Good Scavenger Hunt Ideas for a Cruise

Cruise ships are known for making travel easy. Food is provided, rooms are cleaned twice a day and passengers are given an itinerary each day with a list of many different activities to join. One of those activities may be a scavenger hunt. While a cruise ship may be a floating island, there are plenty of hidden treasures that scavenger hunt participants will have fun trying to find.

Though passengers will be used to seeing the cruise ship's name on cups, towels and programs, a real life saver hanging on the ship is a bit more difficult. There may be some without the ship's name, and those won't count. Because these shouldn't be removed from where they hang, have passengers take digital images next to the life saver as proof they found it.

It's hard to find a cruise ship without at least one ping-pong table, but it may be hard to find a ping-pong ball on the cruise ship because of the location of that table. The sports or "play" section of many ships is far from the pool and buffet, the two most popular areas. Unless passengers have truly explored the entire ship, they may have missed the mini-golf course, rock wall and ping-pong table, making it difficult to find those balls.

While ping-pong tables, golf courses and basketball courts are on the play/sports deck of the ship, the oversized chess/checkers board is often right smack in the middle, next to the pool. These giant boards are painted on the deck, which means they are walked on and often overlooked. The pieces may be pushed to the side or handed out at special request. If they're too heavy for older passengers, a digital photo could serve as proof they were found.

The towel animal is a fun surprise passengers receive after their room has been cleaned. Though all passengers may know what they look like, finding one at certain hours may make the hunt a little more difficult. Asking cruise ship crew may be the only way to find one, and how many passengers will think of that may be a surprise.

One popular game to play on a cruise ship is bingo. Usually, these games are played once or twice a day at specific times. If the scavenger hunt takes place during one of these games, buying a bingo card is an easy find. However, finding one when a game isn't happening is a little more challenging and will require participants to ask other passengers if they have old bingo cards they'd be willing to part with.