New ......Sort Of

[Horsegoer]

Hello. Me and my wife have been on a few cruise. We are would to go on a cruise for my 50th next month and bring my 3yo daughter.

 

We live and NY and would be ok leaving from NY or FL. Which ships would be best suited (besides Disney...lol) for a 3yo? Thanks for any general feedback. Thanks.

[navybankerteacher]

3 minutes ago, Horsegoer said:

Hello. Me and my wife have been on a few cruise. We are would to go on a cruise for my 50th next month and bring my 3yo daughter.

 

We live and NY and would be ok leaving from NY or FL. Which ships would be best suited (besides Disney...lol) for a 3yo? Thanks for any general feedback. Thanks.

A three year old is likely to have a great time on any cruise ship.  Since you live in New York, you might like the idea of saving air fare and travel time and sail from a New York area port - Manhattan or Bayonne, NJ.  There are lots of NCL sailings from Manhattan.

[edinburgher]

7 hours ago, Horsegoer said:

Which ships would be best suited (besides Disney...lol) for a 3yo?

For best results, this would be an ideal question to cross post on the "family cruises" forum

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/28-family-cruises/

Edited January 7 by edinburgher

[Horsegoer]

Thank you very much . Could mod move the post there or I need to repost.

[ontheweb]

15 minutes ago, Horsegoer said:

Thank you very much . Could mod move the post there or I need to repost.

You could "report" your post and ask for it to be moved. You can do so by clicking on the three dots in the upper right hand corner of your post. Just say you are the OP and would like to see it moved to that forum.

 

BTW, those 3 dots can also be used to edit a post you make, but there is a short time frame to do that.

[Horsegoer]

16 hours ago, navybankerteacher said:

A three year old is likely to have a great time on any cruise ship.  Since you live in New York, you might like the idea of saving air fare and travel time and sail from a New York area port - Manhattan or Bayonne, NJ.  There are lots of NCL sailings from Manhattan.

Thank you very much and I'm sure your right but I'm sure some are more "kid friendly". 

[Essiesmom]

I think it depends on the child and what you expect of the programs.  There are some lines that accept children but do not have any programs for them.  Most of them are luxury lines.  There are mass market lines that have children’s programs but do not have outdoor facilities like waterworks or kiddie pools.  These include Princess, Celebrity, HAL.  Others have kids programs and water facilities.  These might include Carnival, NCL, Royal Caribbean, MSC, Disney and others that do not market in the US.

   It depends on your child, too.  If you have an outgoing child that has preschool or day care experience, she might enjoy the kids facilities and making new friends.  If she is a bit shy, she might be intimidated, frightened off.  And it depends on when you want to cruise.  If it is during school holidays, there might be so many kids that the facilities are overwhelmed, and the line might limit the kids allowed into the club.  (I’ve read this happens on NCL).  Non holiday time on the same ship she might have a wonderful time.  So, there are many things to consider.

   And then…there are families that say kids clubs don’t matter because it’s going to be family time and the kids won’t be using the clubs.  But the kid goes once, loves it, makes a best friend, and wants to go all the time.  And the opposite happens when the parents expect the kids to spend a lot of time in the clubs so they can have adult times…and the child hates it an refuses to go, is attached to their side the entire cruise.  
YMMV.  EM

Edited January 7 by Essiesmom

[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.  

 

 

Edited January 10 by kitkat343