Take Five: the Best Tools for Planning a Cruise

With the explosion of cruising has come an explosion of websites, blogs, books, videos and social media postings—it can really be overwhelming.

I’ve pulled out a few of what I consider among the best resources to read, hear and learn what you need to get the very best out of your cruise vacation:

Cruisecritic.com – This is the “Oasis class” of cruise planning sites, with tons of ship and port reviews, industry news and roll calls. Its forum is so robust that cruisers are posting just about every minute of every day.

There are specialty forums too, where like-minded folks congregate on topics ranging from “Lose Before You Cruise” (weight, not money) and “Cruise Foodies” to “Family Cruises” and “Solo Cruises.”

Cruise Radio – Not only does this site and its newsletter have useful and interesting articles, but it also features podcasts and YouTube videos.

Don’s Family Vacations – Don does video quite a lot on YouTube, giving it to you straight, from cruise tips to cruise trip-ups—and all done in a rather endearing way. He’s both informative and entertaining.

Cruise Control – Bill Panoff also does great videos—from ship reviews to special topics such as the newest technology on the high seas.

Cruisedeckplans.com – When it comes to picking your stateroom, this site is invaluable. Its

versatile functionality allows you to see several decks on one page, convert to PDF and print, bump up the size, and drag decks over each other to see what’s above and below.

If you hover over a room, you get a diagram and general square footage for a category. There are some actual photos of particular rooms and even a few comments of areas to steer clear of because of noise and other issues.

What’s your favorite cruise planning site? Share it here!