Family River cruises

[sjde]

I see that AMA and Uniworld offer family cruises. Are there other lines that do? In two years we will be taking a graduating grandchild on a trip so we are considering this as we really like river cruising but I worry he may be bored. if there are other older teens around, that would help. Or maybe we'll have to consider an ocean cruise. Kind of depends on what part of the world he'll want to see too. Thanks for any suggestions!

[CDNPolar]

We have a friend that took her granddaughter on a river cruise as a graduation gift and there was an older but close age range young adult male on the cruise which she connected to and they went clubbing in a couple of cities where they were docked overnight.  I personally questioned the reasoning of letting this 18 year old female club with a 22 or something male that they just met.  Just because he was on the cruise does not mean safety in my mind.

 

Personally, I think before you try to count on whether there are other young adults on the ship you should really assess if your grandchild would be content on a river cruise if there were no others in the same age range.  Just because there are others in the same age range does not mean an instant connection and that they will band together.

 

On a recent river cruise - Treasures of the Rhine - there were many 18-25 year olds, but they were all with families, and I did not see any real mixing of the family young adults.

 

Sorry - just some random thoughts.

[Canal archive]

Thems that do and thems that don’t. I see no reason for not mixing but is it a nationality challenge. As I’m pretty sure if it was Brit Kids of that age that would certainly mix and match.

[ljandgb]

Tauck Bridges are family trips, and there is Adventure by Disney, which is family centered and not TOO Disney-fied.  They travel on AMA ships I believe, chartering out the entire ship for their trips.

 

One of my kids always brings their Switch when we travel.  Setting that up in the lounge after dinner has made them many friends over the years.  Even when they didn't share a language, they all understood Nintendo.  

[gnome12]

13 hours ago, sjde said:

I see that AMA and Uniworld offer family cruises. Are there other lines that do? In two years we will be taking a graduating grandchild on a trip so we are considering this as we really like river cruising but I worry he may be bored. if there are other older teens around, that would help. Or maybe we'll have to consider an ocean cruise. Kind of depends on what part of the world he'll want to see too. Thanks for any suggestions!

 

3 hours ago, ljandgb said:

Tauck Bridges are family trips, and there is Adventure by Disney, which is family centered and not TOO Disney-fied.  They travel on AMA ships I believe, chartering out the entire ship for their trips.

These are not aimed at the older teen mentioned by the OP.

[sjde]

Obviously the AMA Disney cruises wouldn’t be geared toward older teens but what about Uniworld? 

[ljandgb]

I’m going to quibble that ABD caters only to younger kids. I personally know families of teens, even older teens, that have done ABD’s.  You can call ABD and they’ll tell you the ages of the kids booked on any specific trip if you wish. 

[RobInMN]

2 hours ago, gnome12 said:

These are not aimed at the older teen mentioned by the OP.

 

1 hour ago, sjde said:

Obviously the AMA Disney cruises wouldn’t be geared toward older teens but what about Uniworld? 

Disney Adventures are geared to all ages. Just because it's "Disney" doesn't mean it's geared to just families with young children. 

 

Even without it being "Disney", as mentioned previously, Disney simply charters the full Ama ship. They have their own cruise managers.

 

As I've mentioned in other threads, we've done 2 cruises with our family group that included kids. One with Ama (not via Disney) and the other Grand Circle). Between the 2 experiences (3.5 years apart) the kids were early teens to late teens. They all had a great time. In both cases, there were other families and family groups with kids younger and older. None of the kids in our group were ever "bored" and I didn't seen anything appearing like boredom from any other family's kids.

 

But I think it's largely dependent on the kid. Can they entertain themselves? Are they interested in history? Architecture? or even just happy to explore other cities?