WHERE is that "middle of the road" cruise line?

[1965]

It all depends on what time of year you are cruising.

 

If you go on cruises during school breaks, holidays, and summertime, then yes, they will be full of parents suffering from entitlementitis and children who run amok.

 

If you travel during the "off" seasons (while school is in session and either before or after holidays), then you will not run into that many children whose parents suffer from entitlementitis and let them run amok.

 

On all of our cruises, we have run into very few children, and have had an awesome time.

 

We're both 47 btw...

 

Best of luck finding the "middle of the road"!

I agree 100% with chefSusan. If you have the scheduling flexibility that allows you to book when kids are in school, you won't see anymore kids on CCL than on any other line, which is very few. We've cruised going on 8 times on 5 different lines, and the time of year you cruise is the key for the number of kids on the ship. We set sail in 76 days. YIPPEE!

[ChefSusan]

The only time we have cruised during the summer was last year when we went to Alaska on Carnival Spirit. The cruise was totally different from Caribbean cruises - we saw maybe 50 kids on board, and they were very well behaved for the most part. None of them were running amok and thankfully we did not bump into them in the elevator riding it up and down...

 

Like I said before, it's got a lot to do with when you travel, as well as how long the cruise is. We've been on 3 & 4 day cruises, and it seemed like the kids ware driving the ship... we've been on 7+ day cruises and have had a wonderful time.

[DebJ14]

We used to cruise with our kids at Spring Break and Christmas. Now that they are grown we choose to cruise when school is in session. We have however been disappointed to find that large numbers of parents will pull their kids out of school on any given week and thus are never assured of a cruise with low numbers of children. We have found that mid January on RCI seems to have the fewest children. We've had a good experience doing that the past 4 or 5 years. We are cruising next week on Carnival, but taking our son and his family so we will be with a 4 and 6 year old boys. However, rest assured the will be in Camp Carnival most of the time.

[SNJCruisers]

taking our son and his family so we will be with a 4 and 6 year old boys. However, rest assured the will be in Camp Carnival most of the time.

 

 

Now that's good grand parenting.:)

[azpilot]

I would have to agree timing is pretty much everything. We always do our cruise's about the 2nd to 3rd week of Sept or a bit later as most kids are in school and we have had very little in the way of kids interrupting our fun time! The only time we cruised earlier was our Alaska cruise we did in May 2006. Again luck of the draw, little to no kids on that cruise. Not that we don't like kids, we have 5 but once they left the house it was time to minimize the chance that we couldn't relax a little bit more with less of them. So far our plan has worked out pretty darn well.

[Snorkel2Much]

Thanks everyone. We tend to cruise in the summer because our daughter is out of school and it's just easier on everyone and we LOVE it when it's HOT! I have been looking into a couple of other options; but by and large, CCL is the lowest priced with the best itineraries.

We'll just tough it out a little longer, our DD is a Senior in high school this year and will be going off to college next fall which will open up a lot of still hot summer dates for us. Thanks again!

My two recent cruises on Celebrity Soltstice were exactly as you imagined in your original question. Kids were onboard but seemed to be supervised, even though one cruise was in the summer and the other was Thanksgiving week. Basic balcony prices were nearly identical as Carnival balconies for the same weekend departure and similar port visits. I had expected to pay a lot more for the same category, so I was able to upgrade our balcony to Concierge class. The Inside & OV cabin prices were a lot higher on Celebrity.

 

I now have two good cruiseline options to choose from, depending on who is going with us and what we want out of our vacation experience.

 

eta: Celebrity also has Aqua class, which on Solstice is pretty much the entire Spa deck where only double occupancy cabins are allowed, and they have their own version of the MDR just for them. It was only a little more than Concierge class for our sailings, but we were triple occupancy with our daughter and it wasn't an option.

[Jolimont]

Go to Alaska on Princess in early May, instead of children you'll get all those rowdy cruisers on oxygen tanks. Not that there's anything wrong with that ;-)