Traveling to Alaska with 3 kids - help picking a ship needed

My husband and I are going to Alaska with our 3 kids (ages 5, 7 and 9) in June.

We plan to leave from Vancouver and take the Inside Passage and cruise for one week.

I have ruled out Disney because we care more about the itinerary and Disney doesn't do Glacier Bay or one way options that would allow us to tag on a day for something else that interests us.

I have heard good, but mixed things about Princess, Norwegian Cruise Lines, and Royal Caribbean. I heard especially good things about Coral, but don't know anyone that's been on it.

We don't care about gourmet meals - but healthy food options like salad and grilled seafood would be ideal.

Given that there are 5 of us with 3 young kids, sleeping arrangements are proving tricky.

We need a ship that is kid-friendly (an inside or heated pool would be great) and includes a decent kids club.

I would be very interested in any of your opinions given how many cruise gurus are on this forum!

Thanks for any input.

We did Radiance of the Seas in May with my 7 year old and had a blast. Several hours a day children were allowed in the indoor pool, the kids club was great, and there are a bunch of food options. She loved the Crab Fishermans Tour Excursion and the Gold Panning and Sled Dogs.

Have you looked thru the trip reports? in STICKYs near the top of the page.

If there were kids travelling, it will be noted in the first line of the report. Parents are usually pretty vocal about the clubs, activities, etc so the reports will be a good resource.

just did Radiance of the Seas. my teens liked the Optix Club, especially the 12 year old. he was out doing stuff more than I was.

My husband and I are going to Alaska with our 3 kids (ages 5, 7 and 9) in June.

 

We plan to leave from Vancouver and take the Inside Passage and cruise for one week.

 

I have ruled out Disney because we care more about the itinerary and Disney doesn't do Glacier Bay or one way options that would allow us to tag on a day for something else that interests us.

 

I have heard good, but mixed things about Princess, Norwegian Cruise Lines, and Royal Caribbean. I heard especially good things about Coral, but don't know anyone that's been on it.

 

We don't care about gourmet meals - but healthy food options like salad and grilled seafood would be ideal.

 

Given that there are 5 of us with 3 young kids, sleeping arrangements are proving tricky.

 

We need a ship that is kid-friendly (an inside or heated pool would be great) and includes a decent kids club.

 

I would be very interested in any of your opinions given how many cruise gurus are on this forum!

 

Thanks for any input.

There aren't many ships the leave Vancouver that do 7 day rtn. Princess doesn't have any ships doing 7 day cruises rtn from Vancouver . Holland America seems to be the only cruise line doing 7 day rtn from Vancouver in 2015.

Another vote for the Radiance of the Sea...however it doesn't go to Glacier Bay. We went to Hubbard Glacier. It was pretty exciting. The ship horn was going off and people were shouting and hoping to see some glacier calving.

Our son was 6 and loved the kids club on the Radiance. I would say (for us), my only mistake was going northbound. By the time we got to Seward and did our day tour of the area and got the airport, we were exhausted. That long flight home was a killer. Plus I felt that on the way up, that part of the inside passage we went through in the dark. We went in the last week of June. I was particularly wanting to see the Seymour Narrows, but I think it was dark by the time we got to that area. I'm wondering if we would have seen more of the inside passage on a southbound cruise.

Anyway, we are going back on the Radiance next September. It is a round trip Vancouver.

As far as rooms for the 5 of you, we've been booked in a family oceanview twice. (on the Jewel of the Sea which is a sister to Radiance). We were in 8002. It was huge. It had our main bedroom area, plus a separate bedroom area with another closet and dresser and 2 twin beds (one lower and one higher). Also the couch made into a bed in the living room area. The only downside was no balcony.

Wish you could come along on our Sept 4 sailing of the Radiance. Our boy will be 10 by then. I doubt there will be very many kids on board, but he always has a great time.

And yes, lots of healthy food. Your children can order off the kids menu or adult menu. There's even adventure dining. Our kiddo loves that. He'd rather do Adventure dining each night instead of dinner with us.

Last time the indoor pool (solarium) had family time two times per day. I think it was something like 10-12 and 2-4. Don't quote me on that. Very warm and tropical at the solarium.

Do you have any other questions about Royal Carribbean or the Radiance of the Seas. I'm sorry I can't answer about the other cruise lines.

The suggestion to read the trip reports is a good one, because each family has different bests.

We just returned (August 4-11) from a northbound cruise on the Norwegian Sun that we did with our 9 year old son. We had previously taken family New England and Canada princess cruise when my son was 6.

We choose the Norwegian Sun because of an outstanding northbound itinerary (Vancouver, Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay and Hubbard Glacier). The only cruises that do both Glacier bay and hubbard Glacier are the Norwegian northbound and the Princess southbound. The Norwegian timing fit better with our schedule. Next year the SUn is going to Seward rather than Whittier, which I believe to be a big improvement.

What we liked about Norwegian:

-The Sun has some of the biggest inside rooms. For our family of 3 we had an inside that had a queen bed and a couch that was made into a very nice bed for our son. The room was much more comfortable than the inside room on the Caribbean princess; on that ship my son had a bunk and we were not allowed to have the beds underneath together as a queen (we rearranged the room to put them together and the room steward came in an made us put them back separately. With the bunks (the only thing available on princess) the beds must stay under the bunks for "safety". The sun does have some inside rooms that will work for 5. With 5 your options are much more limited (we invited my sisters family of 5 to join us before picking a cruise and they decided against it).

-The kids program was excellent. We had liked the program on Princess...on princess my son had great kids room staff and they had nice craft projects for them. The Norwegian program also had great staff, but they had a better designed program. I was particularly impressed with the "Circus at Sea"...the kids club put on a performance in the main theater narrated by the asst. cruise director. They had really made an effort to put together that allowed the children to shine (my son is uncoordinated) and to allow them to participate without interfering with scenic cruising or port times.

-In addition to the kids program, their were scheduled activities for families to do together, including cupcake decorating and a family white hot party. The entertainment options were marked as whether they were kid appropriate, and they had an excellent family comedy show one evening. On the princess cruise we had been on the only "kid options" were the kids club.

-Their are plenty of common spaces both front and aft to view the scenery; the only time that the ship felt crowded was on rainy sea days not during meal times.

There are no inside or covered pools on the Sun. Their is a heated one foot kids pool with a small slide and a kids hot tub that we used one day. For a non-swimmer, this fit what he wanted. There are two main heated pools...

THe only drawback to the kids club in the Sun is that it is far forward...my son became sea sick there when we had rough seas, but was fine in the middle of the ship.

I was extremely disappointed by the food on the Sun, having loved our food on Princess and my parents having loved their Princess Alaska cruise food as well.

We did not use the specialty restaurants...we wanted our cruise budget for Alaska and they were still more than we spend on dinner. They had the new Norwegian menus for the first time for our cruise. Their may have been some grilled fish, but their was no steamed seafood at all. Most of the food seamed to be equivalent to eating frozen packaged food, which we don't eat. The produce selections were extremely limited...their were no berries available except as garnishes. The fruit that was available was a melon fruit salad (cantaloupe, watermelon and pineapple). There were whole apples and bananas as well...I don't think I remember seeing grapes. For salad bar their was lettuce, cucumbers, grape tomatoes. They had a lot of strange mayonaise based salads as well. Even in the main dining room most entrees were served without much for vegetables...or only a very small portion. My son usually has the choice of eating his vegetables and having dessert, or having fruit for dessert. He got a vacation from vegetables because we simply could not find any that were appealing (he does not eat lettuce). The food was also too salty for my tastes.

The combination of rain on the last two days of the cruise (both sea/scenic cruising days) and the poor food left a bad impression of Norwegian. (Obviously the weather was not their fault and is common for Alaska, but eating bad food and not being able to see the scenery meant that I was ready to get off the ship when we landed in Whittier).

The Sun does not have a naturalist and the port talks are just advertisements from the shore excursion desk. However, the rangers do a program on Glacier Bay day on all ships, and this includes a Junior Ranger program in the kids club.

My 9 year olds favorite things included the Brittania Mine Museum (1 hour north of Vancouver, and as part of the copper mine they have a gold panning trough so we did not need to spend any other time on gold panning excursions), becoming a Junior Ranger Five times (Tongass Forest, Skagway Historical Park, Glacier Bay, Kenai Fjords and Denali), and his favorite was walking on Mantanuska Glacier (with MICA guides as part of our land trip).

Stanley Park is very close to Canada Place, your younger kids would like the train (my son did too, he was a little old for it so it was not a favorite).

Overall, despite the food on the Sun, we had a great time in Alaska.

Jane

If by chance, you want to check out Alaska pictures from our Radiance trip with our son, use the link below. Our trip is divided into two photo books. There are some good pics of the Radiance, and of Hubbard Glacier in case you want to compare. (The first part of our trip was Seattle and Victoria, but then we get on the ship in Vancouver).

Have fun planning and welcome to Cruise Critic!

Personally, I think the Alaska experience is more off the ship than on, so we think itinerary is king instead of the ships. All major lines do kids really well. Not all will have indoor pools, though.

We like the dining and attire flexibility Norwegian gives - which is great for kids. It's very easy to not eat in any specialty restaurants if you don't want to. One of our favorite is Blue Lagoon. It has great basic comfort food and is included in your cruise fare.

We've booked the Norwegian Sun northbound for May and are tacking on another week in Alaska. DH will finally get to see Denali - which cannot happen when you do a RT.