Children at Christmas

Can anybody who took a cruise over Christmas and the New Year please tell me how many children were on board? Thanks.

this will depend on several factors such as itinerary, length of cruise and departure date.

This year on Odyssey there are four or five kids, most are under 7 years old. It's a 20 day cruise. In my experience a shorter cruise of eg 14 days will have more kids.

If kids are an issue for you avoid any Christmas cruise. The odds are against you.

There were 20+ children on our 14 day Cape Town to Cape Town Christmas cruise in 2014. :eek:

Also on Odyssey right now and agree with earlier post, approx 5 children this year, which makes for a far more quiet pool deck, especially on sea days.

Just off Sojourn and I would say there were 30 plus under 21s. Someone mentioned a figure of 40 odd but have no hard evidence to substantiate. A very different demographic to anything we have experienced in the past.

On the whole not too badly behaved. A bit rowdy jumping in the pool at times and sadly parents seemed unable or unwilling to control. Dress in the dining room was questionable particularly by one family. Shorts & flip flops aren't suitable regardless of age. For what it's worth there are bigger fish to fry in the main dining room at the moment.

Whilst I know Seabourn is not kiddie friendly but failing to arrange a single ice breaking event for them let alone ongoing youth activities was a massive oversight.

Some children were travelling with parents & grandparents, others part of a more conventional unit but however you slice the cake those 40? kids represented potentially 100 or so guests out of 450. Particularly with larger ships on the horizon SB can't afford to alienate 1/4 of their guests. I know of 3 under 21s, Emily included responsible for 9 passengers.

There isn't much you can do about 12-18 month old babies but there were a good many extremely well presented and behaved young people who deserved the opportunity to identify each other and mix.

Henry :)

jag60uk - I am assuming you would prefer to cruise over Christmas without there being children on the ship? If so, sadly the only certain alternatives would be a Saga ship or one of the P and O ones which do not allow children, or perhaps Swan Hellenic, who never seem to have any children on board.

If you like Seabourn these alternatives are not brilliant, although Minerva does have some charms if you are into intellectual travelling and do not mind the much less spacious cabins etc. etc.

We did one on Saga Sapphire a while ago, just after Christmas, and although it was not terrible, we certainly did not enjoy it as much as we would have done on a Seabourn or similar ship - and it cost nearly as much, and holds about 700 passengers.

Henry - I am surprised that Seabourn did not provide some special staff to occupy/entertain the children on your cruise, when there were so many of them. I understand that this has happened in the past. Did you make any enquiries as to why this was not happening?

We were on a cruise on Regent this summer - not a favourite line for other reasons - and there were, understandably as it was in the summer hols., quite a few children on board, but they did employ two young women who certainly provided occupations for different age groups at different times, and apart from one day when we had a large group dive-bombing in the pool, not being watched over by the father, it was fairly peaceful, and both children and parents enjoyed the special treatment.

Thanks everyone for the info. As attractive as the idea of cruising over the festive period is, the number of families/children would be enough to put me off the idea.

What about the Antarctica Holiday cruise? Given the cost I can't imagine that one at tracks many families with children.

Make that "attracts."

I don't think cost is necessarily an issue, the holiday cruises are generally the most expensive of the year. The issue is that the Antartic cruise finished too late into January. Kids had to be back at school.

We've done 3 consecutive holiday cruises on Sojourn and this was the only one where there were significant numbers of youth on board. For what it's worth the majority handled themselves extremely well even down to a couple of very young Oriental boys who put 90% of the adults to shame on formal night. Good parenting.

I didn't raise the issue of no mixers for the youngsters with David E. I'm outward going enough to break ice where it needs to be broken and Ems found friendship. The issue is whether there were missed opportunities. Young people have social pressures which old people have long since given up caring about so a little helping hand would be great.

What did surprise me was hearing Silverseas - a line I've always associated with an older demographic than SB, organised pool water polo for youngsters according to a Swiss family.

I know kids are a sensitive subject and I am caught somewhat with a foot in both camps, hopefully understanding the type of youth / family group for whom SB might work. Ultimately the only way to avoid undesirables is to private charter but that is extremely expensive.

Henry :)

In my experience, older children are not a problem. All they generally want to do is to hang out with each other and avoid adults. But younger children require more work, need more supervision and need activities to channel their youthful energy. And if there are going to be a number of younger children on board then Seabourn probably should make an effort in this area.

Well the lack of programs surprises me as well given the note in the 2015-2016 Seabourn brochure. Page 59, that talks about the introduction of a youth program.during the summer season. You would think they would also offer it on the holiday cruises.

We just got off shadow.

We had 5 under 12s. They dedicated a conference room as a children's play room. The kids were all extremely well behaved and dressed. There were no decimated pool games but the kids were invited to join golf, table tennis, pool volleyball etc.

There were about 10 17-23yo. They really only got together on NYE and continued their party in other areas of the ship until the sun was almost up. Miss W did express that the younger group was much less social than our Antarctic trip but this could well have been a function of large family groups travelling together.

I have to admit I was concerned about big groups when I was wavering between the 2. Seem ps like the stars aligned for us...

 

Whoa.

Whoa.

Well they were Asian but not Indian, Possibly Chinese but could have been from a number of other countries. Appologies if "Oriental" offended. It most certainly wasn't intended to.

Having searched the term on the internet I am now aware of the debate surrounding it and potential offence. I shall refrain from using it forthwith.

Henry

For what it's worth the majority handled themselves extremely well even down to a couple of very young Oriental boys who put 90% of the adults to shame on formal night. Good parenting.

Vases are Oriental. People are Asian.

In the future you may wish to read threads in their entirety before posting. He'd offered up a mea culpa a long while before you picked on the same thing socsthecat did.

Vases are Oriental. People are Asian.

Although both can be called Ming

What about the Antarctica Holiday cruise? Given the cost I can't imagine that one at tracks many families with children.

We just did this cruise. There were maybe 10 kids on the ship, with the youngest being 6-ish I'd say and the oldest being 19. Of that number, two families had 3 kids each. And no, I don't think cost has anything to do with it. Kids going on that cruise need to be ok entertaining themselves (no shipboard activities provided, at least that we saw or heard about) and need to love the great outdoors or they'll be bored out of their minds.

Thanks for the update. We have now booked this cruise and are very much looking forward to it. Off topic - did you take any private tours that you would recommend. I am just starting preliminary research but will focus more once we return from a Feb-March land trip to Oz/NZ and a June Med Seabourn cruise. But if there is some must do tour I need to book early will do so now.

Chairsin,

If Falklands is on the agenda and you are doing the penguins, Nyree from Estancia Excursions is awesome.

We did it independant of the ship and for the price of 1 on SB all 3 of us had a much better trip. We were out there a good 10-15 mins before the ship tour which meant there were about 15 of us and the penguins. Nyree left just in front of the cruise group and we had a short drive and look around town before getting back on the tender.

She asks for payment in GBP (it was slightly more expensive to pay in USD). She fills quickly so I'd start the process with her now.

I didn't do any other booked tours as I had already planned how I was going to do things independently (e.g. walking up the Glacier in Ushuaia) or wanted to go whitewater rafting which was a one company only and they had contracted to the ship.

MrsWaldo,

Thank you for the feedback. Not sure how it was when you did the cruise but now the cruises either go to South Georgia Island OR the Falklands. And so many friends raved about SGI that we picked that cruise so unfortunately we will not be visiting the Falklands. I do appreciate the info and I am curious about your comment regarding walking the glacier in Ushuaia. That sounds like something we would enjoy doing as we will walking on a glacier in NZ as part of a heli-hiking excursion we will be doing next month . Can you please give me more information on this?

Vases are Oriental. People are Asian.

i think the "oriental" comment was perfectly fine - nothing hurtful in the intent - i do tire of this political correctness nonsense however.

i think the "oriental" comment was perfectly fine - nothing hurtful in the intent - i do tire of this political correctness nonsense however.

Amen!