Onboard a cruise ship space is at a premium. While it is true that you paid hard earned cash for the vacation, it is important to be considerate of the others. One of the very few drawbacks of a cruise vacation is the necessity of sharing relatively limited public areas. The need to share these areas means, we all have to follow certain rules of cruise etiquette. Although the thousands of passengers onboard come from all over the world and have a multitude of cultural backgrounds, there are certain rules we can all follow.

Follow the Dress Code

People often use the excuse “it’s my vacation and I dress however I want”. This may be true but there are also thousands of other people onboard with whom you chose to share your vacation. Many people really look forward to the atmosphere formal night or other theme nights provide and it is selfish to ruin it for those people because it is “your vacation”. The daily program tells you what the appropriate attire is for each evening, the cruise lines have spend a lot of time making these guidelines, so please follow them.

Control Your Children

Children do the darnedest things, but sometimes those things aren’t appropriate for a cruise ship. While you may be amused by watching junior and his sister splash in the pool the other people getting splashed may not think it is so great. For both their safety and the safety of others, parents should never leave their children unsupervised.

Do not be a Chair Hog

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar. You get up early to get a seat by the pool. When you get to the pool deck you find that all of the favorable chairs have been covered in towels, yet no one is around. A few hours later, a few people show up to finally make use of their spots. In my opinion this is very selfish behavior, no ship has enough deck space to accommodate a chair for every passenger so when someone with no plans to use a chair claims one all of the other passengers lose.

Wait your turn

I understand that no one wants to waste a moment of vacation time waiting it is inevitable. There are times when certain areas of the ship will develop fairly long lines (debarkation, tender boats, certain buffets). For your safety and the safety of those around you please respect the fact that order does need to be maintained even if it means you have to wait for sushi or end up getting off the ship twenty minutes later than you had hoped.

Do not be needlessly loud

People go to sleep and wake up at different times. We all need to respect that not everyone lives his or her lives the way we do. In an effort to respect that please, don’t make unnecessary noise. What I mean by that is yelling in cabins and hallways, slamming doors or turning the volume on the television or CD player to eleven.

While these are just the basics of how someone should behave on a cruise ship or in general, there are many other rules of etiquette that can be listed. I chose the ones that are most often ignored to write about but what it all comes down to is even though it is “your vacation”, but please respect that it is also “their vacation”.