Vacation Cruising

First and foremost, bring lots and lots of disposable cameras. They are small and convenient, plus you won’t have to worry about toting around your expensive digital.

Bring at least two times as much as you think you will need, especially if you cruise in the fall-you can always use the extras at Christmas. Better to have it and not pay cruise ship prices!

Buy waterproof cameras for those activities you’ll be doing that involve water. This is true especially if you’ll be snorkeling or scuba diving. Pictures of underwater life taken by you are ones that are not easily forgotten.

I know of one couple who left for their cruise with 8 disposable cameras and ran out of them on the third day! If you’re on a budget, budget your pictures too unless you want to pay significantly more for extra cameras on board or in port. Be sure and take the pictures of what you really want to remember or show off to others.

These days, they do have cheap digital cameras for when you don't want to take your expensive one and possibly lose it. For $17.50, it is palm size and can still take 64mb of pictures. Not bad...and it fits in the fanny pack which expensive ones might not.

If you do take your digital, make sure you have an extra memory stick and plenty of batteries. Those of us who use our digital cameras extensively know that those puppies eat up the batteries. If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to invest in rechargeable batteries and a charger. Then you can just plug in the charger in the evening and have fresh ones for the next day.

If you have a laptop, definitely take it along with your digital camera. Each day you can take tons of pictures then download them into the laptop so you’re not limited to the memory available in the camera. This will allow you the opportunity to take more pictures that you can dream and print them out once you get home!

The ship will have professional photographers on board for formal portraits. These are wonderful keepsakes to bring home, but they can be quite expensive. Wait until the last day of the cruise and stop by the photo shop to see if they will discount your pictures. Many will.

Just keep "stacking" your photos that you might be interested in buying on a bottom shelf of the display rack (no one will bother them) and on the last day of the cruise some cruise lines will cut the prices in HALF! Then, not only do you get photos at half the price, but also the "impulse-buying" issue has hopefully passed and you only go home with photos you will actually use!

Even though you’re on vacation, some people just can’t do without keeping in touch with the outside world. We’ll briefly look at how to do this while on the cruise ship.