For Families Thinking of Cruising with Young Children

[Dailymeel]

***EDITING TO ADD: I am sorry - this is not a post to deter cruisers. I shared this for families who are similar to mine, who have very young children and maybe only able to afford a once-in-a-lifetime Disney Cruise to maybe wait a few years. Especially if your children don’t want to be left at kids club/nursery.
I am sorry if this post was misunderstood. I honestly did not mean to come across mega negative. Our family had the most magical time, i personally just missed out on a lot of things i wanted to do due to the nature of traveling with little ones. End of edit ***

Hello everyone, I wanted to write this post because of information I wish I knew before I booked.

For the record, this is not a negative review or any kind of review. It is just my personal experience and what I expected and what didn’t work out for us as a family with young children (4 and 1) We sailed on the Disney Dream for 5-Nights from Southampton to La Coruna, Vigo, and back. We had an absolutely magical time.

However, this cruise cost us a fortune and it is kind of a once in a lifetime for my family. If our financial situation improves, then we may sail again, but as our current situation we would not be able to afford to sail again.

I wish I had known what I knew now and I would not have booked the cruise until my youngest is at least 6 or 7 years old.

I know a lot of you on here were very happy sailing with your young children, but given the money we spent we felt like we did not get our money’s worth because we missed out on soooo much. This is more for families who aren’t sure if they should sail with young children and if you are in similar financial position as me.

These are the reasons why I felt we did not get our moneys worth:

on embarkation day we missed the sailaway party because our kids were so tired from the travel, they needed a nap.

my youngest (1) couldn’t sit through the shows so I missed out on all the shows. My eldest (4) watched the Golden Mickeys on the first night with my husband. She watched Beauty and the Beast when it showed in the afternoon, and she watched Believe on TV because she was so tired she laid in the bed to watch it on the final night.

We missed the Pirate show because it started at 10:30pm and my kids were asleep.

We also missed the Final Good Bye show because of the same reason. It actually starts at 10:45pm because they spend 15 mins letting people take photos.

We didn’t send our kids alone to kids club or nursery because we don’t feel comfortable leaving them. I know people rave about the kids club and nursery staff. I am sure they are great, but I won’t even leave my children with the Norland Nannies - just a personal parenting choice. And so we were stuck with the open house times. But this was difficult to attend as well with nap times, meal times etc.

We felt like there was nowhere for my children to play (the weather was too cold for pools and splash area most days, we only played in nemo’s reef once), and I wish there was some kind of playground and/or softplay that was open all day for them. I found sea days particularly tricky because there’s just nowhere for them to play safely.

Though I would absolutely love love love love love to cruise again, I would wait until my kids are older and we wouldn’t mind leaving them at the kids club and they can be together. And we would be able to watch the shows, where I think is where you get value for money. So if you are unsure if you want to take preschoolers or toddlers on board, my recommendation would be to wait a few years until they’re older.

Character meet and greets were the most disappointing as we didn’t meet any except for roaming characters. People queued 45 mins to an hour before a character showed up, there was no chance for my very young children to queue that long. So we saw maybe 1 or 2 characters a day and none on the last day . My one year old was so sweet she would wave to all of them from afar and blow kisses and give air hugs but it really broke my heart to watch her do everything on the side and not able to give her real character experiences. - I wasn’t in a position where I could do parent swaps so another place where we didn’t get our moneys worth because our children were too little to manage queues.

We also couldn’t get Royal Gathering (I didn’t know it would book up so quickly! Agh! I Needed to do my research)

i did come home feeling really sad about missing out on all the good stuff but i was very grateful i got to go on this cruise. I just wish I could have a re-do with my children when they are older and able to manage more late nights.

I still got those Disney Blues and looking through my photos every night!

I hope this helps to inform someone or at least manage expectations when traveling with really little ones

 

[enzy65]

I am a grandma to a 4 month old, my adult son and dil thought they’d like to go on one of our Disney cruises we have scheduled, the child would be around 1 at that time. They literally said to me that my husband and I could watch our grandchild so they could do things on the ship.
I put my foot down and said no way am I spending that kind of money to just babysit and go on a ship I’ve never been on before and miss out on all the fun.
I said wait till he is older, they are mad at me.
So I get what you are saying, we never traveled until our kids were at least 4, and that was sometimes hard.

 

[otten]

This was largely our experience on our first cruise almost ten years ago. We had a 10 month old and a 3.5 year old. The oldest wanted nothing to do with the clubs. We waited 5 years before our next cruise.

 

[Carohs]

I agree. If it's once in a lifetime type of thing the best ages are between 5-7. Where they're still young enough to believe in magic but old enough to sit through shows, dinner, etc.

 

[LordVader]

I think it also depends on the kids. We went on our very first cruise last November on the Wish with our two daughters ages 2 and 5. Our kids watched all the shows and absolutely loved them all, they were up for Pirate night and had the time of their lives. At no point did our kids nap, they didn't want to miss anything lol.

My wife stays at home so we're definitely not in the position financially to cruise often but I think for us, our kids were at the perfect age. My oldest kept asking about kids club and we ended up letting her and she never wanted to leave despite never really being away from us lol.

I do agree the character wait times were nuts! Although we promised ourselves we wouldn't let our kids use tablets, we let them while waiting for characters, plus they were watching Disney movies and we're on vacation. We did get lucky and get a Royal Gathering as I was on it like a hawk and booked it within 10 seconds of it opening for us, maybe that was pure luck.

I'm sorry your weather wasn't great, we had some rain but our kids literally spent about 7 hours at the toy story splash zone and would've never left if we didn't have to eat dinner or go watch a show lol.

Basically I think it comes down to kids, maybe we got lucky because our girls don't need or ever ask for naps, especially while on vacations. I truly hope you get to cruise again and you get to do everything you wanted!

 

[Mango7100]

Completely understand. DD went on her first Disney cruise at 5 and I think that was a sweet spot to start. Old enough to enjoy the different activities at different times, was capable of waiting in lines, independent enough to want to do the kids club for 2-3 hours at a time. I wanted her completely done with any napping before we dropped that kind of money.

 

[Liastaob]

We did 5 and 8, both kids had an amazing time and loved the clubs. I do understand not wanting to leave your little ones with someone, we have a real hard time with random babysitters. However, the amazing kids clubs are like 70% of the benefit of a Disney Cruise. Dropping the kids off at the Oceaneer club and going to brunch at Enchante with my wife was one of the highlights of the year for me.

 

[Dailymeel]

We did 5 and 8, both kids had an amazing time and loved the clubs. I do understand not wanting to leave your little ones with someone, we have a real hard time with random babysitters. However, the amazing kids clubs are like 70% of the benefit of a Disney Cruise. Dropping the kids off at the Oceaneer club and going to brunch at Enchante with my wife was one of the highlights of the year for me.

I would have left them if they were older for sure, but I don’t think I would have been very happy if all she did was choose to screen time in there instead of doing other activities. We did have an incredible time, we just missed out on so much.

 

[Dailymeel]

Completely understand. DD went on her first Disney cruise at 5 and I think that was a sweet spot to start. Old enough to enjoy the different activities at different times, was capable of waiting in lines, independent enough to want to do the kids club for 2-3 hours at a time. I wanted her completely done with any napping before we dropped that kind of money.

The napping was frustrating to manage for us!

 

[Dailymeel]

I think it also depends on the kids. We went on our very first cruise last November on the Wish with our two daughters ages 2 and 5. Our kids watched all the shows and absolutely loved them all, they were up for Pirate night and had the time of their lives. At no point did our kids nap, they didn't want to miss anything lol.

My wife stays at home so we're definitely not in the position financially to cruise often but I think for us, our kids were at the perfect age. My oldest kept asking about kids club and we ended up letting her and she never wanted to leave despite never really being away from us lol.

I do agree the character wait times were nuts! Although we promised ourselves we wouldn't let our kids use tablets, we let them while waiting for characters, plus they were watching Disney movies and we're on vacation. We did get lucky and get a Royal Gathering as I was on it like a hawk and booked it within 10 seconds of it opening for us, maybe that was pure luck.

I'm sorry your weather wasn't great, we had some rain but our kids literally spent about 7 hours at the toy story splash zone and would've never left if we didn't have to eat dinner or go watch a show lol.

Basically I think it comes down to kids, maybe we got lucky because our girls don't need or ever ask for naps, especially while on vacations. I truly hope you get to cruise again and you get to do everything you wanted!

It was my first time in over 10 years cruising, I didn’t expect royal gathering to go so quick to be honest, ultimately, I wish I did more research but I have always been a “show up and find out what happens” kind of holiday maker now I know Disney requires more planning than most holidays.

That’s so nice that your kids didn’t need to nap! Mine could not manage. Youngest only had a short nap on our last day and she couldn’t even make it through early dinner. I had to take her back

And I feel like tablets were necessary with waits that long! We don’t have tablets and didn’t expect long queues so didn’t have any games prepared on our phones.

I think I just didn’t prepare enough for our cruise, we still had a magical time though!

 

[Dailymeel]

I am a grandma to a 4 month old, my adult son and dil thought they’d like to go on one of our Disney cruises we have scheduled, the child would be around 1 at that time. They literally said to me that my husband and I could watch our grandchild so they could do things on the ship.
I put my foot down and said no way am I spending that kind of money to just babysit and go on a ship I’ve never been on before and miss out on all the fun.
I said wait till he is older, they are mad at me.
So I get what you are saying, we never traveled until our kids were at least 4, and that was sometimes hardly

I do a lot of camping trip with our kids, but this was the first time we had a holiday with scheduled activities by the hour. That was stressful!

I’m sorry your son is mad at you, that must be frustrating! You have a right not to want to babysit. My mum is great with my kids but I’d never hold it against her if she has times when she doesn’t want to look after them.

 

[Dailymeel]

This was largely our experience on our first cruise almost ten years ago. We had a 10 month old and a 3.5 year old. The oldest wanted nothing to do with the clubs. We waited 5 years before our next cruise.

I hope I can go again in 5 years

 

[Bad Pink Tink 2.0]

I am a solo adult and I was on the same cruise. This was my 3rd solo cruise with Disney, all UK in August. I had a very different experience. I wrote a full trip report here https://www.disboards.com/threads/s...-and-vigo-from-southampton-completed.3953303/

on embarkation day we missed the sailaway party because our kids were so tired from the travel, they needed a nap.

I didnt do sail away either. I find it far too crowded and busy. I went to the adult bar Meriden and had a really chill relaxing sail out from Southampton.

We felt like there was nowhere for my children to play (the weather was too cold for pools and splash area most days, we only played in nemo’s reef once), and I wish there was some kind of playground and/or softplay that was open all day for them. I found sea days particularly tricky because there’s just nowhere for them to play safely.

I was in the adult pool in the morning times. I didnt feel it was too cold for the pools. I also did the Aquaduct water slide around 8pm on La Coruna port day as we were sailing out.

Character meet and greets were the most disappointing as we didn’t meet any except for roaming characters. People queued 45 mins to an hour before a character showed up, there was no chance for my very young children to queue that long. So we saw maybe 1 or 2 characters a day and none on the last day . My one year old was so sweet she would wave to all of them from afar and blow kisses and give air hugs but it really broke my heart to watch her do everything on the side and not able to give her real character experiences. - so another place where we didn’t get our moneys worth because our children were too little to manage queues.

I didnt do character meets either. I wrote about this in my trip report. The character meets are high demand on the August UK cruises mainly for the reasons but mainly because the majority of passengers are first time cruisers, people who have never done a Disney cruise, people who have never done a Disney holiday or who have switched out their Disney parks holiday for the cruise.

We also couldn’t get Royal Gathering even after speaking to guest services

Guest services cant help with Royal Gathering. This is a pre cruise booking only. You needed to be online at 30 days before the cruise at 5am to book this activity. Again its a high demand, so it books out fast.

i did come home feeling really sad about missing out on all the good stuff but i was very grateful i got to go on this cruise. I just wish I could have a re-do with my children when they are older and able to manage more late nights.

I still got those Disney Blues and looking through my photos every night!

I hope this helps to inform someone or at least manage expectations when traveling with really little ones

You talk about missing out. Your kids are very young, to them they had an amazing time. Its you who have missed out. A lot of this mis managed expectations could have been eased by more research.

Read my trip report, theres a huge amount of things to do that are not the big demand things. You dont have to follow the masses and crowds and do things the same time as everyone else.

Did you get off the ship in LA Coruna and Vigo?

 

[Dailymeel]

I am a solo adult and I was on the same cruise. This was my 3rd solo cruise with Disney, all UK in August. I had a very different experience. I wrote a full trip report here https://www.disboards.com/threads/s...-and-vigo-from-southampton-completed.3953303/


I didnt do sail away either. I find it far too crowded and busy. I went to the adult bar Meriden and had a really chill relaxing sail out from Southampton.

I was in the adult pool in the morning times. I didnt feel it was too cold for the pools. I also did the Aquaduct water slide around 8pm on La Coruna port day as we were sailing out.

I didnt do character meets either. I wrote about this in my trip report. The character meets are high demand on the August UK cruises mainly for the reasons but mainly because the majority of passengers are first time cruisers, people who have never done a Disney cruise, people who have never done a Disney holiday or who have switched out their Disney parks holiday for the cruise.

Guest services cant help with Royal Gathering. This is a pre cruise booking only. You needed to be online at 30 days before the cruise at 5am to book this activity. Again its a high demand, so it books out fast.


You talk about missing out. Your kids are very young, to them they had an amazing time. Its you who have missed out. A lot of this mis managed expectations could have been eased by more research.

Read my trip report, theres a huge amount of things to do that are not the big demand things. You dont have to follow the masses and crowds and do things the same time as everyone else.

Did you get off the ship in LA Coruna and Vigo?

Yes, we did get off the ship at the ports. And I totally agree with you about mismanaging and not doing enough research! I didn’t expect there was so much to know before cruising as it’s the first time where I had already done much more pre planning for a holiday

I think it’s different for an adult to use the pools on a windy day vs. A small baby. They get cold easily just from the wind and mine get blue lips that freak me out!

And you’re very right, the FOMO is totally on me! My kids don’t know what they’ve missed. The reason I wrote this post was in hopes that if families with young children are planning on cruising with Disney, these are some of the things they should expect to miss out on. And a lot of what I’m saying has to do with the cost of the trip. my expectations were not met and that left me feeling left out and I hope that future families planning will see this and manage expectations better than I did!

Heading over to see your trip report! X thanks so much

 

[Mags2002]

The Oceaneer Club and Lab are not based around screen time. You won’t have seen the full range of programs during Open House. There are programs run all day that have nothing to do with screens. A lot of kids want to use them and that is fine, but there are a million other things for kids to do

 

[PAGA2003]

The Oceaneer Club and Lab are not based around screen time. You won’t have seen the full range of programs during Open House. There are programs run all day that have nothing to do with screens. A lot of kids want to use them and that is fine, but there are a million other things for kids to do

That was my first thought as well. Oceaneer's is all about activities! Slime making, surprise character visits, the pajama party where they color souvenir pillow cases, lots of drawing and paper crafts, etc.

Also, a parent can wait in the line for characters and have the children join when closer. That isn't an issue at all and many folks do that.

We have always traveled with our children since they were babies but I will say every trip was booked from the stand point of 'will I get what I want out of this destination with a child'. That meant, that for us, we didn't do DCL until our son was 4. Being in the US we stayed domestic and did a lot of city, beach and National Park vacations with them until then. We added closer international trips to the Caribbean, Bahamas and Canada at 4 and only now at 13 and 8 they will be taking their first trip to Europe.

 

[ljhayes]

We took our oldest on his first cruise at 7 months. I actually LOVE Disney cruises for vacationing with young kids. Were they our most relaxing or magical vacations ever? No, they were still vacations with small kids But there was always something happening, regardless of when the kids napped. Our room was never more than 5-10 minutes away. No one was side eyeing us if our kids melted down. We were able to send them to the nursery or kids club and have time together on our own. I feel like so much of that just isn't possible on other vacations with kids that young. That said, if it was a once in a lifetime trip I would wait until they were older and could appreciate and remember it more. But as far as vacationing with small kids goes, I will always recommend a Disney cruise.

 

[Dailymeel]

We took our oldest on his first cruise at 7 months. I actually LOVE Disney cruises for vacationing with young kids. Were they our most relaxing or magical vacations ever? No, they were still vacations with small kids But there was always something happening, regardless of when the kids napped. Our room was never more than 5-10 minutes away. No one was side eyeing us if our kids melted down. We were able to send them to the nursery or kids club and have time together on our own. I feel like so much of that just isn't possible on other vacations with kids that young. That said, if it was a once in a lifetime trip I would wait until they were older and could appreciate and remember it more. But as far as vacationing with small kids goes, I will always recommend a Disney cruise.

Yes I did love it. I just struggled to find them a place to play as we couldn’t utilise kids area except for their scheduled open houses.

And yes, it was because it’s a once in a lifetime thing for us and all I could think were the shows that I missed out on! I do wish I have waited

 

[Dailymeel]

That was my first thought as well. Oceaneer's is all about activities! Slime making, surprise character visits, the pajama party where they color souvenir pillow cases, lots of drawing and paper crafts, etc.

Also, a parent can wait in the line for characters and have the children join when closer. That isn't an issue at all and many folks do that.

We have always traveled with our children since they were babies but I will say every trip was booked from the stand point of 'will I get what I want out of this destination with a child'. That meant, that for us, we didn't do DCL until our son was 4. Being in the US we stayed domestic and did a lot of city, beach and National Park vacations with them until then. We added closer international trips to the Caribbean, Bahamas and Canada at 4 and only now at 13 and 8 they will be taking their first trip to Europe.

We could only utilise the kids spaces during open house

And in our situation (due to disabilities and such) I did not have another person I could swap standing in line with and watching the kids.

I did have an absolutely magical time on the cruise. I just felt like I didn’t get my money’s worth because of all the things we had to miss (and I also do take responsibility for not doing more research and planning!) for example we paid for the shows and I only got about ten minutes of golden Mickey’s before my little one started fussing and we had to leave, and I came to a realisation then that my child is not capable of watching a show yet.

 

[tvguy]

We didn't even take our kids to Disneyland until they were 8 for the very reasons you list. We just felt it was too expensive when they would not be up for being in the park from 6:30 am until 1 am (back when Disneyland was still open that late)
Their first cruise, they were 11 and 15, and their first Disney cruise they were 12 and 16. So I completely see where you are coming from.
And we are also of a different school of thought in that we took our kids on cruises to spend time WITH them, not away from them. Our daughter only went to the kids club once, for an hour for a music trivia contest that she found very disappointing. And my wife and I did do the champagne tasting, so we were away from them for an hour. Other than that, we were together 24/7 for the entire week, hanging out with our kids as their friends, not their mom and dead.
Not that we didn't travel with our kids. Both had frequent flyer cards by age 2, but those trips were all half way across the country to Grandparents and Great Grandparents and immediate family, places where down time was easy to schedule, and you weren't concerned how much you had spent for a park admission that day while your were napping in the hotel room.