Lugging Your Luggage and Other Things You Should Know About Getting Your Stuff Onboard and Off

One of the great things about cruising is that once you unpack, you don’t need to look at your luggage again for the rest of the trip. 

But that doesn’t make getting it on and off any less painful.

There are a few things we’ve discovered along the way, though, that have eased the burden a bit:

Plasticize your cruise tags. Printing the paper cruise luggage tags and stapling them to the handles is a hassle. And it’s way too easy for them to come off. Some folks laminate them. But investing just a few dollars in Amazon will get you plastic cruise tag holders with a secure wire clasp. Beats paper and staples anytime.

Shower your suitcase with color. Regular readers of this blog may remember our recent horror story of how our suitcase was taken by mistake in the cruise terminal and almost ended up 700 miles away from home. Tie a yellow ribbon—or a fuchsia one, for that matter—and whatever else will identify your case as your own. Be sure to add your name and contact info. A lock on it won’t hurt either.

Ensure your bags are ship shape. You don’t want to get to sea and discover you can only get at your clothing with a knife. Or that you need duct tape to keep it all in your suitcase when you leave. We’ve come uncomfortably close to getting in a jam—literally.

Watch your pockets. Be careful what you store in the outside pockets of your suitcase. There was a sad story in a Cruise Critic forum of a couple who put their passports in their suitcase outside pocket. With the chaos at drop-off, their suitcases were swiftly hauled away—before the couple could take out their passports. So their luggage went on the cruise without them.

Tip the bag handler. I don’t know about other ports, but in Port Everglades, if you want to ever see your bags again, be ready to tip the guy who takes them. Seriously.

What to carry on in your carryon. Aside from the usual stuff—medicines, valuables, etc.—bring anything breakable with you. If you ever saw how the bag handlers handled the bags, you’d cringe. If you ever saw the bags piled high on the carts and knew yours was on the bottom, you’d cringe. If you ever saw the way the crew dragged them through the ship hallways, you’d cringe. You get the picture.

Go door to door. If your stuff doesn’t show up by evening, wander the halls. More than once, we’ve found ours in front of someone else’s door.

Give ‘em up or keep ‘em with you? For the first time in 20+ cruises, we decided to do a walk off with our bags when we left. It was an experiment. The upside? We didn’t have to rush to meet that 11 p.m. deadline the night before to get our bags outside the door, sit around the next day for our number to be called and then hope our luggage was still there in the terminal. We could stroll out of the ship—albeit laden with luggage—whenever we felt like it.

There was a downside, though. The walk from room to pavement is a long and crowded one.

Alas, I’m sorry to say, on Disembarkation Day, there’s no easy way!