Advice & Tips

Cruises have many nuances and moving parts that make planning more confusing than what you'd experience with a land-based vacation. You might be wondering, "Should I book my cruise through a travel agent?"

You can find a lot of great cruise tips out there, but tips from a former cruise ship employee come from a lot of experience onboard.

Kabir Rathaur-Bageria is a former Cruise Director for Carnival, P&O Australia and Marella Cruises on Celebrity Cruises, and has been working on ships for 5 years. He now runs his own podcast, Keeping Afloat.

Cruise directors have pretty much seen it all on a cruise, having had many years of experience in so many areas of a ship.

Since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's no-sail order went into effect in March, cruise lines have axed thousands of voyages to all corners of the globe, leaving those who are still booked wondering what to do. Should you cancel or take a wait-and-see approach?

We enthusiastically recommend the latter. Here are six solid reasons why you should avoid canceling your cruise right now.

The last thing you want to do is make a major mistake on your first cruise vacation. Avoiding common pitfalls is a smart way to set yourself up for a great vacation.

Unfortunately, a lot of first-time cruisers do not take a little bit of time to learn about these all too common blunders, and they always regret it later.

Here are the top ten cruise mistakes to avoid for anyone going on a cruise or thinking about planning a cruise vacation.

With almost every cruise line shut down currently, many people are wondering if they should defer, cancel, or push back on their cruise vacation plans.

Cruise lines around the world are trying to tackle the problem of how to restart cruises while keeping guest and crew safe and healthy, so should you wait for cruises to start again or delay that sailing you have booked further out?

To passport or not to passport? Fewer than half of American citizens have them; if you're someone who doesn't, you'll want to consider obtaining one before going on a cruise. 

Sure, you can travel on a closed-loop sailing -- one that leaves from and returns to the same U.S. port -- with just your birth certificate and a driver's license, but a passport offers more peace of mind in an emergency.

"Will I get sick on a cruise?" It's a question that many prospective passengers ask, whether they're new to cruising or they've sailed hundreds of times. Fortunately, the answer is "probably not." However, as is the case any time you're in public, there's an inherent risk of catching something.