Infinity with a 2 year old

[mnolan770]

We recently completed a cruise with our two year old on Celebrity Infinity.  I posted this review on the Infinity Reviews board, but thought I would put it here too just in case anyone considering cruising on Celebrity with a young child had any questions.

 

For the past 8 years or so, Celebrity has been our go-to cruise line. While we have tried other lines, we always come back to Celebrity. Now we have a child and feel like our time with Celebrity may be over for a while. But since he is only 2 and can't participate in the children's programming yet, we decided to do one (possibly) final Celebrity cruise. I selected the Infinity due to the 5 day length and the room. The five days worked great for a first time cruise with our child. I wasn't sure how he would react to time on the ship. The second factor was the room. We booked room 7199 Family Verandah. This is a corner aft cabin with an extra large verandah. We loved the room. 

Pros: 

Staff - The staff throughout the ship were great. Most greeted us with smiles and many by name every time we saw them. Our son was greeted by name by many on the cruise. He really enjoyed the interaction with the crew. 

Food - We ate in the main dining room for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For dinner we had Select dining. The food in the main dining room was good. Not over the top, but certainly better than we have experienced on other lines and consistent with our past experiences on Celebrity. They offered lobster on the formal night. The steak offered was a thin cut strip steak. Not my favorite. So if you want good steak, you should try Tuscan Grille. Breakfast service was good. The food was similar to what is offered in the buffet. But it was nice to have table service rather than fighting the lines at the buffet. Lunch was also acceptable. The service always seemed a bit chaotic at lunch, but certainly better than the buffet.

Disembarkation - Although we had a car seat, three pieces of luggage, two back packs and a two year old in tow, we did walk off. And due to doing immigration the day before in Key West, walk off was literally walk off. No wait at all. Just a flash of our passports and the room keys and we were done. 

Other passengers - The clientele on this cruise skewed to the older. We have cruised HAL several times and found the fellow passengers on this cruise in the same age range. While my wife and I are both 50, we certainly felt like the young ones. And having our two year old with us, we were concerned about how the older crowd may react. Other than an occasional snarky look, the interactions were great. Most of the older people seemed to enjoy having a well-behaved small child on-board. There were only 25 children on the cruise. And our son is too young to participate in the kids programming, so he hung out with mom and dad the entire cruise. Which meant he joined us for evening music before dinner in the Cellar Masters and the occasional pre-dinner martini at the Ice Bar.

Cons:

The negatives are few. The ship is showing some age. The sofas in our room seemed a bit worn. The shower was not as clean as I have experienced in the past on Celebrity. 

While this may be our last Celebrity cruise for a while, it's not due to the cruise line. It's just not tailored for children. But that's intentional and we understand. We will shift to Royal Caribbean and reserve Celebrity for the occasional child-free cruises we may do over the years.

 

Cabin 7199

 

The cabin provided plenty of storage, more than the 3 of us needed. It had two rooms divided by a sliding door. The first room is the main bedroom with plenty of space to get around. And the second room included two sofas a table, more storage, and second television. The verandah was enormous. I planned to take photos and videos, but never really got around to it. But search online and you will find videos and photos of this cabin.

[mahdnc]

Nice review.  The M class FVs are indeed great for families.  Although our kids are adults now, we took them on 12 cruises with Celebrity beginning when our son was 7 mo old and our daughter was 3 yrs old.  Although Celebrity is not geared towards kids like Royal Caribbean or Disney,  we thought their kids programs and facilities were excellent.

[wwcruisers]

I would absolutely concur that RC is better tailored to kids, than X. Their increasing focus on the family demographic was what prompted us to leave RC for X, eight years ago. However, now that we are thinking about taking our first 'family cruise' -- with our 3 year-old DGD, we will definitely be returning to Royal (for that cruise, at least)!