Cruising kids with autism- your tips

Please provide your tips for cruising with a child or adult with autism.

My son, now 18, loves to cruise. Same room, same bed, posted menus, activity schedules are all bonuses. I recommend traditional seating so you'll have the same time, table and waiters. We usually get a mini suite or suite so he can hang out in our room as a quiet area. We sit on the aisle for shows so if we need to make a quick exit, it's less intrusive to others. We've used the teen clubs for small amounts of time when he was under 17. They give you a pager. The first day we would introduce our son along with a 1-pager that describes his likes and some challenges.

Also, these boards have past menus and daily schedules that you can download and share to get an idea of what to expect.

I book with Autism On the Seas. They are wonderful about setting things up with the cruise line. They make sure the kids program knows what the needs are. They set up priority boarding as most kids don't like waiting in lines etc. They are great at helping you with your special needs.

My son, now 18, loves to cruise. Same room, same bed, posted menus, activity schedules are all bonuses. I recommend traditional seating so you'll have the same time, table and waiters. We usually get a mini suite or suite so he can hang out in our room as a quiet area. We sit on the aisle for shows so if we need to make a quick exit, it's less intrusive to others. We've used the teen clubs for small amounts of time when he was under 17. They give you a pager. The first day we would introduce our son along with a 1-pager that describes his likes and some challenges.

MadisonMom pretty much listed everything that we have done including going for a decently large size cabin (depends on the line) as we found that our son needs his chill time.

The only thing that we do additionally is send a message to the special needs/access department of the cruise line requesting a pager in the kids club and introducing our son (Disney has phones/Princess provides pagers on request). Of the three cruises we have taken, two of them had received the request, one had not. I think in the future, like MadisonMom, we will take a printed copy listing our son's unique characteristics in order to hand to the club directly.

We also request a quieter dining area in the dining room. On embarkation day, we visit the Dining Room Maitre'd to confirm that they received and accommodated our requests.

We request to eat alone as a family. I know every person on the spectrum is different but we find that having to deal with people he does not know takes a lot of energy for our son.

Here is our experience on Princess but we also found Disney's kids club very good with him.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2087915

All the best in your planning.