Best cruise lines and questions for Alaskan Cruise with 8 and 4 year old?

I am hoping to take an Alaskan Cruise with family this summer. Our children are 8 and 4. I am totally overwhelmed with the options for cruise lines! Can anyone lend some advice?

Some details include that our little ones travel well and do fine in adult dominated situations (like shows, restaurants, etc.) but I would like for them to have activities on sea days and be able to go to babysitting in the evenings. My 8 year old is picky about kids clubs and hated the one on Carnival when he was 5 so I am hoping we can plan something different this time that he will go willingly to! Being able to get connecting rooms or family sized cabins would be a plus.

I've currently been looking at RCI, HAL, and Princess but would definitely consider others.

Is having an outside room on an Alaskan cruise very important since you cruise close to the scenery? We are flexible but I wonder if it is worth the extra cost.

And lastly, Disney looks to be about $2k more. Is it worth it the extra cost? We do love Disney but I feel like other lines have similar programs and entertainment to offer.

Thank you in advance for the advice!

My husband and I sailed HAL in Alaska and RCI in the Caribbean. If we had children, we would definitely do Royal again!

We had an outside room, but when you are going through scenery, you will want to be outside on a deck or in an area with a lot of windows. We really just used our window to peek and see if we should head outside.

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I am hoping to take an Alaskan Cruise with family this summer. Our children are 8 and 4. I am totally overwhelmed with the options for cruise lines! Can anyone lend some advice?

 

Some details include that our little ones travel well and do fine in adult dominated situations (like shows, restaurants, etc.) but I would like for them to have activities on sea days and be able to go to babysitting in the evenings. My 8 year old is picky about kids clubs and hated the one on Carnival when he was 5 so I am hoping we can plan something different this time that he will go willingly to! Being able to get connecting rooms or family sized cabins would be a plus.

 

I've currently been looking at RCI, HAL, and Princess but would definitely consider others.

 

T

Is having an outside room on an Alaskan cruise very important since you cruise close to the scenery? We are flexible but I wonder if it is worth the extra cost.

 

And lastly, Disney looks to be about $2k more. Is it worth it the extra cost? We do love Disney but I feel like other lines have similar programs and entertainment to offer.

 

Thank you in advance for the advice!

he first thing is to decide the budget . Then whether your going to cruise from San Francisco , Seattle or Vancouver. You don't say where you live as that will determine where you will be flying. If you have to fly plan for one or two days pre cruise.

Once those are decided the month. With kids your probably limited to late June , July or August .

Then look at what is the most interesting things you'll want to see and do . Keep in mind most Alaska cruises visit the same ports but for different time periods . The number of sea days is usually two on a seven day cruise( except from San Francisco).

An Alaskan cruise is all about ALASKA...NOT the ship! You will be too tired after a long day ashore to worry about ship's amenities! Pick the itinerary you want. Book it. The ship won't matter, and your 2 young kids will not care....guaranteed.

Thanks everyone for the responses! We are flying from the East Coast but using frequent flier miles and I am looking to do round trip from Seattle or Vancouver. Pricing and itineraries for Princess, RCI, and HAL all seem very close to the same so I am having a hard time picking between and am wondering if any one line would have the edge?

I've sailed all 3 lines, including RCI and Princess in Alaska. You will have a great time on any of them. I like RCI's ships the best, HAL's food the best and Princess' kids club the best. I would choose based on price and itinerary.

Princess does Alaska best all-around. We took our son when he was 5, and he loved the kid's clubs. The staff was very professional, and they had a national park ranger come and talk to them when we went to Glacier Bay. They got stuffed eagles and whales. I wouldn't consider any other line.

Thanks everyone!

We took our 1st grader on RCCL's Radiance of the Seas (northbound) in 2011. He had a blast in Adventure Ocean. They did all sorts of things. I know they played games and I think they did some science too. I remember him making a model of Saturn, and I know they did a science thing on germs. He came back with a petri dish with germs (glitter). It seems like he came home with all sorts of things from Adventure Ocean.

Also they do Adventure dining almost every night. Our son loved that! You have to sign up for that the day of. And we selected what entree our child wanted. Then we took him to Adventure Ocean at 5:00 or 6:00 (I forget which). The staff take the kids to the Windjammer to eat. After they eat, the staff and the kids go back to Adventure Ocean for evening activities. Our son never wanted to eat dinner with us again! ha! But of course, that is optional.

The Radiance has an indoor pool and hottub (the Solarium pool). They have family time 2 times per day.....it seems like it was 10-12noon and 2-4 in the afternoon.

As far as balcony, or no balcony. We had cabin 1100 on the aft because it had a very large balcony. It was a junior suite so we had a bath tub. It had a sofa bed for our son. The nicest part is for Hubbard Glacier day, it seems like we were up at 7:00 am to start watching as we were nearing the glacier, but our son was asleep. It was so nice to go out on the balcony and enjoy all the scenery and the glacier with him still in bed sleeping.

As far as Alaska type excursions, he liked them all. We did a flight to Misty Fjord with Seawind Aviation. We all had window seats and it seems like we might have gotten a small family discount. That was in Ketchikan. Also in Ketchikan, we rode the funicular up the hill and had lunch at Cape Fox Lodge, and then walked down the Married Man Trail which was really cool. It ends at a creek and then we shopped on Creek Street.

At Skagway, we did the shorter bus/train combo tour with Chilkoot. It was pretty neat but I was really glad we were on the shorter trip. We had lunch at Skagway Brewery.

At Juneau, we did the RCCL gold mine tour. That was really cool. We were taken to a real mine that is no longer in operation. We got to go in and they demonstrated a 100 year old drill, and a rock thrower (hearing protection and hard hats were provided). Then we purchased shuttle tickets out to Mendenhall Glacier and walked the trail to Nugget Falls.

At Icy Strait, we booked a whale watch with Floyd of F.I.S.H.E.S. That was our most favorite tour of the week. We saw humpbacks up close. One even came along side our boat. Our son stayed inside the boat with Floyd. (Our son brought along his DS with him to keep him happy whenever he got enough of the Alaska scenery).

In Seward, we booked a transfer tour that took us to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, and Alyeska where we rode the gondola up, among other places before it was time to fly home.

We also toured Seattle & Victoria pre-trip before transferring to Vancouver for the cruise.

We are booked on the Radiance again for Sept 4, except this time it is a round trip Vancouver so we don't have to fly home from Anchorage. I would say the only thing I would change about our original north bound trip, is I would flip it so we could go southbound and get that long flight to Anchorage out of the way first. We were exhausted.

Have fun planning your trip!! That's half the fun!

If you are interested, our Alaska picture books are in the link below. I had to separate the trip into 2 photo books because Shutterfly limited me on how many pages my book could have. So there's a book 1 and book 2.

Ugh. I forgot a couple details. In Juneau, we had a nice lunch at Twisted Fish. It was really close to where the ship was docked. It seems like it was in the building marked Taku.

In Icy Strait, our whale watch wasn't until afternoon, so for the morningtime, we walked the beach trail, and came to the Landing Zone restaurant...walked through the restaurant and out the backside to watch the zipliners come down the mountain. Then we went on to the nature trail in the woods. We also shopped at the shops and saw the canning operation (they had a few canning machines going to demonstrate). I think we had lunch back on the ship on Icy Strait day and then went back off the ship for our whale watch.