JenniVamp

Underwear.

Thankfully this was before I started limiting how much we packed, so hubby had extras. Oddly enough, I found hubby's fit me just fine and were quite comfy!

I also forgot to pack t-shirts on our cruise to Hawaii. Made due with hubby's clothes again, but now I make sure to pack a flannel shirt/ sweater. It can get chilly on the ship!

Jennifer

We have a City Select and an Inglesina Zippy. The City Select had to be folded to fit thru the cabin doors, and that was super inconvenient . The Zippy was just the right size. Sorry I'm not sure of the measurements for comparison.

It was a pain to try and unload our twins from the City Select during naps, so we got stuck hanging out in the hallway a few times!

Jennifer

We have 4 kids (2, 4, 4, and 7) and while I can't help with Freedom specifically (we won't be on Freedom until August), we've taken many cruises with Carnival.

Our cruise vacations are family time for us, and we really do like to be together as a family as much as possible on the ship. We're in the minority - our kids don't have experience with being left with non-family members. It's just not how we've chosen to raise our kids, and we're blessed to have family that lives close to help with the kids when needed. With that said - I can relate to families with kids that don't do especially well in Camp Carnival.

The younger kids love it, so we review the schedule each day and if there's something that they want to do, we arrange to have them there for the activity. There have been days where I've sat reading a book just outside of the kids club so that my oldest would feel "safe" staying and playing. Now that we know that the oldest isn't going to "outgrow" whatever causes her to not enjoy social situations, we don't force the issue. Each child is different and we just go with that.

I wish that Carnival had more family together activities. Because we have the 2 year-old, we've always been able to get a cell phone for the cruise that allows them to contact us immediately if the kids want to leave. Since the kids know that I'll get them whenever they're done, they will actually stay and play for a few hours. It helps that they know that I can be reached whenever.

For family fun, we take the kids miniature golfing, or we'll go to the candy shop and let them each pick out a few pieces of candy. On the Miracle last summer, we spent hours at the Red Frog Pub with them. When no one else was around, they were able to pretend to play some of the games. The staff on the Miracle was absolutely wonderful with the kids. We're always aware of how what our kids are doing impacts the other passengers (comes from working in the service industry), so we corral them as needed, but my kids love cruising.

We also hunt for places on the ship that are out of the way where the kids can climb (sit politely) on the furniture and look out the windows.

Hope your trip on the Freedom is wonderful!

We had the Vista Suite on our cruise to Hawaii in 2014. The balcony was amazing, nearly the size of the cabin itself, if I remember correctly.

We were traveling with my husband and I, our 4 little kids (1, 3, 3, 6) and my parents. Although we booked a total of 3 cabins, 6 of us stayed in the suite (leaving one cabin unused), so it was very cozy! The odd layout actually worked better for us because we could separate the baby, who needed a couple of naps a day and an earlier bedtime, from the rest of the kids. It was also nice to have the sitting area separate from the sleeping area.

We loved it, would do it again in a heartbeat, especially for a trip to Hawaii! But, there's probably a reason that it's set up for 3 people and not 6 - it was a very tight fit. The closet area was nice, but if there had only been 2 or 3 of us in the suite, it wouldn't have been all that useful.

The whirlpool tub was nice, but I only used it maybe twice in 15 days for myself. Great for bathing all four kids at once, though!

Best views ever.

Jennifer

My favorite comes from a B2B cruise that my kiddos and I took on the Imagination in November 2015. For the first leg of the trip, I cruised solo with just me and my 4 kiddos, ages 1, 3, 3, and 6. Yikes! It was a trip that I booked at the last second - booked on a Thursday, on the ship on Sunday - but Grandma, Auntie's and a boatload of cousins joined us for the second leg.

The kiddos didn't spend much time in the kids club, but the baby loved the one morning that I was able to drop him off for about an hour during the time for under 2's.

At the end of the trip, I was walking the baby around in the stroller and one the ladies from the kids club came up and said, "Oh, I've been looking for you! We wanted Sebastian to have this." and she handed my son a teddy bear with a Carnival t-shirt on it. He grabbed onto that bear and still sleeps with it every night, almost a year and a half later. We named the bear Stella Jude. Stella after mommy's favorite beer (I drank a lot on that trip!), and Jude, because she was wearing a Carnival/St Jude t-shirt.

That teddy bear was just the icing on the cake of that trip!

We're very close to our kids. On cruises, we don't take them to the kids club unless they want to play, and they know that we'll come and get them as soon as they're done and want to leave. So, on any given cruise, we spend very little time in the kids club. It was so wonderful to have had the kids club employees remember my son and take the time to put his name on a gift and then search us out to give it to him! The older kids all spent time in the kids club, and enjoyed the play time, but for the baby, there's only a limited amount of play time that under two's have at Camp Carnival.

It gives me warm fuzzies every time I put Bastian to bed with his Stella.

Thank you Carnival Imagination!

Jennifer

We've sailed on the Miracle with the kiddos often. We've been on deck 4, 6 and 8. Deck 6 was nice. One floor down to the kids club, and a handful of flights up to get to the Lido deck for breakfast/lunch. We didn't have to wait for an elevator, and that was nice. The view from deck 8 was nice, but it was a long walk to get down to the kids club. Deck 4 was nice because it was easy to get to the shows (or to sneak back to the room for a potty break in the middle of a show!) and it was only one floor up to the kids club. We ended up getting lots of exercise walking up to the Lido deck for breakfast and lunch! 4 was also nice for those very, very long dinners when the kids needed to run back to the room for a quick potty break before dessert.

Our favorite room was a connecting room with a balcony connected to an inside room. Perfect setup for our family!

The Miracle's a great ship for kids, since you can walk from one end to the other. We love it.

Jennifer

We cruise Carnival often with our family of six. It's a bit tricky.

Our kids are younger - 2, 4, 4, and 7, so when we've had to book separate rooms, we've ended up all sleeping together in one room.

We've booked two cabins on the same floor, but opposite sides (not so far apart) and ended up leaving the extra room essentially vacant. We've booked a Suite and an inside room, and ended up leaving the inside room vacant and all slept together in the Suite. That was a Vista Suite, with a wrap around balcony that had almost as much space as the inside of the suite. Nice! But, our very, very favorite setup was with a balcony cabin that had a connecting room with an inside cabin. That was amazing! Two bathrooms, two TV's, two sets of closets and drawers. It was great! But, it only worked because two of my kids were listed in Grandma and Grandpa's room. The connecting rooms on the Miracle were only set up to sleep 4, two in each room, I think. Seemed really silly.

Most of the family setup's I've seen have had a balcony and then an inside room just across the hall. 4 in the inside room, 2 in the balcony. That seems to work especially well with teens and preteens that parents need to keep close, but not so close!

It's frustrating that there aren't many connecting rooms that will sleep six. And, we learned that you either need to call Carnival and book over the phone, or book onboard in order to get connecting rooms. I've never seen them available for online booking.

Good luck!

Jennifer

We cruise with our four kiddos, who are now 2, 4, 4, and 7. It helps to have a dedicated "dinner bag" that I have packed up with crafts for the kids to do while waiting for dinner. So far, the paper bag puppets with "googly" eyes have been a big hit, and little foam stickers to decorate the bags have been fun.

I pack the dinner bag with random things, plastic spider rings, finger puppets, paper crowns with jewel stickers, things that will occupy the kids for quite awhile.

With the two year old (and occasionally with the older kids) it's been helpful to bring along the stroller to the dining room. The one we bring folds back so if my son falls asleep at the table, we just put him in the stroller, lay him down, ask for a table cloth to drape over him, and we continue enjoying our dinner.

My kids love going to "fancy dinner" and I always smile when I see other families with young kids in the dining room.

Jennifer

Great Advice!

Bring a sippy cup, or a cup with a lid and a straw - even if the toddler can drink out of a cup, the glasses on the cruise ship can be too cumbersome for little hands to hold. Also, bring straws with you to the dining room - we occasionally had trouble finding someone who could bring us straws at dinner.

Bring a bit of dish soap and a bottle brush to clean the sippy cup in your cabin.

Put together a "dinner" bag with things that you can do together at the dinner table if you eat in the dining room. Dinner can go on for several hours. We take paper lunch bags and crayons and make puppets. Grandpa did a great job making up voices for the puppets the kids created.

Know ahead of time how the little one will react to the shower. Two of my four kids (ages 2-6) won't get near the shower. Pack a tiny blow up kiddie pool to use as an impromptu bathtub. Even if you only put a few inches of water in it, the kiddo will get cleaner than trying to scrub up with a washcloth in the sink.

Be prepared to beg for specific food items if you've got a picky eater. At breakfast, I was teased for asking for "6 slices of white bread - not toasted" from the buffet every single morning. But, my kids wanted to eat butter sandwiches, and so that's what I made for them!

Take advantage of the ships laundry service if you need to. We've had more than a couple of trips where the kids had accidents while potty training, or woke up wet from diapers that leaked. It's so nice just to pack those wet clothes into a laundry bag and have the cabin steward make sure that they come back clean and dry. Well worth $15!

Try to sit at booths and window seats. It's easier to sit a 2 year old on a booth seat next to you, than to have them sitting in a booster seat in a chair. Window seats give them something to look at.

If you're bringing a stroller, keep in mind that the cabin doorways are tiny. An umbrella stroller will usually fit through, but our twin stroller (not a side-by-side style) did not fit. We leave that one at home now, since we had to take it apart to get it in and out of the room each time.

Use the stairs. My little ones will wear themselves out going up and down the stairs. Find a less traveled area of the ship and let him have at it!

Ice cream is a perfectly acceptable breakfast, lunch, dinner or midnight snack on a cruise ship. My kids loved that treat!

Enjoy yourselves.

Hope that helps!

Jennifer

We've cruised with and without car seats.

Four kids five and under on our cruise to Hawaii. We rented a car in Maui, and didn't want to rely on the availability of car seats for rent, so we brought our own. Also, one excursion had van transportation, rather than bus. Lots of grumbling from other passengers, but we locked in all four seats into the van. I practiced putting them in and out of the car at home to get faster at the process! It only took about 5 minutes for me to install all four seats, and the tour guide installed them for us before they picked us up for the return trip.

Cabs in Mexico don't require car seats, but you might feel safer if you can at least put the 3 year old in a booster seat (the kind that just sits on the seat and isn't anchored in). The cabs I've been in while in Mexico have had seatbelts, so we've always just buckled the kids in as best we could.

Jennifer

Jennifer

We cruised Carnival with my son first at 6 months. No programs for infants - no special pool areas - no diapers or baby food available on board for purchase. No toy lending program.

Carnival had a specific period of time available in the kids club that you could bring the under two to the kids club to play, but the parents had to stay with. We actually enjoyed that and made it a point to go every time we could.

The baby really, really enjoyed the soups at dinner in the dining room each night, and we just mashed up some of the more mild food for him to eat during the trip. We did bring baby food, but ended up using very little of it.

Can't remember if there was an age limit, but at 18-months old, we were able to leave the baby at the kids club on certain days where they babysat him for a fee. We only did that once, because it was a short cruise and the available times for this service weren't a match for our schedule. Plus, I tend to prefer to keep the kiddos with me.

Although Carnival didn't cater to infants in any particular way, I couldn't have imagined anything that they might have done that I would have taken advantage of. A bottle warmer would have been an amazing plus, but we managed with out it. Baby food and diapers we packed and were happy to have brought more than enough of both. The high chairs available were not great for infants, but we learned to bring a blanket or towel to provide additional support.

On our first cruise, the baby was 6 months, my twins were 2.5, and the oldest was 5. We were in a suite and they managed to fit 3 cribs in the room for me.

Hope that helps.

Jennifer

I second the puddle jumpers! We carry along one for each of our four kids. I make them wear them even if they are only going ankle deep at the beach. It's as much for my peace of mind as it is for them - It's easier to spot them and do a head count when they're all wearing their "floaties" and I can at least know that if something were to happen to one of them (a fall into the deep end of the pool, or a wave at the beach that's comes in farther than expected) I'll have a few extra seconds to grab them.

We don't use their floaties as a substitute for complete adult supervision, but things can happen in an instant. I feel better with the floaties. If I could get my non-swimming husband to wear them, I would!

It's a pain to haul the giant bag of floaties when we go on excursions, or head out to the pool, but we've never been anywhere where we could have rented any sort of water toy. Sand toys can usually be picked up locally, but having spent time with the kids trying to build sandcastles with a plastic spoon and a disposable coffee cup, I'd rather set aside space in the suitcase for a few dollars worth of shovels and pails than risk not finding a place to buy them.

The kids have Carnival nylon backpacks that we have set to fit even the youngest (2 years) and they each carry their own 2-3 sand toys. It keeps the beach sand contained, and we can just cinch up the packs and wait till we're home to unload the extra sand.

By far, my favorite thing to have on hand at the beach is baby powder. My kids manage to get so coated in sand that even a shower or foot rinse doesn't stand a chance of getting them sand-free. Baby powder helps you to get the sand out of sensitive nooks and crannies. Not so necessary at the pool, but we don't head to the beach without it!

We took our kids, ages 18 months, 3 years, 3 years, and 6 years, on a cruise to Hawaii last October. It was the most amazing trip ever!!! There were very few kids on the ship. My four made up 10% of the under 18 age group, I think. The best part was that with so few other kids, our kids got top notch care from the kids club attendants. They were able to tailor the programs to suit what our kids enjoyed, and we had no trouble at all when we requested that they allow our super shy 6 year old to stay with her younger siblings.

The entire staff on the ship took extra time with our kids, and that was so special.

We cruise to hang out together as a family, so our kids don't spend a lot of time in the kids club. I appreciated that when they were with us, there weren't other kids, running around like crazy monkeys. It's much easier to teach them good behavior when surrounded by others that are behaving well.

For our family, long cruises are the best vacation option we've found. We liked the 15 day Hawaii trip so much, that we're taking them on a back to back cruise for 14 days this summer (7 and 7). We'll only get as far as Mexico for the cruise this summer, but that's fun too!

Even though there were sea days where it was too cold to be in the pool, or anywhere outside, our kids were never, ever bored. There are so many places to explore!

With four kids 6 and under, we've had kids in various stages of potty training on every cruise we've taken!

We've learned that the regular potty seat that we use at home (the one that sits on top of the toilet) works best, combined with a couple of step stools that we pack in our suitcases (turned upside down and filled with clothes).

For potty trips on the run while on the ship, we either head for the kids club, which has a child sized potty setup, use the regular grown-up toilets without the potty seat, or run the kids back to the room if needed. Making it easy and comfortable for the kids to go has meant that we avoided any setbacks (or accidents!)

The folding potty seats were a fail for us, as they tended to collapse. I'll be happy when we can leave the potty seat behind, but for now, I'm just thrilled that we don't have to set aside a suitcase for carrying on pampers any more!

We did the Exclusive Resort Getaway in Puerto Vallarta through Carnival when the kids were 5, 2, 2, and 6 months. It was the highlight of the trip for the kids. The beach was wonderful, lots of sand for sandcastles, and water warm enough to play in. The resort was very nice, and the pool area had a section that was shallow and good for the little ones to play in - although a bit deep for the toddlers. There was a bus that took us from the pier over to the resort. It was a bit of a long drive, maybe 45 minutes? But having the bus meant that we didn't have to haul along 4 car seats. It was also nice that for the excursion, under 3 years old were free. Not a single vendor to cope with on the beach, and there were plenty of shaded areas to sit in. I remember that there was an outdoor shower where we were able to rinse some of the sand off. I don't remember having a place to change the kids' pampers, but I doubt that I even looked for one. With three in diapers at the time, I had gotten extremely good at using the stroller as a discrete, emergency changing station! We brought strollers for the kids, and although it was nice that the little ones had a place to snooze while we waited for the bus, we could have done with just a single stroller for the baby.

We're headed back in August and the baby will be two. I think we'll do just fine without a stroller. Looking forward to the trip!

Hope that helps.

Jennifer

Love the milkshake idea! I'm going to have to remember to pack Oreos so I can make my own Oreo McFlurry.

Plus, lemonade and vodka! Planning on working my way thru the mini bar and forgot about lemonade as a mixer.

Jennifer