kayawildfire

3 minutes ago, wl2cruise said:

I’m sitting still in the terminal waiting for my deck to be called to pick up luggage didn’t here any announcement about being arrested for leaving. 

It isn't my tweet, you probably know more accurate info about the situation than I do honestly. 

There are no deck chairs above deck 2. You have to go all the way up to deck 6 before there are balconies with chairs. Likely you heard carts and other devices/activity from the galley directly above.

I know, that's just what it sounded like. They must have been dragging things around.

We just got off the Dream's 8/12 sailing and had cabins 2408 and 2412. It was very similar to the experience of the previous poster, very loud with a lot of banging around. It actually sounded like they were moving deck chairs so they must have been dragging things around. These two balaconies are also very close to the elevator, which increased the foot traffic near our room and the noise level. The elevators themselves actually weren't a problem noise wise. Our ports were Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan. We faced the dock at all of the ports except Belize of course and faced out to the river in NOLA. These two rooms aren't blocked by the life boats, they actually have a lot of shade, but there isn't a gap between the boats.

It certainly is hard-especially with two kids in college. Our crew consists of the older kids(a 21 year girl and 19 and 16 year old boys) and the little ones (10 and 6 year old girls and an 8 year old boy). Just so when I start talking about that, you don't get confused:) Now onto your questions:

When we onboard, we do a mix of family time and splitting up. When we are in port, we do mostly stick together when doing excursions, walking around, etc. We do split up though if we are shopping and some people want to go back to the ship. On sea days, we do meals together and usually the waterpark/pool. We do spend time apart-the littles at the kids club, our teenage boys feeding their shuffleboard obsession, etc. We do consider dinner a mandatory event each night. We don't try to do everything together-too many competing interests. That is one of the perks of cruising-some family time and some alone time.

Our kids are basically restricted to freebies. Our older kids have money from their summer jobs/birthday money so they are allowed to get a drink on their dime, but the parents don't pay. The little ones have money for the trip as well, but since they really don't drink soda, I'm really not sure they know what they are missing. None of the kids have charging privileges on their cards-it keeps the unknown "he did it no she did it" charges to a minimum. If the kids want something, they give the parents the money for and the parents buy it for them. The little ones also don't carry their sail and sign cards at any point.

As far as luggage, oh boy. Since we drive, all the kids have a backpack of things to do. The little kids backpacks stay in the car usually, the older ones bring theirs on the ship (that is for their cell phones, chargers, etc. and as many souvenirs as possible of theirs). We definitely share suitcases as much as possible-we can do three kids in a 28 inch suitcase with a week's worth of clothes, swimsuits, toiletries, and shoes. We do bring a different outfit for the evening usually, but usually keep it to bring a clean shirt for each night, but bring one pair of dress shoes and 2-3 pairs of dress pants a person. The girls usually wear dresses. Dress clothes basically take another 28 inch suitcase for the 6 kids. We limit the shoes to one pair of tennis shoes(something good for walking in), a pair of flip flops, and some sort of nice shoes for dinner a person. We do try quite a bit harder for dinner than is necessary, so you can cut that down quite a bit most likely. We live on a farm at home, so we enjoy the chance to dress up a bit. We avoid carryon luggage as much as possible-you just end up with 5 million tiny suitcases. One usually makes the trip with us to carry off and on fragile/valuable things. We try to check as much as possible getting on the ship, they will take the luggage right out of your car and bring it to your stateroom on the ship. Getting off, you have two choices, self-assist or regular debarkation. Self-assist means you can carry everything belonging to you off the ship yourself-if we do this, everyone gets one piece of luggage they are in charge of. If you do regular debarkation, you pack up all your luggage the night before and set it outside your stateroom. They take it off the ship for you and you find it again once you are off the ship based on the number tag you attach to your luggage. You then only have to carry it through customs yourself and you can often get the help of a porter. Self-assist is faster for those driving to the port. I hope I answered the questions you had-feel free to ask any others you have.

I don't usually post on here, but I felt like this was one topic I had to join. We are a family of 8 with 6 children as well, ranging in age from 6 years old to 21 years old. We are leaving next week for our 11th cruise. It is possible to cruise on a budget with a family that size on a budget. We are sailing on the Carnival Breeze from Galveston soon. We are from Wisconsin and will be driving there. We will be stopping along the way to see some sites so it will be an enjoyable road trip, but that's what our family likes. We found it quite diffcult to use a travel agent, having a big family requires some creativity. We book our trips ourselves. Most customer service people freak at the size of our group, so if you get an uncooperative one, hang up and try again. There are a million ways to book the trip cabin wise. We actually have 3 cabins booked on our next trip, 2 adjoining cove balconies and one inside. Your oldest can be booked into a stateroom with one room in between you and them so there is no need to worry there. We never do the drinks packages, if our older ones want one they can purchase it themselves. If you go the Carnival route, you can bring a 12 pack of soda per person on board so that saves money. We don't book excursions through the ship, we usually do it ourselves and that saves money as well. Don't despair, you can go on a cruise. Feel free to ask any questions you have.