I just completed a 5 day cruise on board Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas ship to Labadee, Haiti and CocoCay. Here’s my top 3 takeaways from this cruise:

1. Unless you really plan to drink a lot, there’s no need to buy a drink package. Cruise lines – Royal Caribbean anyway – really pushes their drink packages. This tells me that they are very profitable for cruise lines. In other words, for most people a drink package ends up being more expensive than buying drinks individually. Use this drink cost calculator to help you decide which way to go.
2. If your primary reason for taking a cruise is simply to relax – as opposed to doing lots of excursions – you should consider staying on the ship on port days. When the ship is at a port, most people get off. So if you stay on the ship, you’ll have the pool and restaurants to yourself. I stayed on the ship for both port days and those were the very best days of the cruise.
3. Pack a roll of your own toilet paper. The toilet paper provided on board is thin – very thin. Just pack one roll of the good stuff and you’ll be glad you did.