You are not limited by the only variant of an appetizer, main dish, or dessert served at the main restaurant. You can order for instance 2 side dishes and 3 desserts. You can also order a main course as an appetizer or order several various appetizers as the main dish. It is an excellent way to try dishes that you are not sure about as you may not like them. 

Most passengers have dinner at the main restaurant or at the buffet restaurant on their first cruise evening without knowing that they can do it somewhere else. Thus, if you choose an alternative specialty restaurant onboard for the first evening of your cruise you can get discounts offered by some cruise lines (Celebrity, for instance). Carnival passengers having dinner at the Steakhouse on the first evening of their cruise are presented with, for instance, a bottle of high-quality wine. 

Specialty coffee houses on board offer free appetizers, sandwiches, and other tasty food when ordering drinks. You will have to pay extra for some special dishes, such as strawberry in chocolate, for instance, whereas other “small joys” which are served with the coffee will be absolutely free of charge for you. 

Do you like ice cream? You can buy several branded varieties of it onboard, for instance, by the famous Gelateria on Costa Diadema. And yet, you can find a free variant almost always, which is represented by ice cream machines on the Lido deck or at the buffet breakfast. Don’t forget to make an investigation as ice cream served on the different sides of the deck can taste different. 

On the day of the boarding, most passengers go directly to the buffet restaurant to have some snacks and wait for their cabin to be ready. As a result, the real pandemonium begins. Few people however know that some other places are available at that time, for instance, the main restaurant or the mini-distribution located in the atrium hall or near the swimming pool. Ask the members of the cruise ship staff or consult with the cruise ship program concerning this. For instance, International Cafe, Pizzeria, and Grill are available on the Princess Cruises while boarding or you can visit Sorrento, Solarium, Park Cafes, Giovanni Table, Cafe Promenade, and Starbucks on the Royal Caribbean cruise ships. 

Don’t you know what evening to dedicate to your visit to alternative specialty restaurants? The main restaurant has a carefully planned menu for a week, and stewards have access to it. Ask them to bring you the weekly menu and then decide when you would like to necessarily have dinner there and what days you can prefer something else. 

The “drink where you have already paid” rule does not work onboard. You can bring a drink from the bar and the buffet restaurant to your cabin or any other place, and nobody will mess about it. This rule is related to food onboard as well.

It is a well-known fact that it is more profitable to buy a whole bottle of wine than a couple of glasses. And yet, what should you do if you can not drink it up? It is not a problem, as the waiters will mark your bottle and keep it for the next evening or even send it to another restaurant for dinner. 

In most cases, you can take a reasonable quantity of soft drinks with you having thus saved on carbonated drinks and drinking water 

The Bible in your cabin is usually used by passengers not only for praying. Some of them use it as a convenient storage place for coupons, and valid discount cards. Check your item of this holy book and, perhaps, you will get a surprise!

Most cruise ship cabins are made of metal which means that you can have some magnets with you (or buy a couple of souvenir magnets onboard) to use as holders for your party invitations, time reminders concerning your table reservations, and other small items. 

There is no natural light in the interior cabins at all. That is why we recommend that you set up the channel with an exterior web camera of the cruise ship on your TV, switch off the sound, and enjoy a porthole imitation! It will also help you to understand if the sun came up in the morning. 

Considering the number of all the electronic devices which we usually carry with us on board you can easily face the lack of sockets in your cabin. It is worth taking a triple adaptor or a power surge protector, but you should consult the cruise ship rules concerning it in advance, or ask a steward whether they have it on board. You can also get an additional socket having switched off a TV or a bedside night lamp. 

Are you worried about whether the bed in your cabin is comfortable enough? On some premium-class cruise ships, they can provide you with super comfortable mattresses and various types of pillows on request. Ask a steward about it.

Cabin designers are amazingly creative in inventing various storage spaces. Don’t be shy about investigating all the corners of your cabin or asking your steward to provide you with a short cabin excursion. You will be surprised having found an additional storage place under your bed, for instance, inside a sofa, or behind the mirror.

If you feel that you are starting to have a motion disease do not hurry to go to the cruise ship drugstore. In this case, you should better call reception. Room service personnel can bring you green apples or salted crackers (it works according to them), whereas pills for motion disease can be found free of charge on most cruise ships.