6 mo old on Allure

We just got home from a week on Allure with our 6 month old. We travelled with just my husband, baby, and myself. If anyone is looking for any info let me know! I can confirm they are still doing the toy lending program on board. They have a play room, which you and your child are free to use with plenty of toys and bouncers and such all on play mats. There is a separate area with a nursery where you can leave your baby 6mo-3yr old. We used this service, and they were great!! I stay home, so my son has never been in a day care setting so I was a little nervous. However, they were great!! We found out from checking in with them on day 1 there were 80 babies under 3 on board! But we never had trouble getting any of the times we needed, even last minute. The nursery had toys, walker, jumpy, and cribs in a dark corner of the room. We got a phone while they had him so they could call us with any issue or we could call them to check in.

Was a very different cruise than we were used to, but still fun. I don't think any type of vacation is going to be the same for a long time now! :p it took us a couple days to get in the swing of things, but once we did we all enjoyed it, and would cruise again!

Again, I'd be happy to try and answer any questions if u have any! I know I couldn't find all the info I was looking for ahead of time :)

We will be bringing an 11 month old on Oasis. How did you handle dinner each night, any problems? Were you able to go to any shows at night?

How late can you leave your child at the kids place?

We are cruising with our 17 month kid this coming weekend. Very excited! Thank you for this post. With the toy lending, did you happen to notice if there was a good variety for both babies and young toddlers? I still can't decide what toys to bring for my son.

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Thanks for the tips ..

We will be bringing an 11 month old on Oasis. How did you handle dinner each night, any problems? Were you able to go to any shows at night?

How late can you leave your child at the kids place?

OK, dinner! We brought 7 glorious dresses for my 1 year old little princess and she only wore 1 of them to dinner. Gia had traveled from Kansas City, MO to Fort Lauderdale FL the day before and had stayed at the Embassy Suites the night before the cruise. I believe that this had something to do with her behavior the first dinner of the cruise. It was just too much, too quickly, too differently for Gia. They brought fruit for her which she enjoyed! They kept the whole milk a comin' . They brought extra things to distract her and got us through dinner in record time. Gia still freaked out twice and was brought by myself, my husband or my dad out of the dining room due to her freak outs and almost freak out. I'm quite sure that other children would have taken the first dinner in stride. Our Gia was not one of those angelic children.

All I can say is you have to try it once and then decide if it's best for them to be with the baby nursery on board. The Oasis of the Seas nursery was FANTASTIC! All sorts of toys for her to play with! They would take her during dinner time and feed her dinner and we'd pick her up afterwords. I just felt better about her being there after the first night as I was aware of how much money it had taken every single person who sat around us to be there too.

I say again my experience is mine alone with a 1 year old. There are children that do awesomely with change, my Gia wasn't quite up to the amount of change that she had experienced. She by the way was fine for the rest of the cruise, we had priceless memories of her on the ship and in port. It was worth it to take her with us!

So, my response is a true one but don't be daunted it could go much better for you and I very much am rooting for this to happen for you! :-)

Take Care!

Diamond Baby (Because my sweet Gia is Diamond status with Royal Caribbean due to my own status.) ;-)

We will be bringing an 11 month old on Oasis. How did you handle dinner each night, any problems? Were you able to go to any shows at night?

How late can you leave your child at the kids place?

Let's say cruising was quite different with our son. We brought him to the MDR and although he was not a distraction for those around us he was harder for us to handle for that long of a sit down dinner. He was just bored of being in his stroller or on our laps. He is a mover though. It was our 9th cruise and our first time checking out the windjammer for dinner! :) and 2nd and 3rd! It was just easier to keep him happy/occupied for the time it took to eat in the windjammer. Waiters in the MDR were great when we did go, which included both formal nights. He made animal puppets out of the napkins and loved playing with him. Each night we are there the head waiter also came by and said hi to our son. (It also is a little sad as a lot of crew members who stopped to say hello on the ship said they have kids at home they missed)

You can only leave ur child in the nursery until midnight. So no quest which didn't even start until 11:45. We didn't do any shows except the comedian which was a 9:30 show. We had been on allure before and seen the shows so didn't need to go again. Our comedian wasn't until fri and I wish we had used the nursery at night earlier in the week. It was easier than I thought and they said he went to sleep just fine there.

We are cruising with our 17 month kid this coming weekend. Very excited! Thank you for this post. With the toy lending, did you happen to notice if there was a good variety for both babies and young toddlers? I still can't decide what toys to bring for my son.

 

 

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They had like 20+ bags of toys to check out and choose from. I'm not familiar with 17 month olds yet, but there were bags I skipped over as the toys were too mature for my son. The bag we checked out and ended up keeping all week had a sensory ball, the stacking rings, a turtle that u pushed it's shell down and it rolled across the floor, a bucket with different shaped holes and corresponding shaped toys and a whale ring thing that you pour water thru to spin(pool or bath toy). They kept pushing that u can change out bags as often as u like. And when you are selecting they have a binder with each bag having it's own page showing pictures of each toy inside. So you can quickly flip thru. I brought Clorox wipes with to clean everything he was going to play with first and then washed in water as he is putting everything in his mouth.

Thank you so much for all this info!! We sail in 3 days. Aaaahhh! Time to pack. I think I might just bring his favorite books and hope for the best for the toys we check out for him. He will play with anything. LOL. We are crossing our fingers our little guy does well at dinner too.

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Good luck and have a fun trip!

We just got off the allure also, and there is so much to do and see..for my review, with pictures, click on the following link..

http://karanandmichael.blogspot.com/

I'm pleased to hear others have had a pleasant cruising with infants experience. We will be cruising on the Allure on 10/26/14 with my then six month old son. We are really looking forward to it (though we know it will be very different from all of our previous cruises alone).

I'm happy the toy lending library seems to be up and running smoothly. It will save me a lot of packing.

How were the pack and plays/cribs? Did you find that they were in good condition? I've read mixed reviews about them.

We took our son on the Allure when he was 15 months old. He enjoyed the Royal Babies & Tots nursery. And he was not used to daycare environments so I was nervous how he would react. But they took great care of him and on the few late nights they had him fed and in crib sleeping.

We are now going back in September. He is 3 now and we have a baby girl that will be 9 months. I have talked up the Adventure Ocean Program so he is excited about all the fun activities! Can't wait to see if he really enjoys it like others kids seem to.

I'm pleased to hear others have had a pleasant cruising with infants experience. We will be cruising on the Allure on 10/26/14 with my then six month old son. We are really looking forward to it (though we know it will be very different from all of our previous cruises alone).

 

I'm happy the toy lending library seems to be up and running smoothly. It will save me a lot of packing.

 

How were the pack and plays/cribs? Did you find that they were in good condition? I've read mixed reviews about them.

Ours was in decent condition. I brought our own sheets and brought a quilted thicker one. It worked fine! Only trouble we had was he woke up and instead of falling back asleep he started looking around, realizing he wasn't in his crib and room and freaked out. He normally sleeps thru the night and we had wake ups most nights. I was using my phone instead of his noise machine to save on packing. I think next time I'm packing his actual noise machine w the white noise he is used to. Anything to make it closer to home should help. Met another couple on board with an 8 month old and they were having similar night issues.

We are thinking about traveling on Oasis of the Sea in January 2015 with our son who will be 15months old at that time. We were going to get connecting rooms with our in-laws so they could help with the baby if we wanted to go do something by ourselves for a while at night after dinner.

Glad to hear that the Royal Babies Nursery is good, I know it's $6 a hour during the day and $8 an hour at night. I bet it can get expensive fast!

How was the experience trying to reserve times in advance or last minute in the nursery and how early or late are they open?

Thanks for the reviews! We sail with our 23 month old on July 6th and am really hoping he loves the nursery. He is a stay-at-home with BOTH parents kid, so he has no clue how to handle the separation. eeeek! Regarding food - what do they feed the kids? Do they have any sort of rules regarding crying it out? Will they call if he's freaking out or just let him work through it?

How did the phones work? I asked a rep over the phone about how they would reach us if something happened while our daughter was in the nursery. She said that they would send someone to find us at whatever location we gave them. But, I had read that some people were given phones by the nursery. Any up-to-date info would be great. We are traveling with our 7 1/2 month old daughter on the Allure on 7/6. Getting excited... and nervous!

OP I have a quick question I'm hoping you can answer. I have seen/heard conflicting reports of the Royal Babies Nursery only allowing you to book a max of 20 hours with them? Can you please clarify? :)

Could also please clarify the hours the nursery is open because I'm getting conflicting reports about that as well.

Did your DS ever have one of his meals while in nursery?

How soon can you book nursery hours?

My fiancée and I have our wedding cruise booked for May 2015 and our DS will be 7 months at that time so we are looking to get as much info/tips as possible beforehand. Thanks so much!

We are thinking about traveling on Oasis of the Sea in January 2015 with our son who will be 15months old at that time. We were going to get connecting rooms with our in-laws so they could help with the baby if we wanted to go do something by ourselves for a while at night after dinner.

 

Glad to hear that the Royal Babies Nursery is good, I know it's $6 a hour during the day and $8 an hour at night. I bet it can get expensive fast!

 

How was the experience trying to reserve times in advance or last minute in the nursery and how early or late are they open?

We were last minute a lot, and never had an issue. Not sure how early they were open, but it was before lunch as that's when we swum by to reserve for later that day. They are open until midnight, which works every night except for quest! Quest didn't start until 11:45, so we missed it this time around.

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How did the phones work? I asked a rep over the phone about how they would reach us if something happened while our daughter was in the nursery. She said that they would send someone to find us at whatever location we gave them. But, I had read that some people were given phones by the nursery. Any up-to-date info would be great. We are traveling with our 7 1/2 month old daughter on the Allure on 7/6. Getting excited... and nervous!

We received a phone on Allure every time we dropped him off. They tested it before we left. It has a number on the phone so you are welcome to call the nursery anytime, and they should work anywhere on the ship. They never called us, so I assume it works!

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OP I have a quick question I'm hoping you can answer. I have seen/heard conflicting reports of the Royal Babies Nursery only allowing you to book a max of 20 hours with them? Can you please clarify? :)

 

Could also please clarify the hours the nursery is open because I'm getting conflicting reports about that as well.

 

Did your DS ever have one of his meals while in nursery?

 

How soon can you book nursery hours?

 

My fiancée and I have our wedding cruise booked for May 2015 and our DS will be 7 months at that time so we are looking to get as much info/tips as possible beforehand. Thanks so much!

I think the max hrs is what you can book that first day. As they explained they want to allow everyone equal chances to book. But after the first day, I believe you can book as much as you want.

All I can verify is they were open until midnight. We met a couple that left their son in the nursery while going on excursions, so I know they were open earlier. (Yes, they allow you to do that, and leave a cell #. I personally couldn't, but if you feel comfortable they are ok with it)

I was nursing him only so they did not feed him. I did see near their kitchenette area some labelled cans of formula, and some bottles. They did have a fridge as well. But that was all what ppl had brought for their kids. I do know when we registered him on the first day there was some extensive questions about what your child was allowed to eat or drink, so I'm guessing those who eat real food, it is maybe available?

First thing we did upon boarding was go to the nursery to register him. I also wanted to book the night we had the comedian, and one night we were doing a specialty restaurant. It was good as we also picked up a bag of toys then for the room.

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