Traveling on the Allure with a 20 month old... Questions?

Hey everyone. I figured since I have found a lot of good advice on these boards figured I'd pay it forward a bit. We are going to be traveling on the Allure next week and we will have our 20 month old daughter with us. I wanted to reach out to you all here to see if there are any questions that you would like me to find the answer for when we are on board, or doing any excursions.

What ports will you be going to?

Are you doing MTD or traditional? I have the early dining selected now.

Can you let us know how your child liked the nursery and the shows? Also, do they still do the you lending program?

Thank you!

We are going to Nassau, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. We are doing my time dining but I made reservations for 5:45 most nights. I will let you know about the shows nursery and toy lending program.

Thanks! We're doing Western, so diff ports, but I'll be excited to hear about your experiences. Are you planning to take the little one to any shows?

I'll just add our recent experience but onboard Radiance....Their Royal Tots Nursery was "amazing" and yes RCI (fleetwide) has the toy lending program...

Just remember to go to the nursery to sign your little one up when you board..get your bag of toys and make reservations for any times you may want in advance...

You might be surprised at how many tots are cruising now a days...we had 20 under three on our September Alaska cruise.

Yeah. We plan on going to the nursery as soon as we board. As for the shows we are only bringing her to the ice show. All of the others are too late at night. We might try to bring her to the diving show but it depends on if we can get into the 7:30 show. Also we will probably bring her to most of the dream works stuff as she is now obsessed with Kung Fu Panda.

So we just got back Sunday evening. Not quite as relaxing of a trip as I had hoped. Our little one did not want to nap at all throughout the entire trip unless she was being held by one of us and that only would last about 30 minutes anyway.

I was a little disappointed in the nursery. We dropped her off there a few nights during the week, and they did not really follow our instructions, or we just gave too vague of instructions. The first night they actually never tried to put her to sleep even though we told them that she could probably go to sleep within 30-60 minutes. They had her up until midnight and that was only the second night of the cruise so it was a bad start sleep wise for her. Another time we dropped her off we speficially told them to try and put her down at 8:30 (more specific this time because of the previous incident) and they called at 8:45 saying she was very cranky. When I went down they had her calmed down and told me she seemed like she was tired. Obviously she was as I told you to put her to sleep at 8:30. A third time we dropped her off in the afternoon and they basically just put her in front of a TV for the 3 hours she was there.

We got lucky with the second cabin and my mom offered to have her sleep in her bed with her. That worked wonderfully as she refused to go down in the pack and play.

The toys for the toy lending were nice, but we were out and about so much we hardly touched them. I was also disappointed in the baby splash area. It was very small and right in the middle of the rest of the H2O zone. There was no signage anywhere saying which area she could be in and we got yelled at for being in the wrong area once. The bad part about it is the baby one is so tiny with only two small shower things but all around is a bunch of the same looking things and the babies started getting grumpy they couldnt play in the other areas.

The other disappointing thing was the timing for the dreamworks characters. They had Po from Kung Fu Panda only at 9pm. A lot of the meet and greets were later which either made us skip them or try to keep her awake, making the sleep deprivation that much worse.

Dinners with her were fine. We ate in the MDR all but one night. That night she did room service and we ate at Samba (which was also the night we got called to the nursery because she was tired and cranky). The waitstaff was great and always made sure she had what she needed.

Overall we all had fun. The little one had a blast, just needed more than tiny cat naps throughout the day. Would I take a toddler again, probably not, adn if I do we would probably look into doing a B2B with the first week having the kids, second not. Both the wife and I were exhausted by the very end.

Forgot to mention that we took her to the Aqua show (Ocean Aria) and the ice skating show. She was great at both of them and seemed to really enjoy them as there was a lot of action. We also did the farewell parade which she loved. Just wish we planned ahead a bit more on that as we still had to pack everything up before putting her to bed so again she was up until about 10pm that night.

For the dining we did have my time dining, and originally I booked dinner around 5:45 each night, but we found that difficult to get to as getting everyone ready, including my mom who was almost as bad as the toddler, took a lot longer than I am used to. One night we decided to go at 7pm in order to get out and go to the meet and greet with Po and still ahve the kid up. Of course that was lobster night so there was a huge line and we didnt sit until close to 7:45. We were still able to get the wait staff to rush things along and got out just in time to get to Po.

If you can't tell, my daughter got obsessed with Po.

So we just got back Sunday evening. Not quite as relaxing of a trip as I had hoped. Our little one did not want to nap at all throughout the entire trip unless she was being held by one of us and that only would last about 30 minutes anyway.

 

I was a little disappointed in the nursery. We dropped her off there a few nights during the week, and they did not really follow our instructions, or we just gave too vague of instructions. The first night they actually never tried to put her to sleep even though we told them that she could probably go to sleep within 30-60 minutes. They had her up until midnight and that was only the second night of the cruise so it was a bad start sleep wise for her. Another time we dropped her off we speficially told them to try and put her down at 8:30 (more specific this time because of the previous incident) and they called at 8:45 saying she was very cranky. When I went down they had her calmed down and told me she seemed like she was tired. Obviously she was as I told you to put her to sleep at 8:30. A third time we dropped her off in the afternoon and they basically just put her in front of a TV for the 3 hours she was there.

 

We got lucky with the second cabin and my mom offered to have her sleep in her bed with her. That worked wonderfully as she refused to go down in the pack and play.

 

The toys for the toy lending were nice, but we were out and about so much we hardly touched them. I was also disappointed in the baby splash area. It was very small and right in the middle of the rest of the H2O zone. There was no signage anywhere saying which area she could be in and we got yelled at for being in the wrong area once. The bad part about it is the baby one is so tiny with only two small shower things but all around is a bunch of the same looking things and the babies started getting grumpy they couldnt play in the other areas.

 

The other disappointing thing was the timing for the dreamworks characters. They had Po from Kung Fu Panda only at 9pm. A lot of the meet and greets were later which either made us skip them or try to keep her awake, making the sleep deprivation that much worse.

 

Dinners with her were fine. We ate in the MDR all but one night. That night she did room service and we ate at Samba (which was also the night we got called to the nursery because she was tired and cranky). The waitstaff was great and always made sure she had what she needed.

 

Overall we all had fun. The little one had a blast, just needed more than tiny cat naps throughout the day. Would I take a toddler again, probably not, adn if I do we would probably look into doing a B2B with the first week having the kids, second not. Both the wife and I were exhausted by the very end.

What do you mean, they didn't put her to sleep? Did they put her in a crib? Were they supposed to do something special?

What do you mean, they didn't put her to sleep? Did they put her in a crib? Were they supposed to do something special?

They have cribs there that they would put the kids to sleep in. They just let her play until midnight because she wasn't getting cranky. We told them to put her down to sleep around 9 or something like that. They did not even try to put her in a crib or give her milk or anything.

So sorry you had a bit of a bad experience with the nursery...We've cruised twice both on Radiance with toddler grandchildren and had amazing experiences...I guess it all depends on the staff that happen to be on your ship...Hopefully next cruise will work out better.

Some of the staff seemed better than others. It also very well could have been our daughter being a pain but they didn't really tell us that. She has never done day care as our work schedules allow for us to not need it. We have left her with sitters but usually in familiar environments like our house or our family's homes that she has been to before.

We also probably needed to be more specific when we dropped her off. The time she was up till midnight I could say there could have been a miscommunication between us. Also I don't know for sure if she was just in front of the tv the whole time that one afternoon but my wife swung by about 15 minutes after we dropped her off and she was in a stroller in front of the tv. When I picked her up she was in a stroller in front of the tv and the staff didn't give me an update as to what she did all day. I didn't want to ask too many questions as there were other children and they were sleeping.

What a lousy experience.

I have heard that for the late night party, they will just let your kid stay up and play unless they go to sleep on their own.

Were there other toddlers in the nursery or just babies?

If I dropped my child off and they left her in a stroller and didn't interact with her, I'd be upset. I'll take her out of the stroller when we drop her off if we try on our cruise.

Did you talk to anyone about this while you were on the ship?

What a lousy experience.

 

I have heard that for the late night party, they will just let your kid stay up and play unless they go to sleep on their own.

 

Were there other toddlers in the nursery or just babies?

 

If I dropped my child off and they left her in a stroller and didn't interact with her, I'd be upset. I'll take her out of the stroller when we drop her off if we try on our cruise.

 

Did you talk to anyone about this while you were on the ship?

They actually put her in their own stroller. We did not bring her up in ours. She did fall asleep in that one on one of the nights, which I am fine with. Liek I said, I never confirmed that all they did was put her in front of the TV and leave her there. They did give her a bottle of milk so maybe it was just random luck when I walked in and they had just put her back in there. There normally were other toddlers and babies in there. They seemed pretty busy most of the time. At the time I picked her up there was another baby that they were trying to get down to sleep so maybe she began getting fussy and they wanted to quiet her down. I did not complain to anyone on the ship as I did not know all the details and I hadnt realized that my wife went back and saw her there until after I had gotten back, which is another reason I did not question it.

My advice is to be very specific as to what you want them to do with your child as they tend to try to keep them quiet and entertained rather than keep them on somewhat of a schedule. Just specifically say she can do X for this amount of time, read her X book at this time, give her the bottle at this time and put her down to sleep.

The night she was up till midnight we basically said she was still a little wired and that they could keep her up until she blew off the energy, maybe like an hour or so. then when we went 3 hours later she must have still been displaying that energy because she was still up.

Thanks for the info.

I'm not too worried about my kiddo's schedule. She's pretty flexible and already going to be off because of of the time zone difference anyway. As long as the nursery staff interact with her, I'm sure it'll be fine. She's pretty social anyway. I'm sure if there are other kids around, she'll want to play.

I'm sorry you guys didn't have a great experience, though.