I know this is a slightly old thread, and you didn't mention Celebrity, but we just got back from the Galapagos on the Celebrity Xpedition. We traveled with our two children, ages 5 and 11, and my 70 year old mother. We did the Outer Loop Itinerary (most lines do an Inner Loop or Outer Loop route, due to restrictions on how often they can go to a given spot.) We loved the one
Adventures by Disney trip we have done (Costa Rica), and would gladly have gone with them to the Galapagos, but our 5 year old does not meet their minimum age requirements. We LOVED the Galapagos on Celebrity.
We chose Celebrity over Lindblad/Nat Geo because they begin and end in Quito instead of Guayaquil. We MUCH preferred starting and ending in Quito for two reasons. The first, and most important, reason was that we could get from Houston to Quito with a direct flight. The second reason is that Quito is a beautiful and interesting city with a lot of history, and with Celebrity we were able to spend a day in Quito seeing the sights, and a day in Mindo in the cloud forest.
The Xpedition takes 96 guests and has a staff of 60something. Celebrity has bought two smaller vessels for the Galapagos as well, but I don't know when they will enter service under the Celebrity name. We did not find the 96 guests to be too much, since you always broke into smaller groups to go to the islands. They had 7 guides on board, which is how we ended up in a private group for just our family multiple times.
To our surprise, there were a lot of children and teens on our trip. My daughter was the youngest, at 5, but there was a second 5 year old who turned 6 on the trip. Almost a quarter of the guests were kids or teens, to the absolute disgust of a few of the adult guests. (There was a large group having a multigenerational family reunion that included a lot of kids.) A few of the adults were very unhappy and very rude about the kids on board, and one of the groups was so vocally ugly about it that we were offered a private guide for the stop a couple of times so we wouldn't have to be with them. (It was sort of amusing that one woman was moaning and complaining loudly about all the children, and the amazing cruise director came over and asked me if we would prefer a private guide for the excursion so we wouldn't have to deal with her. We said yes.)
As others have said about Lindblad, we found the service on the Xpedition to be absolutely top notch. The food was surprisingly good most of the time, although we quickly discovered that you usually got the best meals if you ordered the local Ecuadorian specialty of the night. All alcohol was included, and we thought the cocktail of the night was almost always amazing. One moment of stellar service sticks out. My husband went to the wine and cheese tasting without me, since I was in the room with our napping daughter. My husband mentioned why I wasn't present when chatting, and the maitre de grabbed a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a cheese plate and brought it to me in the room. Really amazing service, the entire time, with a mostly Ecuadorian crew that couldn't have been nicer or more helpful.
The Galapagos is an amazing destination. We were generally offered two hikes on two islands a day, plus a snorkel, either from a beach or deep water, just jumping off a zodiac. Each stop had a long and short hike option, which was also good for not having everyone trying to leave the Xpedition at once. We usually had a group leave at 8am for the long hike, and a group leave at 8:30 for the short hike. You are always back on the ship and on your way to the next location by noon. We usually do the second stop of the day at 3 or 4, and the times off the boat were again staggered by half an hour. There was usually a snorkel option between the morning and afternoon hikes. A few places you couldn't actually go onto the island, so you just took a zodiac ride along the coast. It was a very busy and very active trip. I cannot say enough amazing things about the destination, and I'm sure you will love it, no matter which group you choose to go with.
