Any Couples "ChildFree" out there?

[curiouscat]

Hi. Just interested to see who is out there that loves cruise travel like my hubby and I who are child free.

 

Also, to know that best cruise lines for childfree travel.

 

Thanks:o

 

Curious Cat.

[Host Kat]

Howdy Curious Cat!

 

Welcome to the Help Forum!

 

I fully understand your situation! However, you have posted your inquiry on the Help Forum where members ask for help in using the board's software. This is not the place for your type of inquiry and the information you seek.

 

To help you out, I am moving your inquiry to the Ask a Cruise Question Forum where general cruise questions are asked. Your inquiry will then be in a more suitable forum and on topic.

 

Wishing you in the new location for your thread and I sincerely hope you will be able to find it OK.

 

Happy trails to you...

 

Kat

[LHT28]

Are you child free or childless?

Child free= children are older and can look after themselves

Childless = never had children

I find a difference in perspectives of things:)

 

We are childless and enjoy Oceania cruiseline & Orient as they have no children's programs so attract relativly no children compared to mass market family oriented lines

 

There are other upscale lines that also are more adult oriented but they are more than the Princess, Carnival NCL etc...

[wraithe]

Hi, my wife and I are basically child free, as you put it. I have two kids, 17 and 20 yo, who live in SC with their Mom, my wife doesn't have any kids. We've cruised twice now, on Royal Caribbean, and had great luck. There are kids onboard, but haven't really had any problems with them. Little noise, and no major mishaps, even on a Spring Break cruise the first week of April on Mariner. FWIW, we have two more cruises planned for RCL, and plan to cruise twice per year from now on. I just don't think there's any other reasonable way to vacation.

[curiouscat]

Thanks Kat....

 

I appreciate it being a relatively newbie around here.

 

CuriousCat

[curiouscat]

LHT28

 

We never had children. I guess that makes us childless..... sounds pitifull but actually we are quite enjoying our life and marriage.

 

We have travelled Princess and RCCL. I just would lilke to try another line that really does not encourage children under 12. We were considering Oceania for next year. However, the itineraries and ships are limited. We are in our mid 40's and therefore still working and hard to get away for any great length of time.

 

Curious Cat

[Host Kat]

Thanks Kat....

 

I appreciate it being a relatively newbie around here.

 

CuriousCat

 

 

We were all newbies at one time!

 

Kat

[bububr]

My partner and I travel on Celebrity during non-break times and on longer 9 day or more cruises. Out last cruise had less than 50 children and only 1 infant out of 1800.

 

We don't hate children, we just like to get away from the daily grind of stollers in elevators, children in restaurants...and even people with cell phones. We have found that out of the mass lines, Celebrity tends to attact less families, and the passengers adhere more to the dress codes, etc... Its no guarantee....But after many cruises we can only think of one incident that comes to mind involving a child and family........To not get too much into it, it revolved around religious values;theirs, not ours...and how we shouldn't be on this cruise exposing our 'lifestyle' to their child. The staff took care of the situation. We were happy. It was X.

 

Hope that helps your decision.

 

Dave:eek:

[LHT28]

LHT28

 

We never had children. I guess that makes us childless..... sounds pitifull but actually we are quite enjoying our life and marriage.

 

We have travelled Princess and RCCL. I just would lilke to try another line that really does not encourage children under 12. We were considering Oceania for next year. However, the itineraries and ships are limited. We are in our mid 40's and therefore still working and hard to get away for any great length of time.

 

Curious Cat

 

Not pitifull at all! ;)

We are late 50's and married 37 yrs

Yes Oceania does have longer cruises than some others but they are worth the time.

We tried Princess last fall & NCL in March...ships are too big for us and too many kids for our tastes.

 

Regent (RSSC.com) has shorter cruises

[wrp96]

If you are looking for few children on the mainstream lines, look to longer, more exotic itineraries. I've only sailed Royal Caribbean (which markets to families) and can tell you that the longer itineraries (over 7 days) attract a lot less families than the shorter itineraries. My 10-night Panama Canal cruise had probably around 50 kids on it. Also look for sailings in September, November, early December, late January, early February, and May as they will have fewer kids because most kids are in school at that point.

[spookwife]

Are you child free or childless?

Child free= children are older and can look after themselves

Childless = never had children

I find a difference in perspectives of things:)

 

 

Uh..no.. Child Free: don't have 'em, don't want 'em..ever.

 

Childless: Don't have 'em but want 'em someday OR are unable to have 'em.

 

Empty nesters: Children are grown and on their own

 

BIG difference, and we Childfreers will be QUITE adament about differentiating between them.

[bettycrocker]

Uh..no.. Child Free: don't have 'em, don't want 'em..ever.

 

Childless: Don't have 'em but want 'em someday OR are unable to have 'em.

 

Empty nesters: Children are grown and on their own

 

BIG difference, and we Childfreers will be QUITE adament about differentiating between them.

 

My DH and I have been together 10 years and see no children in sight.

 

Now, don't let this upset the people out there with children that are going to say "you just don't know what your missing. Children are wonderful and you'll never exerience anything like it." and so forth and so on.

 

Well, we have plenty of nieces and nephews and fully enjoy having them over for the weekend, filling them with sugar and sending them home to their parents. So, yes we do know what were missing and we love are freedom.

 

That being said. We went on NCL Star a couple years ago when it was still in HI, in Oct. and I don't remember seeing any children.

 

Will be going on CCL Valor in Sept., hopefully won't have too many kids, but we really don't spend a lot of time in the same areas kids would be in. ie. pool Plus this is the beginning of the school year and they should all be in school.

 

Happy sailing

[Jane110]

 

Child Free: don't have 'em, don't want 'em..ever.

 

Childless: Don't have 'em but want 'em someday OR are unable to have 'em.

 

 

That seems like a little TMI (too much information) to give out to strangers if meeting in person. However, since you put yourself in the Child Free catagory, it's probably not a sensitive issue for you, so you don't think about it. Not criticizing you in anyway - just pointing out different POV.

 

If asked, we just tell people we don't have kids. There's usually a dead silence afterwards, so it's a question I never ask anyone in a face to face social meeting. Why risk making people uncomfortable? If people have kids, it'll usually come up from them within the first 10 minutes of conversation.

 

Sorry for thread drift....

 

Back to OP question...

 

We like Oceania and the fact that it's not a family line. But they are very expensive and their itineraries may not be to your liking or too long.

 

When we cruise on the bigger ships, we make sure we schedule our trip for when school is in session in order to minimize the experience of hundreds of kids joining us on our vacation!

 

Also, I'd stay away from the lines that offer the most for kids like Carnival, RCCL and Disney.

[michmike]

Only had 1 child to begin with and thankfully he is now married and off on his own and no kids yet. We also prefer to minimize our exposure to kids while on vacation and have been very successful doing so on HAL. As long as you avoid school vacation periods and the summer and esp if you can get away for longer than 7 days, you will find very few children on HAL.

 

We just did a 10 day end of Jan and had maybe a dozen kids under the age of 5 and no more than half a dozen from 5-18. Just right. Can't imagine a cruise with 200-300 of them. *shuddering*

 

Found much the same on Celebrity on our one and only trip w/ them.

 

Definitely want to avoid Royal Caribbean and Carnival as they market heavily to families and have the miniature golf, rock walls and such that attract them.

[mrsfuzzmo]

We are in our early 40s and childfree, childless, no kids whatever, it's just us. We don't classify ourselves as, by reading this thread, apparently others do. We love to cruise and prefer to have few children onboard. That being said, we like to cruise with a median age of 40 onboard so we try to stay with the mainstream cruise lines, though we have done some others. What we do is cruise during the weeks that most parents won't take their kids out of school (first week after labor day, first week after Christmas Vacation, First week after Easter vacation). This is usually the week or two after an extended school break and it really has done the trick. Aside from one Disney cruise, there have been few kids onboard any of the lines, no matter what the "rating", because of the time of year. We also like to do the exotic over the mainstream itineraries and that helps. Southern Caribbean itinerary, Panama Canal, South America, Alaska, and Hawaii will have the least number of kids onboard almost guaranteed. A longer cruise will also help. So, in my opinion, you don't necessarily have to choose a cruise line for all adults, just chekc out some other options. (Unless you really want absolutely NO kids aboard, then find a line that does that).

 

Mrsfuzzmo

[gizmo]

I agree with some of the others. I sail on Hal and find there are just a few kids on board. We pick our dates carefully.

 

No holidays

Avoid spring break time.

Late fall is a good time to lessen the number of kids.

 

We take cruises of 10 day or more. This also decreases the number of kids.

 

We have no interest in RCL which kids gravitate to. I would not even chance a 10 day cruise on RCL.

[spookwife]

Believe me, we would have much preferred to pick for our first cruise something that minimized exposure to children. Alas, we are at the mercy of the US Navy, and currently, they say he can take leave the last two weeks in June and the last two weeks in December: prime Kids-out-of-school-time. And of course finances dictated that we couldn't afford the Alaskan cruise that we wanted so Mexcian Riviera, here we come.

 

Jane, I have been Bingo'd so many times it isn't funny. I can't just say: We have no kids. We get the "why not?" or "what's taking you so long?" or variations thereof. No awkward silences for me, unfortuantely. Depending on my mood, and the boorishness of the questioner, My response varies from " We cannot have any. " to " we hate the little heathens."

 

We are using our first cruise as a template. I figure if we can enjoy ourselves on a summer family oriented cruisline, then cruising is for us, and we will then try and plan future ones according to our overall preferences and time periods. In fact, I have already done some research into the other cruiselines mentioned and have already half started formulating a plan for next year....I just will have to bite the bullet and admit we may have to fly to a cruise terminal instead of driving to closer ones...

[Krazy Kruizers]

We are "child free". We are in our sixties and I think we will be having any children at this age!

 

We choose HAL - fewer children and are very careful of our dates - avoid Christmas - Thanksgiving - Easter, etc.

[spookwife]

I belong to several CF websites.. and one of the more favorite retorts is

"We can't Bear children.". of course, it's really open to interpretation, don't you think?!;)

[wraithe]

"We can't Bear children

 

LOL! Amazing the twists and turns you can make with the English language, and funny that coming from a guy (your husband) who probably spends much of his career searching out the nuances of exactly what someone has said. Very amusing.

[thecoop]

Childfree here - son is 24 and likes to stay home and take care of our house and cats while we are gone. It is like a mini vacation for him, or so he says. I love being able to cruise once a year and take mini 3-4 day weekend vacations whenever we want. Oh, the freedom we get for having him early. We are both 44 and enjoying freedom once again.

[jgf]

Hmmm... DH and I wanted children, were unable to have them, tried unsuccessfully to adopt, and then came to the conclusion we were perfectly happy as we were and didn't really want to be parents after all. So I guess we're childfress or childlee? It's just easier to tell people who ask about our children that we have two cats... :)

 

 

Uh..no.. Child Free: don't have 'em, don't want 'em..ever.

 

Childless: Don't have 'em but want 'em someday OR are unable to have 'em.

 

Empty nesters: Children are grown and on their own

 

BIG difference, and we Childfreers will be QUITE adament about differentiating between them.

[CateW]

Well, I guess you could say we are empty nesters, although we have two at home that are old enough to go but that seem VERY reluctant to leave the comfort of the nest. That said, when we sailed Crystal there were very, very few out of the 900 passengers (maybe a dozen or so and a couple of those were under 3) so if you are looking for few to no children this might be a line for you to consider. HAL is another line where young children are the exception, although there were a number of teenagers traveling with parents but honestly I couldn't even tell they were there.

[numberscritter]

The Discovery World Cruises has posted on its website that reservations for children under 11 are not advised and have no children activities. Most of their cruises are also longer than most families would like (12+days).

[vacationaddict]

We are "childfree". Our children are gone and moved away. Taking our first HAL cruise this summer. We have been on Carnival, RCCL, and NCL. We always cruise at the end of May so there are not many children yet.