For Families Thinking of Cruising with Young Children

[Dailymeel]

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.

Regarding kids club - the staff are great but the club is designed around screen use and video games to entertain the kids a lot and we are a very strict screen time family.

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. - 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 even after speaking to guest services

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