Have Cruise Ships Become Too Good at Keeping Us Busy?

Sometimes the hardest part of a cruise vacation is remembering that we’re allowed to do nothing.

There’s an old joke about someone returning from vacation and saying, “I’m glad to be home. Now I can finally get some rest.”

I used to think that was mostly a joke, but we have certainly had those trips that required a vacation from our vacation. Take a look at most schedules on modern cruise ships, and you can easily start feeling overwhelmed.

Breakfast at 8, followed by trivia at 9, and then a destination presentation at 10. Maybe a cooking demonstration, a wine tasting, a little time at the pool, lunch somewhere in between, dinner at 5:30 and a show at 8. And that’s before we’ve considered the live music, shopping events, game shows, or whatever else the cruise director has managed to squeeze into the day.

Somewhere in there, we should probably find time to relax, though the next thing you know, it’s 10:30 at night, you’re exhausted, and you need to get to bed because tomorrow is a port day.

Cruise ships have become incredibly good at making sure we never have to be bored. The question is whether we’ve become equally good at remembering that we don’t have to do everything they offer.

When the Daily Planner Starts Looking Like a To-Do List

One of the things I love about cruising is the variety. On a sea day, I can go from a destination lecture to a trivia contest, wander through an art gallery, listen to live music, grab something to eat and still have a theater show waiting for me that evening. If none of that sounds appealing, I can find a chair somewhere and watch the ocean.

The ship gives us choices. Lots of them.

But there’s a funny thing that happens when you put all those choices into a daily planner. Suddenly, they start looking less like possibilities and more like a list of things we’re supposed to accomplish.

We look through the schedule and start circling activities. That sounds interesting. We should go to that. Oh, we can’t miss this one. And if we’re not careful, we’ve managed to turn a day with absolutely no obligations into something that looks suspiciously like a work calendar.

Of course, nobody is forcing us to attend the towel-folding demonstration, and yes, some ships still have those. But there’s a little voice in the back of our heads that says, “We’re on vacation. We should make the most of it.”

And sometimes, making the most of it becomes trying to do all of it.

Thirty Years of Cruising Has Changed Us. Mostly.

When Susan and I first started cruising nearly 30 years ago, we wanted to do everything. Every activity seemed new, every port was an opportunity, and we didn’t want to miss a thing. I’m sure there were times when we came home with more energy spent than when we left.

Over the years, we’ve gotten a little better at understanding that we don’t have to participate in every activity or get off the ship at every port. If we’ve been somewhere before, or if we simply need a day to ourselves, we’re perfectly comfortable staying onboard. Sometimes the best part of a port day is enjoying a quieter ship while everyone else is ashore.

But I should probably admit that we haven’t completely mastered this whole relaxation thing.

We have one rule that has apparently survived three decades of cruising: we do not miss the main theater show.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a comedian, a production show, a singer, a magician or some performance we probably wouldn’t have purchased tickets to see at home. If it’s in the main theater, we’re going. We’ve even been known to skip dinner after a long day in port and take a nap instead, just to make sure we have enough energy to make it to the show.

Apparently, we’ve learned to relax, but only within certain boundaries.

And I’m perfectly fine with that. The shows are one of the things we genuinely enjoy about cruising. The point isn’t that we should stop doing things we love, but it’s that we should be able to skip the things we don’t care about without feeling like we’re missing out.

Susan, Her Kindle and the Paper Planner

The daily planner has also become a bit of a ritual in our cabin.

Most cruise lines now make their schedules available through their apps, which is convenient. You can check activity times, dining information, entertainment and all sorts of other details without carrying a piece of paper around the ship.

Susan however, still wants the printed planner delivered to our room, every day.

This is particularly funny because she had absolutely no problem transitioning from physical books to her Kindle. In fact, I’m not sure she’d want to go back. But when it comes to the cruise ship’s daily planner, apparently technology has gone a step too far.

If the paper planner isn’t waiting in our room when we get back from dinner or the show, she’s disappointed. And in this case, her being disappointed means I’ll be visiting Guest Services shortly. Reading through tomorrow’s activities before bed has become part of her cruise routine. She’ll look at what’s happening, decide what sounds interesting and start figuring out what kind of day we might have.

I have to admit, there’s something nice about that little paper planner. It’s a reminder that tomorrow is full of possibilities, and for once, most of them are things we actually get to choose.

Of course, we don’t always use the planner the way the cruise line intended.

Sometimes we’re looking for the biggest activity on the schedule, and not because we want to attend, but because we figure it might be a good time to be somewhere else. If half the ship is heading to a pool-deck party, that could be the perfect opportunity to find a quiet lounge, enjoy another part of the ship or perhaps discover that the pool we actually want to use is suddenly a lot less crowded.

So yes, we still plan our days, but we’ve just gotten a little better at planning what we don’t want to do.

The Luxury of Doing Nothing Isn’t Always Available

There’s an important distinction here though, because I don’t think every cruise should be approached with the goal of doing less.

Sometimes the destination is the entire reason we booked the trip.

If we’ve traveled halfway around the world and the ship is docking near Rome, Venice, Amsterdam or Singapore, I’m not going to suggest that the enlightened thing to do is stay onboard and take a nap. Those are places we may have dreamed about visiting for years, and we want to experience them, even if for the second or third time.

On those cruises, the days can be long. We may leave the ship early, spend hours exploring, come back tired, grab a quick bite and still find ourselves heading to the theater that evening. We might return home physically exhausted, but with memories we wouldn’t trade for anything.

That’s a different kind of vacation, and it’s one we also love.

Other trips serve a different purpose. Sometimes we don’t need to see another cathedral, visit another museum or take another excursion. We just need to get away. On those cruises, the luxury of doing nothing becomes part of what we’re looking forward to.

The trick is recognizing which kind of trip we’ve planned and which kind of trip we’re on, rather than assuming every vacation has to accomplish the same thing.

FOMO Has a Way of Following Us Onboard

I think fear of missing out plays a bigger role in vacation planning than we sometimes realize.

We see photos of people doing incredible things, read about must-see attractions, watch videos of the newest cruise ship features and start building a mental list of everything we’re supposed to experience. By the time we actually leave for vacation, we can feel as though we’ve already committed ourselves to a schedule.

And then the cruise line hands us another schedule.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make the most of a trip. If you’ve saved for years to visit a particular destination, of course you want to see and do as much as you reasonably can. But there’s a difference between choosing an experience because it matters to you and choosing it because you’re afraid you’ll regret not doing it.

That distinction becomes especially important on a cruise ship, where there will almost always be something else happening. You can’t attend every activity, eat at every restaurant, see every performance, visit every lounge and still have time to sit on the balcony and watch the ocean.

At some point, you have to decide what matters most. For us apparently, that includes the main theater show. Everything else is negotiable.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think the answer is for cruise lines to offer fewer activities. Quite the opposite. I love that there’s so much available, and I appreciate the work that goes into creating an experience where different people can find different things to enjoy.

Some cruisers want a packed schedule from morning until midnight, while others want a book, a quiet chair and perhaps a cocktail sometime in the afternoon. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between, depending on the day.

The luxury isn’t necessarily doing nothing. It’s having the freedom to decide that doing nothing is exactly what you want to do, without feeling guilty about it.

And sometimes the best way to enjoy everything a ship has to offer is to leave a little space in the day for something you didn’t plan. A conversation with someone you just met. A quiet walk around the promenade. An extra hour sitting by the pool. Or simply watching the ocean and realizing you have absolutely nowhere else you need to be.

Those moments rarely appear in the daily planner, but they can become some of the ones we remember most.

Maybe the goal isn’t to come home from a cruise having done everything. Maybe it’s to come home feeling like we actually had a vacation, whether that meant exploring a city we’ve dreamed about visiting, enjoying a full day of activities or spending an afternoon doing absolutely nothing.

Because as much as I enjoy a good trivia contest, I’m pretty sure nobody has ever looked back on their life and wished they’d attended one more cruise ship towel-folding demonstration.

Of course, if there’s a main theater show that evening, we’ll probably need to set an alarm for the nap.