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Question about avoiding spring break

firsttimecruiser9876

By firsttimecruiser9876,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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2PinaColadas

2PinaColadas

Posted
Posted
Hi guys!! Looking at a 4 night cruise out of Jacksonville Thursday - Monday on March 15. Trying to figure out if this would be a big spring break cruise for either school age or college kids. Want to avoid spring break! Any advice here?

 

 

Yes-- that is Spring Break for many. We have cruised on Spring Break and always had a great time. The college kids can be rowdy, but for the most part they sleep away most of the morning and party later at night. Worked for us as we are up early and go to bed earlier. We've never had problems with them. We have actually enjoyed several conversations with college kids and watched March Madness games with them on many occasions. The bigger issue for us has been kids that are not supervised. Eight to twelve year olds playing on the elevators, cutting in lines, taking over the pools, horse-playing in the hot tubs, running in the hallways etc... And the parents who think they have the right to do so.

But we've never had problems so bad that we did not do it again. We are cruising for our 9th time on Spring Break in four weeks.

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Lerin

Lerin

Posted
Posted

Do activities such as Tea time, Chefs Table, art auction, morning talks and yoga and you won't see any frat house stuff.

If your plan is to sit in the bars, clubs, pools and casino then you will probably encounter more of the party crowd.

 

The weekend you've chosen is pretty much prime spring break. Any chance of changing your dates? Even by 2 weeks will make a difference.

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riclop

riclop

Posted
Posted
Hi guys!! Looking at a 4 night cruise out of Jacksonville Thursday - Monday on March 15. Trying to figure out if this would be a big spring break cruise for either school age or college kids. Want to avoid spring break! Any advice here?

It's spring break with lots of drunks.

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klfrodo

klfrodo

Posted
Posted

Not even close to a frat house.

The spring break we went on was a 7 day cruise. Was probably 5:1 girls to guys.

 

Did they have fun? yes

Did they party? Yes

Were most of them broke by day 5? yes

 

Did I see some adults acting worse? yes

 

Overall it was a fun cruise and I would not hesitate to take another cruise during spring break.

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volmoma

volmoma

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If you cruise out of Jacksonville, PLEASE for all that’s holy in the world, my BFF and I disembarkation took 2 hours....please ask for help/porter pay $4-$5 dollars a bag and get through in less than 25 minutes.

 

 

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jkneern

jkneern

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Most spring breakers don't do the 7 day cruises. They mostly do the shorter 3-5 night cruises. We too have sailed with the college aged kids and has never been a problem. As someone else said its the tweens running in the halls banging on doors, playing in elevators, swimming in the hot tubs etc....but doesn't prevent us from doing it again.

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Lady_Jag

Lady_Jag

Posted
Posted

Spring break for Duval County (Jacksonville) Public Schools is March 16-23. While you may or may not be encountering an abundance of college students at this time, you will probably be cruising with a lot of high school, middle school, and elementary school students.

 

 

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SteelCityCruiser10 "Live from...." Rare

SteelCityCruiser10

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I was hoping for an early to mid April cruise, but all they offer is late April. Probably works well with spring break...just didn’t want to wait that long due to other circumstances :/

 

 

 

I was on NCL sky 4 nighter that was like being in the frat house. Never again. There were college kids stumbling around the ship at all hours chanting their letters and other nonsense. i even saw one of the students in the MDR get up from their dinner table with his napkin, put it over his forearm as if he was a waiter and go up to an elderly couple pretending to take an order. Truly shocking.

I will never make that mistake again.

 

 

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ProgRockCruiser

ProgRockCruiser

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We're cruising 4-8 March, right in the heart of my daughter's college spring break - but she's not coming because of other commitments. We knew that going in, and it was the best week for us to select due to other schedule conflicts, so we'll just have to enjoy watching all those young folks running around in their bikinis and board shorts...

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Lonely At The Top

Lonely At The Top

Posted
Posted
I’m so torn. Seems as if some people say no big deal, and others say it’s pretty bad!

 

I am 50+ and i guess it depends on what you are looking for....i have done 2 short cruises, both in late March/April (if memory serves me correctly, 4 nighters) and there were alot of Spring Breakers (college kids). Yes, you will get the drunk idiot every once in awhile puking over the rail (oh yea, saw that), but that is not the norm. The vast majority of them are looking to have a good time and it did create a fun type vibe on the ship. The second one had alot of college kids AND alot of families. The college kids you can get away from, the little "beasties" are like knats, they are all over the place and most of them dont have volume control. The college crowd wants to be out by the main pool bar where the music/action is, so if you wanted quieter you could escape to the Serenity. On the 2nd one, parents wanted to ignore the rules of Serenity and just let the snowflakes invade that area as well. It got to the point that the Security really had to crack down and tell the kids to leave (which resulted in the parents getting mad because somehow they think their kids shouldnt have to follow the rules :rolleyes:). I guess it depends on what you are looking for. If you want to party a bit and get a little crazy, you may have fun on the Spring Break cruise. If you want peace and quiet in a lounge chair, lol, yea, you probably wnt to look for another line or pick another timeframe

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Sun4Me2Please

Sun4Me2Please

Posted
Posted
Hi guys!! Looking at a 4 night cruise out of Jacksonville Thursday - Monday on March 15. Trying to figure out if this would be a big spring break cruise for either school age or college kids. Want to avoid spring break! Any advice here?

 

Yes, I think you are hitting spring break time. If you are trying to avoid it, I would look at end of April... this is our favorite time to cruise, what most call shoulder season. After spring breakers, and before kids are out of school for summer. :)

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ProgRockCruiser

ProgRockCruiser

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Posted (edited)

I searched online for data on Spring Break dates, and found this site:

 

https://www.studentcity.com/when-is-my-spring-break

 

Now this is for colleges only, but gives you an idea of the start of the spring break season, since college starts before high school, in general. And "drunk college kids" seems to be a primary concern of this thread.

 

I grabbed the data, slapped it into Excel, parsed out the start dates, created a pivot table, and voila:

 

Start Date Total instances

2/10/2018 ... 1

2/17/2018 ... 7

2/24/2018 ... 19

3/03/2018 ... 219

3/10/2018 ... 401

3/17/2018 ... 153

3/24/2018 ... 91

3/31/2018 ... 23

4/07/2018 ... 4

4/14/2018 ... 8

 

So you can see that the second week of March is by far the worst, with the week before and the week after also being busy.

Edited by ProgRockCruiser
Forum doesn't like tables
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