17yo college student on HAL in mid-January.

[Voireon]

First off, hello everyone. This is my first post here on this forum, so excuse me if this was the incorrect forum to ask this question...

 

Secondly, I have cruised many times before. When I was ten, my family took a four day disney cruise, as a splurge since my Grandparents' health (on father's side) was in poor condition (and still is, but thankfully they are still alive and able to walk). Unfortunately, a very distant relative died, but my grandfather is a Methodist Reverend, and he was asked to do the service. My family opted out of going to the funeral, since we had never met them, and had only taken insurance out on my grandparents. Well, we had a wonderful time, and decided to do it again next year, with the grandparents again. At this point, my father received a very considerable raise at work, and the cruise became my family's "staple" vacation. I have been on disney nine times, RCL 4 times, and Carnival once. Each time was during one of our school vacations, so there were at least 100~ kids under 18 on the ship (and on the Disney med trip there were 850, and 487 teens!), so I had a great time.

 

Moving onto the present...

 

My grandmother on my mother's side became a travel agent two years ago, and has gone on our last two cruises with us. She offered to take me alone on a cruise with her and my grandfather, without any of my three siblings or my mother or father, sort of as a gift and as a "we just want to see you more," or maybe just because they're being nice =). Of course I said yes, as I love hanging out with them, and infinite food + staying up all night 7 nights in a row having a good time with random kids, waking up at three p.m., and eating the entire ship's supply of food is always great. Only now, I have come to the realization that the HAL cruise line doesn't have very many children/teens on their ships (although food seems to get good reviews), and I'm sailing the last week of my college's winter break, from Jan. 10th - Jan. 17th(?) and I would suspect that there will be 1 to zero kids my age on board. I graduated from highschool a year early, so I won't be turning 18 in time for the more "adult" activities (although, here on campus, there is certainly no lack of that, so not missing much).

 

Sorry to bore you, here's the question, lol. While hanging out with my grandparent's for a week is great, I don't want to be too bored out of my mind. Should I just plan on bringing a bunch of books/etc, or do kids 15-17 go on cruises this time of year? Any suggestions as to what to do?

 

And... maybe this question better answered elsewhere, but how is the HAL cruise line in general? I'm on the Oosterdam, going down the Western Mexican Boarder, and the cruise reviews on here range from "perfect" to "worst experience in my entire life." Any specific reason for that, or are some people just picky?

 

And sorry if this post is tl;dr...

 

Carson