Grandeur Review - Family Edition

Hi everyone. We just returned from a 6 night cruise to Bermuda on the Grandeur. I posted a similar review on the RCI forum, but modified this one to focus more on the family aspect and our experience sailing with our 4 year old son.

THE PARTICIPANTS: The passenger manifest for this cruise was my wife and her adoring and loving husband (that is me) and our son. We are both in our mid 40’s and our son is 3 years and 11 months. This was the first cruise for all of us.

THE PLANNING: Why take a cruise? Why take this cruise? We tried WDW last year, but it was too crowded, too loud, and too overwhelming for our son (he had just turned 3 at the time). But, there were four things he did love – the pool, the beach, the Neverland Club, and the steam train. In looking into a different family vacation this year, I realized that a cruise could deliver three out of four of those things. Even though our son traveled well on the plane, we decided that if we could cruise without involving air travel, we would. As we live in the Metro DC area, sailing out of Baltimore was a no brainer. This left us with selecting the ship and itinerary. We picked Grandeur and Bermuda because it was the shortest cruise in the fall timeframe – we did not want to sail with hundreds of children during the summer, and of all the ports – Bermuda sounded the nicest. Also, we were not convinced that we or our son would love cruising, so we wanted to take the shortest cruise possible – just in case.

THE ARRIVAL: Driving to the port in Baltimore was very easy, as was checking in and boarding. I do have to make two comments – first, there is kind of a hard sell on the dining packages, which is a bit irritating. The second was that getting on early is not such a great thing, as many things are closed till 1pm. This is not an issue for most people, but my son has infinitely less patience than his parents, and it was hard finding things to occupy his time while we waited two hours to get into our rooms. We forgot to pack his suit because we did not think it would be warm enough to go into the pool – next time, I think we will bring it (because he wanted to go in as soon as he saw it). After we got into our room, I held off taking him to the pool because I was worried about getting him back out again, dried and dressed for muster. We did go up to the arcade, but were a little disappointed when we arrived – I had seen some pictures of the arcade (older ones I was to learn) that showed an air hockey table – one of the few arcade games that my son loves to play. I have told him repeatedly over the past few weeks that we were going to play air hockey on the ship, but when we arrived – no air hockey table. I am guessing that they took it out to put in the nursery. NOTE TO RCI – Please find a place to put another air hockey table before we sail again next year!

THE ROOM: At 1 pm we headed down to our room. We booked a Grand Suite (8514). We did not take any pictures of the room, but Spookwife posted some from her trip to New England, and our room looked exactly the same except that we did not have the wrap-around couch (ours was just a sofa) and our TV was mounted closer to the bar area (there was a connecting door at the other end). We picked a suite for four primary reasons – one, we wanted to have a place to crash if needed (i.e., if we hit bad weather, if our son did not like the kids club, he needed a nap or just a quiet place, etc.); two, we loved the idea of early boarding (which turned out to be not such a great think) and early departure (which was awesome, but more on that below); three, the in-room dining from MDR (more on this later); and four, the location. We loved this room, although you did hear chairs being moved up on the pool deck. This cabin is located near the front of the ship, and is very close to everything – one flight up is pool deck and WJ, two flights up in Adventure Ocean, two flights down is Palladium and shops.

THE SHIP & CREW: We thought the ship looked beautiful. She is elegant and classy. We loved her. I know that there are many who would argue for going on the bigger ships, as there is way more to do. But our son loved the ship, and between the pool, the kids club, and eating outside the WJ, he was never bored. The ship is easy to navigate, and you are almost minutes away from everything. One day we were at Concierge Lounge and were paged by the Adventure Ocean. We walked over there in a minute. By time we arrived, our son was fine and wanted to stay longer. Another advantage of staying in a suite was the officer’s reception – we brought our son, and he got his picture taken with the captain.

THE FOOD: We selected the My Family Time Dining for this cruise; however, it did not really work for us. We managed to eat the first night at the MDR, but part way through our main course, our son told me that he was done, and that he wanted to go right now. This is his polite way of informing me that he will likely have a tantrum if we do not leave soon. So in the interest of our fellow diners, we left before dessert. We tried to go the MDR for the first formal night, but my son would not even enter. He was adamant that it was too scary and he did not want to go, so we ended up going to the WJ most of the cruise. And I have to say, we did not mind at all – the food at the WJ was fantastic. They had a variety of things to choose from; it was clean and never crowded, and most of all, you could sit outside and see the ocean (our son loved that). For our next cruise, we are picking My Time Dining, and will have a lot more flexibility. If our son still hates the MDR, we can feed him at WJ around 6:30pm (when it opens), drop him off at AO around 7pm (when it opens), and then head off to MDR, WJ, or Specialty Restaurant for our meal. We did get to eat at Izumi one night, and it was fantastic. I am not fan of sushi, so had the hot rock. My wife has sushi and loved it.

THE KIDS CLUB & ACTIVITIES: We knew that there would be relatively few children on board, and there were. I would estimate that there were less than 25 children under 11 on board, and perhaps about that many teenagers. Our first time dropping off our son at AO was fine, but he was the only one in there for about 2 hours, so he was not that enthused to go back in again until he met some of the other kids, and after that, if there were other kids in the club, he could not wait to go back in. He also loved the pool – he met almost every child his own age, and a few of the older ones at the pool. The Grandeur has a section that is very shallow and fenced off from the deeper portion, and most of the younger children just played in here. And you would think that there is not that much to do in a little splash pool, but when you are sailing, there are waves in there and the kids loved it. One note of caution, you need to keep your eyes on them. The fence is not that high, and the taller ones can easily climb over it and then find themselves in the deep portion of the pool. One child climbed over while we were there, and although he could swim, once the other kids saw him do it, they all wanted to try it too.

COMING HOME & LEAVING: This was a piece of cake. We went up to the CL, and Francis walked us off around 8am. Even with heavy traffic on 95 and 695, we still managed to get home by 10am. This was awesome. We left our bags out at night, and were walked off in the second group. My wife and son did not want to leave, so pulling them off the ship was the hardest part.

IN SUMMARY: For our first cruise, we did not know what to expect, but we all loved it. Our son had so much fun in the pool, meeting other kids, eating at WJ and watching the waves, and the kids club. I would highly recommend this as a first cruise for anyone with smaller children. We feel that as our son grows up, we can start to move into the bigger ships. We are already booked on Grandeur for next year over Thanksgiving. We debated going on one of the larger ships with a H2O zone, as we think our son would love that even more, but he is still young, so maybe we can get by one more year on the Grandeur, and maybe try Freedom or Quantum or Allure the following year.

Well, I am sure I have taken up way more of our time than you anticipated, so please let me know if you have any questions. I have all the Cruise Compasses and AO Daily Planners somewhere in my as yet unpacked luggage.

Great review! I'm glad you & your family enjoyed the cruise.

Thanks. I think my wife and I were surprised at how much we enjoyed this vacation...