kitkat343

It depends what you are looking for. Are you sailing primarily for itinerary or are you primarily sailing for a ship with the most amenities for a 3 year old? When my oldest was 3, we sailed primarily for itinerary so we were on a bunch of incredibly old and unimpressive ships that lacked all the bells and whistles of newer lines. Princess has no waterslides, zip lines or bumper cars, but they have an excellent kids program. And because my oldest had never experienced those things on a cruise ship before, he was just happy being on the ship, riding glass elevators and especially being at the kids club. If you are itinerary people, I'd actually recommend being careful about when you sail with waterslides since after sailing with waterslides on a ship once after that your kids will be disappointed if they are ever on a ship without them. And if you are trying to sail out of NY, that could limit your options (less so in Florida). Out of NY, there are a lot of 7 day runs to Port Canavaral, Nassau, Bahamas and a day at a private island in the Bahamas. Just be aware of the fact that the ship is scheduled to dock midday in Port Canavaral, which is about 65 minutes from Disney. So at most you have a half day in the Magic kingdom. It's also the first stop so if the ship is running behind, you will dock late and that can eat into your already limited time at Disney. The Kennedy Space Center is closer for older kids. There are also many cruises that sail to Bermuda from NY, and it is a very safe island and easy to explore with a child. The public bus and ferry system are completely safe and you can also ride taxis if you prefer. NCL sails there in the winter, but its can sometimes be challenging to dock at Bermuda and there are sometimes issues with the port of Bermuda being cancelled in the winter (cancellations can obviously happen all year long but the winter is a bit tougher) . Please also note that Bermuda is closer geographically to North Carolina than the Caribbean so it's not really beach weather in the winter there (but warmer than NY and still pleasant to explore in the winter). In January, RC has interesting i12 night itineraries to the Caribbean that visit 5 different islands. The exact islands switch on different cruises, but St. Kitts has beautiful beaches (and my daughter loves the baby monkeys at every tour site there very much although from an animal welfare perspective this isn't the best animal experience). Antigua has stingrays and an island where you can visit giant tortoises, St Lucia has beautiful volcanos and waterfalls (but they are located an hour from the port, up windy hills so that can be a challenging drive for kids, plus they are sites better appreciated when they aren't crowded so you'd want to see how many ships are in port before going there), St. Maarteen has the world famous Maho beach where planes land on top of you and beautiful beaches all over the island, In San Juan, there is an easy hike through El Yunque to a river in the rainforest that my 4 year old loved. There is also the fort close to the pier where kids can fly kites and the Children's museum is supposed to be quite nice. Barbados has caves you can explore (there is an amazing ride at Harrison's Cave you can go through but it is a bit far from the port and independent excursions are required to get there early so you waste a lot of time unnecessarily.) Animal Flower Cave is really nice for kids to explore if they can handle climbing down the natural stairs into the cave and they can even swim inside. The Wildlife Nature Center is nearby Animal Flower Cave and at 2 pm lots of animals are fed. You can also swim with turtles in Barbados. From Florida, my favorite itineraries with kids are the 12 day Panama Canal partial transit. This cruise visited Cartagena, which is a really spectacular city, you could see the Panama Canal locks in action, went to visit a rain forest in Costa Rica (not the best rain forest in Costa Rica like Monteverde, but a nice one nonetheless), and visits Aruba, Jamaica, Bonaire or Curacao. We did this on Princess, and they had an amazing kids club so my 2 year old son was very happy on this cruise. Princess allows kids under 3 to go to the kids club with adult supervision. The kids club staff did a great job of entertaining him in the club since there were only 9 children on the whole sailing. You should try to sail during the school year if you can since most kids have older siblings and try to sail during breaks. The kids club will have more time to take care of younger children if you sail off season. For kids from Florida, you might also want to consider Western Caribbean cruises to Roatan, Honduras because they have lots of great animal experiences there (you can play with monkeys and sloths and there's great diving/snorkling). Belize has a nice zoo, and in Costa Maya Native choice runs a great excursion to minor Mayan ruins you can run around and explore and then Mayan grandmothers cook lunch. My kids liked the kids clubs on RC the most and really liked the RC ship we sailed. They have good food and lots of children's amenities. My family was less happy with our last NCL cruise. NCL ran a ship aground in the Dominican Republic 8 months before we sailed. Although other cruise lines had returned to the port with megaships, NCL wasn't allowing that. If a nearby Carnival port had space, NCL would send their megaships there, but if it was full they would make the DR a sea day or send the ship to Nassau or GSK. Because of the uncertainty, I had to research and plan both Nassau and GSK because normally people didn't find out until they boarded what was happening with the ship in the DR. A month prior to sailing, NCL announced that they were cutting the stop in the DR and the morning of Antigua to help the environment. They continued to advertise the original itinerary, not letting anyone switch, even people who booked through NCL directly after the cancellation who were never notified of the change. My daughter is obsessed with monkeys, and we had chosen this cruise partly to get to a monkey reserve near Puerto Plata. We'd also hoped to get to a giant tortoise island in Antigua, but the boats there only ran in the morning. There are posts that appear periodically on NCL about their cutting ports after final payment, and one commenter noted that he only purchases NCL cruises at the last minute so if there are changes the cruises were so cheap he won't be upset by losing some ports. The last post about this was started by someone in December on the NCL forums: Most of the children appeared to greatly enjoy NCL's kids club, but my youngest refused to go and the middle one said he liked it a lot less than RC's kids club. My youngest loved the kids clubs on RC and Cunard, and said she didn't like NCL's kids club because they mostly played electronic games like Nintendo switch more than RC where they mostly did art projects or athletic games (to be fair, when we picked up our daughter she did usually have art projects with her that she'd done at the NCL kids club so it couldn't have been all electronic games and Cunard showed movies but she always asked to go to the Cunard kids club and refused to go to the one on NCL). However, most children on the ship really did appear to like the NCL kids club. Given the stress of our last NCL cruise last year, we decided to sail with Cunard this year over the holidays (we sailed from NY and our options are limited since the ship RC currently has home-ported in NY is having mechanical issues and is dropping ports because it can't sail at maximum speed.). Cunard has a very good kids club, but is a very formal line.

Option 2 visits the 3 fjords that were the highlight of my 7 day cruise. Please bear in mind that the fjords are weather dependent, so if you only have one stop if the weather isn't clear it's going to be harder to appreciate the great beauty of the fjords. In Geiranger, you go around to see beautiful viewpoints (bearing in mind the road to the northernmost viewpoints is seasonal and doesn't open until after the big annual avalanche, usually late May/early June.). In Olden, Olden Adventures can take you to both the Loen Skylift and Briskdal Glacier (the glacier has been hit hard by global warming but the ride there and experience at it is quite lovely if you know to expect a reduced glacier. Book a troll car if you would have difficulty hiking to the glacier). In Flam, book tickets early to the Flam railroad. And if you have a normal port day, you'll have time for another activity in flam in the afternoon.

When my kids were little we'd get warm milk and cookies delivered by room service. If you can't get a kettle/coffee maker for your room or hot water at the buffet, that's another option to consider.

We just sailed the Christmas voyage. It had been 6 years since we last sailed Cunard, so the cutbacks didn't affect us (we didn't remember exactly what happened last time and we've been sailing less expensive lines for our kids so we were very happy with the voyage overall) the fact that the itinerary is exactly the same on next year's Christmas voyage makes it much less likely that we would chose to sail it again.

If you are traveling as a family, the problem with room service is that the younger kids go to sleep early. On my NCL cruise there was a curfew so I wound up having to escort my 13 year old to their late night restaurant since we couldn't risk room service waking up the younger kids.

Labadee, as a secured resort area, is completely safe. Jamaica, along with Roatan, has lovely ports. I would not recommend getting into a random cab at the port there or wandering around by yourself, but if you go on tripadvisor and book an independent tour ahead of time you will probably be fine (or take a ship tour). Dunn's river falls is lovely, and dolphin's cove is a nice animal experience place if you have kids or like animals, and scotchies has excellent jerk chicken.

Our experience on AOS was the same.

We really liked the carambola beach club also. IT's very close to Timothy Hill, so you should stop there briefly too if you are creating your own independent excursion.

I think this port is on the other side of Guatemala, but we really loved our stop in Santo Tomas de Castilla. We were able to visit the Rio Dulce, and a local school. It was quite lovely and a wonderful port and I hope the cruise lines expand their offerings there. I haven't been to Puerto Quetzal, but the other side of the country is really beautiful.

also better if these things happened outside of final payment (unless there's an emergency that necessitates a change)

Hue was a really beautiful place to spend half a day (we did a land tour to Vietnam and stopped at Hue as part of our drive from one city to another. We stopped there for a few hours along the drive and it was quite lovely and I remember feeling like I was quite glad we'd stopped there and that we didn't need more time there. But I do think there was quite a bit of walking, though maybe you can find a tour guide or cab service cab service on tripadvisor and ask them if they can drive you around instead of your walking (we were there 15 years ago so I can't be more helpful or remember if cars are allowed inside the historic center).

Thanks - I was paying attention to Iceland since that's my next big dream vacation, but with 3 young kids it's a bit hard to go all the way there unless we have a good chance of making the ports because we need independent tours so we have a better shot of keeping the kids happy and not ruining someone else's once in a lifetime trip. When we had 2 kids we went to Norway, which was amazing and hopefully someday some itineration of my family will make it to Iceland.

Did you want ship excursions or private ones? We sailed to Norway in late may and had a lot of trouble organizing private shore excursions since we were earlier than the normal start of the season. In the end it all worked out but because there are very few private tour operators in Norway/iceland I’d recommend looking into this early. And make sure there’s still space on the ship tours because someone said those sold out on the Baltic board. I don’t know where you are going but you’d want to carefully research the ports in March. The road to the highest points is closed in the winter in geiranger and doesn’t open until late may/early June, after the big annual avalanche. You’d want to check your ports and make sure everything you want to see is open in March (I don’t know your exact ports but if you post them on the Baltic board people there can probably let you know if there are any seasonal issues) the prima to Iceland also had specific issues with isafjordur because the government of Iceland was deepening the harbor. That project was supposed to be completed prior to the 2023 cruise season but construction ran behind. People on the boards have reported that the primas lifeboats cannot be used to tender, and this resulted in every single stop in isafjodur being cancelled last season. Someone on the Baltic board just contacted the Icelandic government, which stated they plan to make an announcement about the harbor later in January, so you should also keep an eye on that if that’s one of your stops. Other ships, including the star, were able to reach the port, but because the prima can’t tender there you’d need construction to be finished before you go. and I know nothing about Brugges, but there were some issues last summer with the prima also cancelling the stops there due to weather. You might want to look into whether or not March or august are more likely to work.

Also really helpful in case someone accidentally picks up your bag at the cruise terminal. We travelled with 3 kids so it was pretty chaotic disembarking and my husband used the air tags to confirm that all the luggage was in the car with us before we left the cruise port (if you are less overwhelmed you can do this visually but its good to have a backup)

Thanks - its helpful to know that at least one line is allowing this now. The others will probably eventually follow.

Was this postcovid? The OP will need to contact RC directly. Precovid, this could sometimes be arranged depending on the local port resources and regulations. Postcovid, there was awhile where it was not being allowed, and hopefully Dallsguy will return to let us know if they were able to arrange an early departure postcovid so we will know if this is not being allowed again. It's always worth asking since at some point the crusielines may agree to allow early departures again. You should call them and discuss this and the possibility of maybe applying your funds to a. different cruise (also something they might not allow, but you won't know until you ask). Best of luck to you.

My children loved their cruise to Norway at the ages of 6 and 2. Their favorite ports were Flam, Geiranger and Olden. Olden has the amazing Loen skylift and Briksdal glacier. On a clear day, there are amazing views from the Loen skylift. The Briksdal glacier has been hit hard by global warming, but it is quite a lovely hike (there's a golf cart you can rent most of the way) and beautiful spot at the glacier. Flam has the amazing Flam railroad, and we had. a lovely tour of a goat farm there. Geiranger has amazing scenic viewpoints. I'd try to get to at least two of those three, but Alesund is much beloved on the Baltic forums (you can ask them there about the itinerary). I would be a bit concerned about the heat in July in Spain and Portugal - what are you planning on doing there and how are your kids generally with heat? I haven't heard much about the heat in the summer in Spain but know that's been an issue in Greece and Italy for the past few summers so you should look into that.

We have 3 kids, and often travel with 2 grandparents. So with 7 people we order 7 entrees. On average, when 7 people order 7 entrees on a cruise line with good food like RC or Princess 2-3 entrees are excellent, 2 are good and 1-2 are bad. On our last cruise, RC quite kindly pushed out our kids food quickly, and some of our kids order off the main menu. If something was really good that our kids ordered we'd order another one because each night one person wasn't able to eat the entree they'd already ordered. So ordering one extra entree for a large table didn't create food waste - one of the meals wasn't going to be eaten, and that person either waits for a second entree to be cooked or goes to the buffet. For two people, I'd imagine you might not get an inedible dish every night and there might be a lot of food waste if you always order 3 entrees. I don't know that the food waste in the MDR is entirely caused by people over ordering - a significant amount could also be due to the inconsistency in food quality that is inevitable when cooking for huge numbers of people at one time.

I think the comparison to the other ports, which were so amazing (I'd add Stockholm to your list) makes it harder to appreciate Helsinki so a lot of people feel this way. Another option is to take the ferry to Suomenlinna, and have a nice pleasant walk around the island. The ferry to Suomenlinna leaves from Market Square, where you can pick up the 3 tram to the rock church and take a pleasant, easy affordable tram tour of the city. You can stop at the market in Market Square and eat from some of the stalls. And the ferry is pleasant too. But this is a good day to take it easy since you will be running around everywhere else with lots of amazing places to see.

We did the Baltic cruise with a 3 year old in tow, and thanks to Europe's amazing public transportation was able to easily DIY all the ports. Depending upon your level of physical fitness, you might want to take a cab to the top of Toompea hill and then walk down in Tallinn. The joy of Tallinn is exploring all of the beautiful historic buildings, which you can easily DIY. It is possible to walk up and down, but that depends on your level of energy. In Stockholm there is so much to do you need to carefully research the options and choose what you are most interested in. The Vasa gets crowded (and only lets a limited number of visitors in at a time) so try to get there early. A long time ago, the tour ferries ran from the ship dock directly to Vasa prior to 10 am, so they were your quickest/best option to get there before the crowds. I was there 10 years ago, so you'd need to check if that's still the case. Vasa filled up while we were there (we got there right at opening) and it was a much different experience when it was crowded. Other people on these forums have noted that Vasa is empty later in the afternoon, which I cannot vouch for since we went at opening but know that's true for the museums in NYC. Copenhagen and Helsinki are also easy to DIY. If you tell us more about your interests, we might be able to give you more specific advice about what to see. Helsinki has the tram route 3 which will let you see the historic buildings and stop near the Temppeliaukio rock church. We also liked the food at the stalls in market square. There are nice small towns near Warmeneude, or you can take the train to Berlin. The Schwerin castle is supposed to be lovely, but was closed on the day we arrived. Visby, Stockholm, Helsinki, Warnemünde, Copenhagen, Skagen and Kristiansand

Cunard opens up slots for the kids club at 830 am for the following day on their website. Once you’ve signed up it’s your slot and you can come at any time during the session, and even leave and come back later during the session. I much prefer this than standing early in line 3 times a day to try to get the sessions for the day (especially on ncl where last time some of the sessions were only 2 hours. On Cunard the morning session is only 2 hours so that would be frustrating to wait in line for). The only downside is that people may sign up for slots and not use them (you can cancel them online but kids are unpredictable). The website says they will eventually start to cancel a child’s session if too many non cancelled bookings are missed.

There was another thread months ago that described NCL's talk to shareholders in which they described how NCL is planning on increasing their voyages to interesting itineraries. But I think NCL should either start keeping its itineraries (unless there is an emergency/ship problems/weather problems) or focus on creating voyages that are more likely to appeal to passengers who don't sail primarily for itinerary. My trip was a cruise from NYC to the Caribbean. Half the passengers were just happy to get out of the cold, and couldn't care less about losing a port after final payment to help the environment. If NCL doesn't want to make reaching the ports a priority, then they should focus on itineraries people aren't going to care as much about cancellations to and not sail to once in a lifetime destinations, where passengers would be disappointed if weather canceled a port but will be angry if NCL cancels it after final payment to help the environment or claims they cancelled Costa Rica for safety reasons and replace it with Acupluco.

Someone just liked this post so it came back in my feed. I was just in Barbados again and would like to note you (or others) might also want to consider Animal Flower Cave. It's quite different - you climb down a significant amount of stairs and then you can explore a cave yourself. It's right on the ocean so the waves come crashing in, and there's a part you can swim in if you like. I'd recommend googling it since it's a little hard to describe, but videos/pictures will show you exactly what it's like. Animal flower cave is also near the Barbados Wildlife reserve, so you can combine both together (there's lots of animals that come for the 2 pm feeding, especially monkeys and turtles). A child would need to be sturdy enough to climb up and down the stone steps and also to climb through the cave, but my 5 year old made it fairly easily and loved it there. The two together are a good option for kids. Its about 40 minutes from the port so you'd just need to be aware of that.

Honestly, Norway was the hardest we found it to arrange private tours for all of our previous cruises. There are very few private operators. In the end, everything worked out really well but I wouldn't wait until the last minute to try to book on the shore.

that sounds amazing! too bad it didn't catch on!