Cruising with tweens...

[firsttimecruiser77]

Hi all,

We are planning to take our kids with us on a cruise next spring and it will be their first cruise. They are ages 12 and 13. My question is: How old do they need to be before Carnival will allow them to be in a room alone? My hubby and I would like to put them in an inside stateroom across from our balcony room. Will we be allowed to do this? What if we booked them into an adjoining balcony room? Hopefully, someone knows the answer to this and can help me.

 

Thanks!

[christyran1228]

Just for booking purposes, you would book you and 1 child in a Balcony, then your DH and other child in the inside ... when you get there, you just switch rooms. :)

 

I personally would put the kids in an inside rather than a balcony, but an adjoining wouldn't be a bad option if you want to spend the extra $$.

[firsttimecruiser77]

I had kinda thought of that but then I thought maybe Carnival would allow us to do this. The only issue I see with switching is the sign and sail cards and the kids not being able to get into the room with their own cards. But I suppose its a minor inconvenience since they will be with us most of the time.

[GayleR]

Our kids were tweens when we introduced them to cruising. They are in college now and still love it.

 

I would suggest you book early dining if your kids want to particiapte in the kids club and you want them to eat with you. A lot of the night time stuff happens during late dinner. We learned this the hard way one year.

 

I can't help you with the cabin question as we always had them in our cabin until they were older.

 

Have fun!

[missypriss19]

Me and my spouse had a suite and the kids were in the room across the hall and they were younger than yours with no problems

[kabux]

You don't actually have to just switch cards - you can go to the purser's desk when you board and have them switch the rooms and reassign the cards so that adults are in one room and kids in the other - they will give you new cards I think.

 

Remember you can also limit the spending on the cards for your kids.

[missypriss19]

If you book like the others have suggested then just have them fix your cards as you board. they will do it no problem. Another thing we did was at night we would take one of their cards and give them one of ours so that we could get into each others rooms no problem

[firsttimecruiser77]

Thank you all for the advice. So, I would just go up to the purser's desk when we board the ship and tell them that we need the cards changed to reflect the kids in one room? They won't normally question it? We found a good price for past guests on Valor in a grand suite so we are thinking of booking the 4 of us into that. Which would you do? Four people in a Grand Suite OR one Jr. Suite and one inside?

[nybumpkin]

The purser's desk will give you extra "key only" cards for the other cabin. We've done that we our kids several times, rather than ask them to switch our sail and sign cards.

 

We have sailed with our sons booked across the hall or in the next cabin with no problem.

[nybumpkin]

Thank you all for the advice. So, I would just go up to the purser's desk when we board the ship and tell them that we need the cards changed to reflect the kids in one room? They won't normally question it? We found a good price for past guests on Valor in a grand suite so we are thinking of booking the 4 of us into that. Which would you do? Four people in a Grand Suite OR one Jr. Suite and one inside?

I didn't read your full question before my last post. We had four of us in a Grand Suite last year on Conquest (really good deal for us, although it's not what we originally booked) and there was more than enough room for us. The only "down" side is one bathroom instead of two - but we make one bath work at home anyway, so not a problem for us.

[BOSN]

Welcome Aboard. As has been stated, when you book, 1 adult and 1 child in each cabin. Once onboard, goto the pursers desk/guest services. They can adjust it to the adults in the balcony, and the children across the hall. They will give you your normal sign & sail cards for your cabin, plus cards so you can enter the childrens cabin when you want.

 

Now you just have to decide do you want the children to have any spending.:eek:. That is up to you. If you want to give them a budget of $5, $10, or $20 a day, don't put the whole amount on their cards. A small pain, but ech day you can go down and put their allowance on their cards. They can also give you a print out to show what has ben spent, and the balance.

 

So as not to confuse things; just for their cabin, when you board and do the cabin switch, prepay the tips for the childrens cabin. If you don't, the tip money must be there on the cabin acount. The children may see this as their allowance, and spend it. Then you would have to keep topping it off. You know your children though, and it's up to you, only a recommendation.

 

Enjoy you family cruise/vacation:).

[stargate fan]

Just for booking purposes, you would book you and 1 child in a Balcony, then your DH and other child in the inside ... when you get there, you just switch rooms. :)

 

I personally would put the kids in an inside rather than a balcony, but an adjoining wouldn't be a bad option if you want to spend the extra $$.

 

Welcome Aboard. As has been stated, when you book, 1 adult and 1 child in each cabin. .

 

Actually, you can book your children in their own cabin across the hall or next to yours, you don't have to book one adult/one child per cabin. You can still get a key to their cabin from Guest Services if you wish.

[luvtovaca]

As long as the rooms are next to each other or across the hall, or even just a couple doors away, they will let you book it with the kids in their own room. We've done it. The exception is balconies, there is some age requirement (don't remember what it is, but it was older than 15). In that case, you'd have to book an adult in each room and then do the "just room key" to each others rooms or switch rooms once on board and get new sign & sail cards. The easiest we found was to set it up with a parent in each room and then get the "just key" to each others rooms. We did not give our kids charging privileges, though so sign & sail accounts were not an issue for us.

 

As a side note, the other advantage of having keys to each others rooms in our case, was for check in purposes. If our kids couldn't find us at our designated check in times, they knew to leave us a note on our bed. (And, they ALWAYS did, amazing for teens, I know!). I admit, I was a crazy mom about keeping tabs and if they didn't check in within 5 minutes of the time, I went to the room, looking for a note, drove DH crazy!