I was worried about that too.
Your carry on, allows you to get started cruising before your luggage gets to the room. Once you get your room key, that is Used for all ship transactions & then they bill you at the end. The only cash money we used was the casino, but you can use your room key to get cash from the cashier. & you can use cash or credit card on shore. I did call my credit card company to let them know that we are going on a cruise so they wouldn't stop my credit card ( they did that to me one time because they thought it was stolen)
My carry on bag was my beach bag. I had my passport, tickets, swim suites cover up, mp3 player, lotion, medicines, camera's, sunglasses,& a cover up. I got to my room, put medicines in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, got my suite on & a nice cover up, picked up the newsletter that was in the room, read what was going on,
walked some of the ship as we went to grab a quick lunch near the pool & went & layed out with my mp3 player. (boy I'm ready to go again)
I think nice cover ups are a good thing. it allowed me to feel comfortable if I wanted to go for a quick shopping trip on the way to the pool flip flops. You can get burnt quickly with the ship moving their is always a nice breeze so I didn't realize how much sun I was getting.
Any bathing suite but the ships pools are salt water, the hot tubs are fresh water.
My husband wore a blazer & tie, I wore a nice pant suite. They take lots of pictures. They must have 6 backdrops on the way to the dining hall & they have professional photographers.( I must admit it was the nices picture of the two of us since our wedding) Noshorts were allowed in the dining room but they had a casual buffet at the windjammer cafe. We liked the food in the dining room better so we mostly ate there.
People who sat with us at the table didn't have a suite or tie on & they were served.
Our cuise had lightning & thunderstorms when we docked so we went through most of our clothes but they will charge a little & do your laundry, I wish I would have taken a light raincoat or cape
it would have given me more comfort.
If you're diving up to the ship & you pre- check-in they will send you tags (similar to airline luggage tags) you put them on your bags at home & put them on every bag you're not carrying on. You by-pass all those that didn't pre register. drive up, drop off those bags keep your carry on with the stuff I mentioned above & get in line to get on board, they do scan it. My point is your carry on can be what ever you want. so a specific size doesn't apply, but you do need to be able to manuver through the narrow hallways.
this is just my experience
Enjoy your trip
