St Maarten with a 1 year old baby?

[Extra Kim]

We are doing another cruise with our daughter (her 4th real cruise) in January, she will be one by then. Since we have cruised with her before we have no worries about the time onboard the ship, but we would like a nice beach break / beach club / All in-clusive  in St Maarten.  Any recommendations that would suit a family with a one year old baby?

[cathi007]

2 hours ago, Extra Kim said:

We are doing another cruise with our daughter (her 4th real cruise) in January, she will be one by then. Since we have cruised with her before we have no worries about the time onboard the ship, but we would like a nice beach break / beach club / All in-clusive  in St Maarten.  Any recommendations that would suit a family with a one year old baby?

We will be traveling with out DD, S-I-L, grandson 3, grand daughter 14 months. We didn't take our kids on cruises until they we about 8, so I am very nervous. It's nice that you have taken your baby 4 times already. Any tips or tricks would be much appreciated. Luckily for my DD her mom and dad will be on the cruise, so we are giving them 4 "date" nights :). In St. Martin we plan on going to Orient Bay, it's our favorite beach. It will be interesting to see how Abby does, as she has never been to the beach before. I know you can look at Great Bay, we honeymooned there 34 years ago. They have some beach front resorts that are nice

[Extra Kim]

Our daughter was 3.5 months old on her first cruise (YES, it can be done). Italy to Germany, 11 nts. MSC Meraviglia.

 

5.5 months on a the ferry to the swedish Island Gotland, only 4 hours each way.

 

6.5 months on our ferry cruise to Tallinn in Estonia, two nights. Tallink Baltic Princess.

 

8 months on her first Caribbean cruise, 7 nts. Celebrity Equinox.

 

9 months on her second cruise in the Med. 7nts MSC Seaview.

We bought a Graco stroller that can fit a baby seat and a Stokke PramPack, both are great!
We have a very similar stroller as this one, but not exactly the same:

Before you go on the cruise, get your baby used to noisy environments like resturants and shopping malls. This will help the baby to get used to a lot of people.

Bring Peltor / 3M Kid and put it on the stroller, you never know when the baby needs it:

Bring a lot of nappies. We keept score of how many nappies we used every day the weeks before the cruise, then bring more then that. 

In public restrooms we used Libero Mats to put on the changing tables. When you are in your cabin you will need something to put your baby on when it's time to change the nappy. We bought a blow up thing from IKEA and it worked very vell.

 

IKEA Skötsam:

Libero Mats:

Don't have a lot of plans for the ports of call, traveling with a baby is VERY time consuming.

I have been to St Maarten three times, first time back in 2012. Did an Island tour (with Bernhard tours I believe).
The second time 2015 and last time in August this year, both times we just walked to the beach near the cruise port. But we wanted to do something else this time, might go to Orient beach.

 

[cathi007]

Thanks for all the tips 🙂

[maw cinci]

Do you remember the name of the beach that you visited near the port?  Are there chairs and umbrellas as well as food and drinks.  We will have 4 yr old and 18 month old.  Were you able to locate a family friendly all-inclusive?

[Extra Kim]

Last year we walked to Great Bay Beach, they have chairs and umbrellas (think that we paid 20$). This year we took a taxi to Orient Beach, paid 30$ for two chairs and one umbrella.

Orient Beach is better by far, but that doesn't mean that Great Bay Beach is bad if you want a beach near the port. There's water taxis between the port and Great Bay Beach if you don't want to walk.