The saying goes that” There is a cruise line for everyone.” First of all, that is a ridiculously expensive proposition, and second of all, I’m not sure I believe it.
I have taken one cruise in my life and left feeling underwhelmed. I’m not sure if the problem lies in my expectations or if I am not a cruise kind of gal.
14 million Americans go on a cruise each year, and last year I was one of them. For the first time in my life I decided that the time had come for our family to go on a cruise.
I picked Norwegian Cruise Lines based on this study.
According to a May 2021 survey among U.S. consumers, the best rated mega-ship cruise line in the U.S. was Norwegian Cruise Line, owned by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.
So my husband, kids, and parents boarded the Norwegian Bliss in Los Angeles to prepare for 7 nights on a cruise to Mexico and back.
First Time Cruising Shocks
Photo Credit: Travels With The Crew
I was completely and totally unprepared to board the cruise ship. Although there are apparently e-docs to allow you to check your luggage on arrival and to bypass a long line, I couldn’t find them and had no idea how to find them. So we waited in a long line for someone to find our cabin numbers.
Once the hour-and-a-half-long check-in line was completed, we boarded the Bliss and found our next hurdle. What do you do when you get on a cruise ship? Do you go to your cabin? Do you eat? Do you sit somewhere and wait for something exciting to happen? We had no idea, so we wandered around in chaos for a bit before heading to our cabin.
Once we headed to our cabin, we really had no idea what to do either. Our luggage hadn’t arrived yet, and we couldn’t download Norwegians’ App. I just sat on the balcony and waited for something exciting to happen.
We found out later we should have been booking dinner times, show times, and basically scheduling out our cruise for the duration of the 7 days. I guess I missed that somewhere along the lines too!
How the Rest of The Cruise Went
Photo Credit: Travels With The Crew
The cruise got better as the week went on. At least it wasn’t as unknown as it had been before. But, as the cruise went on, I got more and more bored and more and more sleepy.
My typical day went:
- Get up and eat
- Take a nap
- Go to Trivia
- Take a nap
- Eat lunch
- Go to trivia
- Take a good long nap
- Eat dinner and maybe watch a show.
- Repeat
I do love a good nap, but that amount of napping is only a good thing if you are over the age of 85. I was bored. My kids were bored, my husband was grumpy and bored, and my mom seemed to enjoy herself.
When we got off at the ports we enjoyed seeing new things, but it was so different from the way we usually travel it felt like we were just getting a quick overview instead of really visiting a new and interesting place.
The Good Things about Cruising
Here are the things I like about a Cruise:
- Food whenever you want
- The Broadway-style musicals are way better than I had any idea they would be.
- Trivia is fun
I know it’s a short list, but if I’m being honest, that’s all I can manage.
The Bad Things About Cruising
- Getting on the cruise ship
- The food is only OK.
- There are soooo many people on board.
- The elevators take forever because there are soooo many people on board.
- There are never enough places to sit.
- The restaurant service is slow.
- I read all my books in the first 2 days. (technically not the cruise’s fault, but if I had more to do it wouldn’t have happened.)
- The entertainment shows at capacity before even getting on board.
- Getting off at ports and getting back on is almost as bad as getting on the ship the first day.
- Boredom.
So now I look at that list and think was Norwegian just the wrong cruise line for me, or am I what is wrong? And why do I care so much?
Chocolate Chip Cookie Testing
When I was newly married and figuring out how to be grown up, I just knew that part of being a put-together lady was having a fabulous chocolate chip cookie recipe. Why I thought this, I’m really not sure, but I was on a quest to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipe in the world. No ordinary Nestle Tollhouse Cookie recipe would do.
I would bake a batch, taste them, freeze a few, and try a new recipe. For weeks and weeks, I baked 1-2 batches a day until our entire freezer was filled with various chocolate chip cookies. I’d pull them out every week or so and try them all to test them against each other. When I finally felt like I had the perfect recipe, I wrote it down and felt like I had unlocked the secret of adulthood.
Before you ask for the recipe…I found out recently it is really just the Nestle Tollhouse recipe with one more egg and an extra 1/2 tsp of salt.
What do cookies have to do with cruises? Absolutely nothing! But I can’t leave well enough alone.
Why I’m Still Hoping There Is a Great Cruise Out There
Photo Credit: Travels With The Crew
Everyone I know loves to go on a cruise! When I ask people about their favorite vacations, 9 times out of 10, a cruise was involved. I watch Youtube videos about new cruise ships or cruise ship reviews, and I think maybe that is my perfect chocolate chip cookie!
So I will go on another cruise or 5. I will not stop until I can prove that either I am not made for cruises or the cruise line I a desperately seeking doesn’t exist.
Here is where you come in. What do you think? Do you love one cruise line over another? Do you feel the same way? Do I need to wait until I’m 85 and can enjoy the napping and eating schedule? Let me know because this experiment will continue until I figure it out!
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