Cruising 101: Wayfinding hints on cruise ships @julescruisecompanion #cruise #cruiseship #travel

It doesn't matter which cruise ship that you're on, a Disney, a carnival or an NCL, there is always something to learn on every new ship that you're on. Are there some little hidden gems in plain sight that you may have missed? Is there an easy way to find your way around a ship without having to think about it every single time? Regardless of which cruise line that you're on, it's really important to know which way the boat is facing. Signage & iconography is another thing in the cruising world that has a little bit of mystery to it, the last thing that we want to do is get onto an amazing cruise ship not know where we are & get lost. All cruise ships have a method of wayfinding with a lot of information. On Coral Princess you can see the name of the deck & the side of the deck that you're on. It has a cutaway schematic of the boat & what is located on each of the decks, then a more in-depth description on what is on the deck. The Little Red Dot tells you you are here. There can be smaller signs for example near lifts that give you the list of all of the decks & all of the public spaces that are on each of the decks. Other signage can give you a hint to which is the front forward or the bow or to the AFT the back of the boat. None of these examples demonstrate midship because you'd have an expectation that you're in the middle between the front & the back, so it doesn't have to explicitly say midship. There are some basic principles to wayfinding but of course there's always exceptions to the rule. If you are looking on the left side of the boat, there are four letters in Left, there are four letters in the word port p-o-r-t, so on the port side or the left side you have the even numbered cabins / staterooms, which also have four letters also. When you’re on the right side of the boat, right has five letters on the starboard side, it has nine letters, a longer word & also an odd numbered word. Therefore the odd staterooms, odd only three letters, are on the right hand side of the ship. Another way that I use to get around a boat is to look at the exit signs because the exit sign has an arrow on it telling you the direction in which the general public should move in an emergency. Where if it was a genuine emergency & you had to go through a crew area & it would be an emergency exit. Gone are the days that we have to gather at our Master station before the boat can leave the shore. We do have some memories of old-time cruisers. Another way of knowing where you are is to look at the door decorations on your cruise ship. What I have done in the past is I have taken magnets so that my door would stand out in a corridor. It wasn't uncommon for people to have a bit of a fun game of rearranging my magnets. Even by the end of a cruise I think I lost quite a few magnets over several cruises. Of course there's always an exception to the rule & today it's Disney, where the fish are on the left hand side of the boat fish being this shorter ladder & left being the shorter word. Seahorses is the longer word so they're on the starboard side. They both point to the back the AFT of the boat. Another exception with Disney is that the even numbers staterooms are the the outward facing staterooms where the odd numbered staterooms are the inward facing State rooms. Disney you're just out to trick us! When you're looking for a stateroom sometimes it's a little difficult because there's no identifying features. Where this is Carnival Splendor, a Joe Farkas interior designed ship & it has these decals that are reminiscent of the Whimsical images. Where other cruise ships such as Coral Princess there are very few landmarks. Maybe you linked to the painting that's opposite to your stateroom door for example. Where most stateroom decks look very similar & it's not uncommon to get lost. This larger surface area of the ship of course would be the carpeted spaces & none of these carpets give you any indication to which direction that you are travelling. One thing that NCL does is it has little fish on the carpet & the fish swim towards the front of the boat. Another thing that Disney does is the map is always facing towards the front of the boat & also the top of the star on any of the carpets also points to the front of the boat. Another way to stay oriented is some cruise lines change the mat in the lift to the day of the week. This is especially helpful on those longer cruises (21, 23, 28 days) when sometimes you can just lose track of time. Other absolutely fabulous ways of orienting yourself to the ship is to find the adults only area sometimes called the Sanctuary. These are available on most cruise ships; you just have to know where to look. I hope you've had some little gems, some little ways to stop you getting lost on a cruise ship but then again being lost on a cruise ship would be a fairly amazing place to get lost. Stay safe everybody & happy travels Edited by VideoGuru:https://videoguru.page.link/Best