Have you cruised with a 2 or 3 year old?

[chrisrunty]

DH and I have been on four Disney Cruises but this April to MR will be our 1st with our very active 2.5 year old son. Any tips or words of wisdom / advice? We are a bit nervous.... No napping....tantrums... Etc... But we are also super excited!!! Missed the ship these last 3 years.

 

[ssanders79]

Yes. We tried to keep a similar routine, which included naptime, same bedtime at home. Worked well for us.

 

[Silverfox97]

We took our DD on 2 cruises recently - in Aug, she was 2.5, and this Jan (she'll be 4 in March).

1) If they are used to naps, let them take one. Happy child = happy everyone else. We get to the port at 10am and board at Noon, eat lunch, and when the staterooms open at 1:30pm, we go in, and it's naptime. The wave phones help a lot, because 1 parent can be off on the ship while one is in the room with the sleeping child. Our DD got to bed later than usual, so napping really really really helped.

2) If you have a strict sch with your child, try to at least keep to the eating sch. Again, happy child = happy everyone else

3) Bring (or buy) a few sand toys - they are also fun in the Mickey Pools (especially a watering can). This attracts lots of other friends, too!

4) Bring something for your child to do at the port while waiting to board - something fun and new that they haven't seen before. This helps keep their interest while the time passes.

Let me know if I can help - read thru trip repots - in fact, we should be posting one for our Jan trip this week (we have on posted for our Aug cruise already).

 

[JennLK]

We just cruised with our ds who turned 2 in Jan about a 3 wks after his bday.

Do your best to keep him entertained but you will not have to try hard. I made sure that we walked around a lot, made time for character visits, went to the Oceaneers to play (you can take your under 3 y/o if you go as a family !), saw shows, did karaoke. There are dance parties, deck parties, Nemo's ... always something to make sure that when they are looking for activity there is something to do.

We would feed him dinner while we were dressing for our dinner/show (5pm show main dinner) All but the first night he was at the nursery during dinner. I dont ever expect him to be still for over an hour and a half. Usually we had 15-30 mins after dinner before he had to be picked up so we would walk around/check things out. We made sure to relax when he was looking tired and put him to bed relatively early - although still a bit later then home. Since we wanted to see the fireworks and he had already fallen asleep - I tranferred him to his stroller and went up to the deck to see ! He slept the whole time during the fireworks and after - party We tried to take advantage of naps since he always seem to fall asleep in his stroller. We would have a relaxing lunch - or on CC day just relax with a Konk cooler.

I would say that he had a great time and did not proove to be too stressful for us so long as we just weren't hanging in the room for too long.

 

[hrarcham]

Bring a stroller and take walks on the promenade deck. It is breezy and quiet and may help him unwind. We booked a nice dark quiet inside stateroom which was great for nap times mid-day. We enjoyed the pools in the morning during breakfast. It was not crowded at all - often we were the only ones there... We went to the Kids club with our 2yo for activities the enitre family would enjoy. We also knew our son was not good at sit down meals and booked him into the nursery at seating times. We fed him prior to heading to the nursery - ate our sit down dinner than picked him up in time for the shows. It worked out well for us

 

[chrisrunty]

Thank you so much for the replies! We just converted to a toddler bed (4 days ago) nighttime has been fine but naps are not happening. Hopefully by cruise time I get my sleeper back. At home he sleeps 9-9 so he is our night owl. We have late dinning and we keep going back and forth on bringing our stroller or renting the one on the ship. I've scheduled flounders, but at 40 inches, 36lbs, potty trained, active climber, and articulate.... (everyone thinks he is 3 or 4) I hope he might be one of the exceptions for oceaneers. If not we plan on going there with him.

Does anyone know if the varrandah rooms get good and dark for naps? I don't think I noticed things like that when it was just DH and I.

 

[rivercountry4all]

If you can survive Chuckie Cheese you can survive the dream. Just go for it and enjoy.

 

[Queen of Oakville]

Our son was 2.5 when he took his first cruise last year (Carnival DREAM).

He wasn't a fan of CAMP Carnival; which I wont for a second pretend to be anywhere close to Disney. His sister at 4 loved it though. He chose to spend most of his time with us; which I was fine with.

We kept his nap schedule. Heck the whole family napped. We found deck chairs on a quiet deck and we all napped together. Outdoor naps were amazing. Sometimes my daughter preferred to be at camp; so we dropped her off there.

He behaved wonderfully at dinner (always in the MDR). At 2.5 he was plenty occupied with crayons and the kid's menus and the dinner conversation in general. Plus the crew would always stop to chat with them.


We took sand toys for the beach.

Other than that, we kept busy and had a great cruise.

 

[lbgraves]

DD was 3 on our first cruise. There were nights where she was still napping at dinner time so we changed her and put her in her stroller and went to dinner. When she woke up the server brought her drink & meal to her quickly. DS5 did this a couple times too.

 

[Michele325]

Our first ever cruise was when our youngest was 2.5. Also very active, he did not like Flounders. We did alot of the things other have mentioned. One thing I wanted to mention was at dinner. I was very nervous about all 3 of my kids sitting through it. But the first night we noticed how many of the parents were leaving to get the baby a toy or walk kids around between courses. And I felt so much better! Also, there were so many things to look at and entertain them during meals. So different than your typical restaurant. Worked out great.