By Sarah Phillips
A cruise ship is your (moving) home away from home during your vacation. Just like every house is different, every ship is just a little bit different too. So, how do you learn more about your cruise ship? We’ve done the research and got you covered.
5 Places to Research:
1. Cruise Forums (Cruise Critic, Cruiseline.com, Cruise-Addicts, etc). There are a lot of cruise forums out there and they’re chock full of info about different cruise ships. Some are far more detailed than others, but they’re all a pretty good place to find the answers to your ship questions.
2. YouTube. When Doug found out he was sailing on the Carnival Sunshine, he was super excited. Every day for the past few months, he’s been searching Carnival Sunshine on YouTube to find anything new. To his dismay, there weren’t a lot of videos up yet on the newly revamped ship – at first. As his sailing got closer, more and more videos and pictures started showing up, whetting his appetite to check out the Sunshine. Videos can do so much more than pictures when you want to explore a ship without actually being on it. In addition to checking out your ship, you can probably score some cruising tips by watching the vids.
3. ShipMate App. A few years ago this cruise app hit the Apple and Google store, little did anyone know that it would revolutionize the way people planned and got excited about their cruise vacations. With over a million downloads, ShipMate App lets you step-by-step plan your cruise, excursions, roll calls and meet other cruisers on your ship.
4. Cruise Line websites. Why not go to the experts on each ship? At a minimum, you’ll find deck plans, restaurant names and clubs along with the featured offerings on each ship. These companies built the ships, so they’ll know the most info overall on each of their ships.
Royal Caribbean has an awesome page to learn Quantum of the Seas.
5. Social Media. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook…. Again, you’ve got lots of places to look for info on your cruise ship. Most Social media sites have a search feature to help with this. Type in the name of your cruise ship and enjoy checking out the results. Just an example, when I type Carnival Sunshine into a search on Instagram, I find almost 700 photos to check out.
Bonus
Cruise Radio. We’ve sailed on a lot of ships over the years and so have our listeners. We’ve got reviews, photos, and videos of most cruise ships out there. You’ve come to know and trust us for our news and tips and we’ll make sure you’re covered with ship knowledge too. You can check out the podcast player here.
Listen to an Episode
[smart_track_player url=”https://traffic.libsyn.com/cruiseradioshow/CR_QUANTUM_11_20_14_AU.mp3″ title=”Quantum of the Seas Review” artist=”Cruise Radio” ]
Where are the best places you go to research a ship? And what’s your favorite ship? We’d love to hear from you!
