot of options on different excursions that you can take
lastly use your facebook group that i mentioned just a few minutes ago folks will most likely be
talking about excursions and their excursions they're going on or excursions they might say
hey i've been to this port before and i did this thing so just do your research and figure out and
plenty enough time uh before you're sailing what excursions you might want to do and book those
just as soon as you're confident about it and as soon as you can because a lot of excursions
do fill up especially through the cruise line and once they're full you're likely not to have
a spot on it tip number nine is to pre-book any dining any drink packages wi-fi packages
or entertainment if applicable what i mean by that is specialty dining restaurants primarily
make sure you make those reservations online ahead of your cruise for a couple reasons first of all
a lot of the times the cruise lines are going to offer a discount they'll offer sales from
time to time you know five to thirty percent off a dining package or a specialty dining experience
so go on your cruise planner via the cruise line and check that out and watch for those deals
also another reason we want to do that ahead of time is so that you get the preferred time the
closer you get to selling the more book these restaurants are going to be and you're liable
to not even get the time that you want maybe not even the restaurant you want i don't even risk it
anymore i don't wait till i get on board the ship to book my dining reservations i make sure it's
done ahead of time so i know i'm going to get to eat at all the specialty dining locations that i
want to uh the drink packages are often discounted you can often get those at a lower price if you
book them ahead of the cruise online so make sure you do that same with the wi-fi packages
and then i mentioned entertainment some of the cruise lines and i know some of the bigger ships
like i'm going to use royal caribbean's uh like symphony of the seas they're oasis class ships
there's so many people on those ships that they want to have a reservation system for the shows
that they offer on board and you're going to have to go online and make those reservations
so make sure you do all that pre-book all that stuff as soon as you can to ensure
that you're going to get the most out of your cruise you're going to get the best deal out
of the things that you're buying for your cruise number 10 research your cruise ship you're going
to be living on this thing for a week sometimes more maybe less but research your cruise ship
again start here with youtube there's a lot of content think of any cruise ship in the world and
just search it on youtube and i promise you you're going to find a lot of content on that cruise ship
and you can get a lot of good information from the content you can find here on youtube so make sure
that you do your research not only is it going to help you to know more and help you to sort of
know the lay of the land per se once you get on board but it's also going to build great
anticipation and to me that's half the fun of going on a cruise is the anticipation as you
do the research and as you try to figure out things about your ship and things about what
you're going to be doing on shores number 11 you want to download the cruise lines official
mobile app and most cruise lines at this point have a mobile app and they use these mobile apps
in various ways and one of the biggest ways that they use it is to actually be able to check in for
your crews and check-in often begins anywhere from a couple of months all the way down to a couple of
weeks ahead of your cruise and if you do check in on the mobile app you're gonna get your boarding
pass instantly you'll have it there on your phone ready to go for embarkation day uh that's the way
i prefer to check in i know all cruise lines don't offer checking on their app but i love
the ones that do because it just seems like it makes things so much easier on embarkation day
and you will use the app extensively once you're on board you're going to use it to
see the daily calendar of activities you're going to use it to reserve dining times you can actually
book short excursions through the app you can check your onboard account you can view menus and
so much more so make sure you have that mobile app on your device before your cruise so that you're
ready to go the moment you step on board number 12 on my list of things to do before you cruise
is to check in for your crew now depending on what cruise line you're selling on you're going
to be able to check in for your cruise anywhere from a month and a half all the way to a couple
weeks ahead of your cruise and at check-in like i mentioned you're going to need those
identification documents you're going to be asked a lot of different questions about your arrival
the biggest thing is the arrival appointment most of the cruise lines use a staggered embarkation
and that requires you to essentially reserve an arrival appointment time at check-in so
for me this means i'm going to be on there at midnight as soon as check-in opens i'm online to
check in for my cruise because i want the earliest sporting time i can get so just make sure that you
check in as early as you can to ensure that you get your preferred boarding time for embarkation
day so my next tip sort of goes along with that once you're finally checked in you now have access
to your boarding pass so you want to print your boarding pass and other important documents and
what important documents am i talking about here well you have your boarding pass of course any
other details or information you might have about your crews such as addresses a lot of times the
cruise lines will get the address to the ports you know exactly where to go contact information
for the ship and the cruise line you also want to make sure if you bought travel insurance i
always print out that the proof that i have travel insurance just so i have the contact information
so if anything goes wrong while i'm on the cruise i can call in to the travel insurance company
i always put everything in a folder so that i'm ready to go and i can just grab it on embarkation
day and feel comfortable knowing that i have all i need in order to get on my cruise ship you also
want to print out luggage tags if available i know some cruise lines still actually mail
those to your house but you want to make sure that you have luggage tags to put on any of the bags
that you're going to be handing off to the porters so essentially your checked bags any bag you're
going to hand off to the cruise line to put on the ship for you if you're carrying it on yourself it
doesn't need a luggage tag but if you're dropping it with the porters they'll absolutely want to see
a luggage tag on there so make sure you print that off ahead of time or receive that ahead of
time have that on your luggage and ready to go on embarkation day my 14th thing to do before you go
on your cruise is to pack and pack lightly and i say pack lightly because the lighter that you
pack the more money you're gonna save especially if you're flying to get to the cruise ship you're
not gonna have to pay as much in baggage fees uh you're not gonna have as many bags to give over to
the porters and and that's more money and tips and things like that so to save yourself a little bit
of money uh pack lightly you know consider maybe re-wearing an outfit a day or two of your cruise
you know if you've got formal night multiple days across your cruise consider wearing the same
jacket or the same slacks there's a lot of things you can do to help you pack
a little bit lighter for your cruise and in the end that's going to save you some money
and make the load just a little bit lighter on embarkation day and all throughout the cruise
because you're going to have to lug that luggage home too and my final tip for you thing to do
before your cruise is acquire some cash and i know this from personal experience because i think when
i travel when i go on a cruise is just about the only time i'm ever in possession of any cash so
i'm always frantically running around the day or two before my cruise like you know going to atms
and stuff trying to get some cash you're gonna need cash for several reasons on your cruise first
of all to tip those porters that take your luggage uh at the pier you're gonna want to give tip them
you might also want to leave some money for your room steward another crew that you encounter
onboard the ship that do great service you want to give them a little bit extra to show your
appreciation you're also going to want cash when you're walking around in the ports uh you know
if you take a taxi in one of the destinations to get somewhere for any shopping that you do so just
carry some cash with you i promise you're gonna need it uh and it's just good to have you know you
never know what might come up don't depend on the atms on board i know a lot of ships and a lot of
cruise lines will advertise that they have atms on board but i've seen a lot of those things closed
so don't think that you're going to wait till you get on the ship because even if they are
open the atms charge a lot of fees once you're on board the ship so get it take it with you so that
you're ready to go on embarkation day and above all folks have fun i hope you have a great cruise
and enjoy it's in my opinion the best way to vacation thank you so much for watching this video
if you enjoyed it and found it informative i invite you to please give me a thumbs up
down below consider subscribing to the channel and until next time i'll see you on the next adventure