Planning your first cruise can be a challenge for those who either haven't travelled much or who haven't taken an organized tour or vacation. How do you plan that first cruise? Family and friends often get together to discuss where they want to travel or vacation next. You might have heard cruise tales from and seen (or been subjected to) cruise vacation pictures taken by your family and friends, or read in magazines and the Web about how much fun (and economical) cruising can be. If you want to ‘take the plunge’ and go on your first cruise, where do you start? Better start from the Internet. Go to main pages of cruise travel avoiding numerous middlemen and various agencies, pick the tour you like, and book it online.

But there are a few tips for ‘fresh’ cruisers. One of them is that every cruise ship aims to get high grades for service, and much is invested in training the crew. Sometimes foreign staffers tend to go overboard in their efforts to please, do forgive their expression. In a restaurant on a ship, you might be asked the same question several times by mechanistic people-pleasers if you enjoy your soup. Simply enjoy your soup and take much of it – once you get back home no one will care whether you like it or not.