You have to book even numbers, if you book for 2 your son won’t have a spot. I don’t know if things have changed but I had to pay full price for my kids if they didn’t want to choose from the kids menu.
If she gets a doctors note and cancels, all onboard charges, taxes, and port fees should be refunded by carnival. She needs to contact her insurance company to find out her next step. I don’t know if insurance will pay if she’s a no show.
But the cruise has already been paid for two, the insurance company should reimburse the ill passenger, and then everyone is made whole. Why should the OP have to pay the single supplement when the cruise line gets to keep both fares?
If you read this thread you will learn that some ships were built with the proper sanitation for non potty trained kids, and DCL ships have small splash areas for them.
There is a water taxi, I think $5 pp, a regular taxi is faster. You can go to the casino, eat in restaurants, go to marina village, and I assume the lobby? No walking the grounds, aquarium or beach without a pass.
Some of RCL’s ships have small splash areas for diapered kids, and have nurseries for under 3’s. Carnival allows 2’s in the kids club. We’ve sailed NCL with our 5, 2 connecting balconies. They don’t have any splash areas for diapered kids and only 1 ship has a nursery.
Actually if you take the ramp to the parking lot you don’t drop your bags, that’s a different lane and if you go that way you will exit onto the street and have to swing around again to go up the parking ramp. I’ve heard there are sometimes porters who have escorted departing guests to their vehicles but we’ve never been lucky enough to run into one in the lot. We just bring our bags onto the elevator.
My kids’ first cruise was a surprise, they had no idea until we pulled up at the pier. This was after a surprise trip to WDW. My oldest was 11 and excited. She was not excited to go on our next cruise at 14. Even though her 4 siblings were also going, she didn’t want to be away from her friends for a week and really worried about trying to meet others and being bored. Fortunately she went to the teen club the first night, met a lot of kids and had a great time. If you are going during a school holiday she’ll have a great time, tweens/young teens can be apprehensive.