What We Wish We'd Known Before Our First Cruise with Our Family
Thinking about taking your family on a cruise? There is a lot to consider and know about before booking your family’s first cruise. This episode, Lisa’s sister, Kristen Raymond, shares things she thinks families will want to know before setting sail on their first cruise. Kristen recently took her family of 6 kids + husband on their first cruise and she has great insights and tips to share.
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Tips for First-Time Cruising Families
Be prepared for sea sickness. It seems like there’s often at least one person in the family who is affected by sea sickness. You can get a prescription for patches or medication from your doctor prior to the trip. You could also try an over-the-counter medicine like Dramamine. Another non-medicine option that has worked well for our daughter is sea bands. You can pick those up at a drug store or they will most likely be sold on the ship.
The Lido Deck is the place to be! One of Kristen’s kids wanted you to know that kids will want to head to the Lido Deck right away after boarding and will spend a lot of free time there. Be ready for pools, a grill, pizza, a buffet, mini golf, and lots of other fun outdoor activities. Each ship is configured a bit differently but every ship we’ve sailed on has had a deck with all of these great amenities near each other.
Kids Camp. Be aware that the hours posted on the website may not be the actual hours that the kids’ clubs will be open. When we sailed on the Carnival Panorama a couple of months ago the clubs were closed from noon to 7 pm. That was pretty surprising since that felt like the prime-time kids would want to be in the club.
Despite the lack of open kids’ club times, the Carnival Panorama was a great choice for families! We loved the cooking classes, Sky Zone jump park, ropes course, swimming pools, and water slides. Some of these activities has a extra charge or height requirements.
More on the cooking classes. We signed up for multiple classes while on our recent cruise: a sushi-making class, an ice cream class, and a pie-making class. This was something that we really enjoyed and would definitely recommend to other families. You need to book these classes before sailing as they fill up. There is an extra charge for the classes. We were on a Carnival Cruise and after researching it, it looks like other cruise lines also offer cooking classes.
Build-a-Bear Experience. This was another add-on activity that two of Kristen’s kids signed up to do. They loved building their bear and it is a fun souvenir from the cruise.
Before you leave on the cruise, make a list of all of the activities you want to do while on the boat. This will help you remember all of the fun things you want to do and you won’t miss out on something.
If you want to dine in any of the specialty dining restaurants, be sure to book these before leaving on your cruise. This will help you get the best dates and times that fit into your schedule. Occasionally, you can book these while you are on the cruise but dining times will be more limited.
We recommend booking anytime dining. With this option, you can still book a recurring time for each night of the cruise with your same table and waiters. But if you want to make a change and go to dinner later one night, you have the option to change your dining time.
Take advantage of sunny sea days. If the sun is out, get outside and enjoy it. Oftentimes, it can be cloudy and cool on sea days which doesn’t make for the best swimming weather. So if the sun is out, go out and enjoy it!
Download the app for your cruise line before boarding the ship. You can schedule dining, book excursions, see the ship’s activities, and create a customized schedule all in the app.
Check out the app chat. Most cruise lines offer a chat feature in the app. Carnival charges $5 per person to use the app. This was great for our family because most people didn’t pay to have phone service at sea. The ship chat lets you use the ship wifi and send messages to each other.
Wifi is an option but it is an additional fee.
You can put a spending limit on each of your kids’ cards. The card is the door key and you can also charge things to the card.
Most of all, be ready to have a great time and make amazing memories with your family on a cruise. There really is something for everyone to do. A week with no cooking, lots of playtime, and endless ice cream cones, what could be better?