decision for Meditterean cruise with kids

I am booking all of our vacations for next year and was sad to see that Carnival will not be doing a med. cruise next summer.

so now I am debating on weather to do a NCL or Royal. I have kids ages then will be

19, 18, 17, 7, 4, 2

plus my husband and I

I have only cruised with carnival because of all the really good deals we get but unfortunately our goal is EUROPE next year and possibly HAWAII both for the summer. and Carnival doesn't have any for the summer vacations when kids are off.

thanks in advance

Do you need the kids club for the 2 year old? The Cunard kids club starts at 2, so that would be my first choice. Newer or recently refurbished Royal ships will have a fee based nursery.

Years ago we tried to plan a trip to Europe with the whole family. There were two children involved- ages 14 and 2. It was becoming a headache- trying to figure out what tours we could do with a two year old. It was going to be really hard to take him to many of the places we wanted to go. In the end- I left the two year old at home with my sister and took just the 14 year old. When the baby was older- I took him on a cruise to Europe (he was 4.5) and he loved the youth program. I'm glad I waited to take him until he was older. The flights are long, the excursions are long and the demands of a baby will really limit the scope of what you can do. That's my two cents. I'd wait until your youngest is at least three- out of diapers, able to sit for periods of time and over the terrible two's. I'd do Alaska, Hawaii instead and wait another year or two to do Europe.

Carnival only does Europe when there's a new ship.

Princess does HI when schools are on break. Otherwise NCL has ship doing 7 day cruises around HI year round.

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It really probably depends on where you want to go in Europe and what you want to see -- and on your specific two year old.

I generally hate and despise the advice to not take kids on vacations because they're too little and it's too much hassle and they won't remember it. (*I* will remember what it was like to watch my little one stare in amazement at the Colosseum for the rest of my life... whether he remembers it or not is academic! :mad:) But cobblestones + strollers is a serious drag, so if you're two year old (or your four year old) isn't independent or you're not a baby carrier family, that'd be tough. Even with carriers and independent kids, it can be tough -- I got serious biceps lugging my 40 pound four year old around Rome this February, even though he walked most of the time!

Also, Cruise ship excursions are generally going to have age limits that aren't little-one friendly; in the absence of ship's tours are you comfortable organizing yourselves to get where you want to go -- which might be a sight easier in Western Europe than in the Adriatic, just because there's more infrastructure available.

However, I think more Europeans are open to vacations (be it cruises, or otherwise) with their kids and have more options -- If I were you, I'd investigate Costa or MSC or some of the other European lines and see if they have what you're looking for.