New cruisers with questions

TexasCruisers · #1 (**permalink**) April 7th, 2012, 08:52 PM

Hello everyone! I have been doing a lot of research but can't seem to find all of my answers yet. My boyfriend and I are taking our first cruise this summer (I went on one as a kid but definitely don't remember most of it). We will be sailing on the Carnival Magic on a 7 day cruise to Montego Bay, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel.

1) Can we carry our main luggage with us onto the ship instead of having it brought to our room?

2) We have booked excursions through Carnival and on our own. How do we get to our excursions through Carnival, and how do they know we have paid for them?

3) How long does it take to get off of the ship and back on?

4) And most importantly... will there be towel animals in our room (even though its an inside cabin?)

Any suggestions you have for us are greatly appreciated. We are SO very excited and cannot wait for this trip. We are doing an ATV tour in Montego Bay, riding jetskis out to Stingray City and a snorkeling reef in Cayman, and swimming with the dolphins in Cozumel. We have no idea what we will be doing on the ship (other than drinking, haha!)

Trip · #2 (**permalink**) April 7th, 2012, 09:07 PM

Hi,and welcome to Cruisemates...nice to have a cruise coming up soon.

1) Can we carry our main luggage with us onto the ship instead of having it brought to our room? Your main luggage, no, but bring your carry on, with you, with meds, cosmetics,and swim suits, if you want to lounge by the pool. Usually, your luggage will be delivered by dinner.

2) We have booked excursions through Carnival and on our own. How do we get to our excursions through Carnival, and how do they know we have paid for them? Go to your Carnivall page and enter your booking number and fill in all the pertinent info, as far as like, sail and sign, credit info, etc. to get that out of the way..then go to excursions, select what you want,and pay with your cc.

3) How long does it take to get off of the ship and back on? If you bought a ships excursion, you will be off first. In GC you will need to tender. With an excursion there,other then a ship exscursion, make sure you go down to where they are giving out tickets asap, if you have an early excursion. There ould be long lines gettingback on, but it moves quickly most of the time.

4) And most importantly... will there be towel animals in our room (even though its an inside cabin?) You will most certainly get your towel animals..make sure you take pictures of them, to make all your pals at home jealous

TexasCruisers · #3 (**permalink**) April 7th, 2012, 09:19 PM

Thanks for the response!

We already paid for the excursions... I am just not clear how we meet to travel to them, etc.

Also, we booked our GC excursion on our own... it isn't until 1030 and the itinerary says we get into port at 7am, so I assume we will have plenty of time to get to our excursion!

So how will we know where to go to tender? Is this all information that we will be given when we get to the ship? Or was our travel agent supposed to tell us?

Trip · #4 (**permalink**) April 7th, 2012, 09:39 PM

When you are in a port that tenders{GC} they will make an announcement where to meet, to get your tender numbers. They will call the numbers, and you then go to the gangway area to dismembark. In the other ports, you can get off at your leisure. There will be people with signs for the various excursions. Also, plenty of people to point you in the right diretion.