So what exactly is on your stateroom account?

A nice thing about cruising is that cruise ships are generally a cash-free environment with all of your expenses charged to your onboard account.  You don’t have to carry cash or a credit card around with you for the shops, specialty restaurants, or even to pay for your ship-sponsored excursions.  A frequently asked question is what charges can one expect to find on their stateroom account?

In no particular order:

1.       Gratuities for specific ship crew members. Typically the stateroom host, dining room server, assistant dining room server, and head waiter receive a tip based on a recommended amount per day per passenger.  For DCL, this is $12 per day: $4 for the cabin attendant, $4 for the main server, $3 for the assistant server, and $1 for the head waiter of that section of the dining room.  These gratuities can be pre-paid or you can bring cash for them, but most people just have the amounts added to their stateroom account which they settle at the end of the cruise.

2.       Souvenirs from the ship shops.  In addition to cruise line and port specific gear, onboard shops sell a variety of goods such as jewelry, clothing, and perfume.  Some ships have extensive stores, sometimes competing with your local mall!  On the Disney Magic, there are two main gift shops, one that is mostly Disney themed items and the other is higher-end clothing, perfume, jewelry, and such.

3.       Photos.  If you don’t see a ship photographer, wait a minute and one will show up! Whether they are taking your picture as you board for the first time, before dinner with the characters, during dinner with a mouthful of food, or up on the sun deck, you can count on having your photo made. And they count on you liking them enough to buy some!  Disney Cruise Line sells the photos one at a time or you can buy a package or even a CD.  They use facial recognition to place all the photos they take of your party onto a CD for one (not low) price.

4.       Excursion fares.  Some cruise lines require pre-payment for excursions when you book them, but one thing we particularly like about DCL is that they don’t require payment until you board; then they add your excursion fares to your stateroom account.

5.       Laundry services.  Whether you use the self-service laundry or send your items out for pressing service, the cost will be added to your stateroom account.  If you use the self-service machines, on the Disney ships, you use your “Key to the World” card rather than coins to operate the equipment, and sometimes you might have a double-swipe show up on your account. It’s a good idea to check your account after you’ve done your laundry to be sure that you have been billed for only the number of swipes you used.

6.       Specialty restaurants, coffees, and bars.  If you go to any of the specialty restaurants on a ship, there is typically an extra fee for this, but by most accounts, the meal is extraordinary and the service impeccable.  Many ships have a specialty coffee café where you can get high-end coffee, and of course any alcoholic beverages you have to pay extra for.  You can also get smoothies and other frozen drinks at the bars as well.

7.       Room service.  While most items on the room service menu are complimentary, some have an upcharge. And of course you’ll want to tip the person who delivers it to your room, so you can add the tip to your account or do what many people do which is keep a stack of $1 bills on hand.

A common joke among cruise directors giving their disembarking talk is that you’ll know how much fun you’ve had on your cruise by the sound of the thud as your stateroom account is left outside your cabin door on the last night, or by the number of pages it takes to print your bill.

Cash and currency exchange

When traveling abroad, you have to consider how you’re going to pay for things.  While you may be able to use your credit or debit card for many of your purchases, you’ll still need some local currency, whether it’s for food, tickets, or transportation.

It’s a good idea to have some local currency when you arrive, particularly if you’re planning to take a taxi to your hotel.  While most airports will have ATMs or currency exchange offices, you don’t want to risk the machines being out of cash or service or the exchange office being closed.  So if you have enough cash to get you to your hotel, that should get you where someone can help you get the currency you need for your stay.

No one wants to risk carrying too much cash, though, so you want to carefully consider how much cash you want to have on you, whether it’s for when you arrive or as you go from day to day on your vacation.  You will want to check with your local bank for any limits to ATM withdrawals as well as any associated fees, and you want to be careful about using your credit card for cash as there are hefty rates associated with cash advances. It’s fine to use it to pay for things; call the company to find out what foreign transaction fees may be incurred (typically 3%, but some cards offer lower rates).

Our cruise ship offers currency exchange on board; we’ve used it before in our overseas travels.  The way it works on DCL is that you can exchange your dollars (or whatever your own local currency is) for the currency you need at a set, posted exchange rate. This exchange rate is based on what the ship was able to exchange for and in our experience has been comparable to what we could exchange for via ATM or otherwise.  When you make the exchange, DCL provides you with a receipt that shows how much you exchanged and what the rate was.  Then, if you find you have some foreign currency leftover and want to exchange it back, as long as you have your receipt, you may return the foreign currency for your own local currency at the same rate you made the original transaction.  We have sometimes used this service when we weren’t sure if we’d gotten enough cash from other methods and wanted to have some extra, just in case.

The Disney ships will accept cash, checks (up to limited amounts), and travelers checks for currency exchange.  You cannot charge a currency exchange to your stateroom account.  So in order to use the onboard currency exchange, one needs to have something to exchange.  We have taken cash before but never quite feel comfortable with having “that much” cash in hand on the way to the ship, so this time we have decided to use the old-fashioned traveler’s check.  Our bank offers them with no additional fees, so we can get the amount we want, and because they have a guaranteed replacement should they be lost or stolen, we will take the necessary precautions and steps to have the information needed in the unlikely, unfortunate event of their loss.  We also figure that if we have any left over that we don’t exchange for local currency, we will just apply that to our stateroom account (more about that in another blog post).

 

If we don't know about it by now...

Our teenagers have exams this week as the school year is winding down.  There isn't much studying (maybe not any) going on in our house; they seem to ascribe to the "if I don't know it by now, I won't learn it by morning" philosophy. 

That's about where I am regarding our trip planning; if it's not already scheduled, booked, reserved, pre-ticketed, listed, or in the to-be-packed-pile, it's not going to happen. We've done thorough reading and web-searching, interviewed everyone we know who has been to any of the ports where we'll be, and we have a full itinerary scheduled. 

So for the next 13 days, we'll concentrate on the getting ready to go part of vacation - two more days of school; eight more days of work; clean out the refrigerator; pack the suitcases; and oh yeah, somehow I agreed to participate in a neighborhood yard sale!

Got Questions?

 

We’ll be on our way in just over two weeks, so we’re putting out the call now that if anyone has particular things they want to know about, please let us know and we’ll be glad to search out the answers for you while we’re on our adventure.  Whether it’s ship-related, port-related, or excursion-related, leave your question in the comments or contact us otherwise and we’ll do our best to find out for you.  We have had so many questions pre-cruise that it’s been nice to find the answers when we can, so we’d like to return the favor!

Memorial Day

In memory of the men and women who gave their lives for our freedom.

Captain Mickey and his Magic ship

A little more about Athens and Ephesus

One thing about booking ship-sponsored excursions is that once you've decided which one to reserve, you don't have to think much about where you'll be or what you'll be doing; it's all planned for you!  As evidenced by previous posts on our blog, we haven't done much research or additional reading and planning for the ports we have booked through the cruise line, but as our departure nears, I want to do a little more prep, particularly for ports we've not been to before.

The first one is the port of Piraeus, which is in Greece and is the jumping off point for Athens.  We have booked an excursion to take us to the Acropolis and the Archaeological Museum and includes a lunch in the Plaka.  Here is a good website that has more information about Athens.

Another one is Kusadasi which is about 30 km from the ancient city of Ephesus, which used to be a port city in its heydey.  While many of the websites I could find were sponsored by tour guides, I found that they have good pictures and blurbs about the different sites in Ephesus and the surrounding area. It's a great preview of what we'll be looking at with our own eyes before too many more days!

Of course after we have been to each of these ports, we'll be able to offer our own thoughts and experiences about these places and hopefully answer any questions that other travelers might have.