Alaskan Cruise

[F1Julie]

I know it's not DCL, but has anyone done an Alaskan cruise with kids? I loved my first 3 day cruise on the Wonder and will be sailing on the Magic in December 2006. I'm thinking about doing an Alaskan cruise in July 2007. My DD will be 7 then and it would just be the 2 of us. If anyone has done an Alaskan cruise, did your kids like it? Was there enough stuff for them to do? I recently had a survey from DCL and it did ask about possible other destinations and Alaska was one of them. If DCL did that, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but I'm not so sure about other cruise lines.

 

[linco711]

I'd like to know the answer too! The Holland America Alaskan cruise looks good....but no info...........hopefully someone will have that info for us.......

 

[CPM]

I haven't done one yet, we are planning on May or June 2007. I have many friends that have done it with kids. They do not reccomend HAL for kids.
RCCI, CCL or NCL is what is mostly reccomended for people traveling with kids to Alaska.
I found a lot of good info on the cruise critic boards.
I'm leaning more towards booking with RCCI right now, CCL second choice. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to use my frequent flyer points for the airfare. That may determine it for me.

 

[ivanova]

HAL is working to become more kid friendly -- so I'm not sure how much you can compare to past HAL experiences.

Of course, a LOT has to do with the kids' ages too, regardless of the cruise line you are talking about.

 

[NCRedding]

We did an RCCL cruise to Alaska in July of 2003. DD was not yet 11 when we went. She enjoyed the cruise and enjoyed Alaska. The scenery was awesome. We did the Radiance which was round-trip from Vancouver, but I think is now one way. We also stayed at Vancouver for 3 nights prior, and really enjoyed that.

The kids clubs on RCCL do alot of things--the hours are not continuous like on DCL, so had DD not had check out privileges, we would have spent a good bit of time going back and forth to check her out. They also had a rock climbing wall and mini-golf, but it was almost too windy to enjoy. The kids all looked to be having fun. The teens though seem to do a good bit of hanging out over the centrum--yelling and cursing--especially the last night. There were fewer kids, so DD actually got to know more on a personal basis.

I would recommend RCCL, just know that it is not disney. Also, if you are coming from the east coast, I would strongly recommend early dining. We usually do late dining, but even with days before, we were still on east coast time, and had problems. The shows are after dinner on RCCL, so we missed almost every show because we were so tired.

 

[CPM]

HAL is working to become more kid friendly -- so I'm not sure how much you can compare to past HAL experiences.

Of course, a LOT has to do with the kids' ages too, regardless of the cruise line you are talking about.

I'm sure it does, but my good friend who just went last July had an 8 year old and a 13 year old. Neither had good experiences with the kid's clubs. They weren't open enough and they charged more then the other CL's. CCL & RCCI only charge after 10:00 PM.
I'm not saying anything is wrong with HAL but it's certainly not known for the younger generations.

 

[barkley]

we did alaska (inside passage to and from vancouver) last august with our then 7 and 10 year olds. we did holland america (hal) because we are disney vacation club members and they are the only line (other than disney) that you can use points for. i would NOT reccommend hal after anyone has done a disney cruise (you will compare everything and find they fall far below in all categories) and esp. would encourage anyone with kids to avoid it like the plague!

the kid's club was a joke-it was only open for a few hours in the afternoon and a few hours at night (which conflicted with the end of the early dinner seating and the end of the late dinner seating:we only ate in the dining room one night because of the hours). they had a space smaller than a disney stateroom dedicated to the entire "kids program", and while they did have a naturalist speak to the kids one afternoon, the majority of the time it was coloring, board games or videos. if your child does not want to do the set activity for the session they offer no other options and the child must leave. we saw 2 computers in the room and asked if these were available to the kids-we were told "only during computer time" (found out later that the kids stood in line to take 10 minute turns). hal has no pager system for the parents, so if you have a child that tends to get bored (as my son did very quickly) you are told to call the club every 30 minutes from wherever you are onboard or risk "permanant exculsion". we also found the kid's staff to be very unfriendly.

we spoke to the director of the kids club (who happened to be a former disney cruiseline kids program director) and asked what the deal was. he openly admitted that hal was making big efforts to market themselves as family friendly but was not putting any effort (or $$$) into it. he said that hal had hired prior disney staff (esp. in the kid's programs) but most leave as soon as their contracts are up to return to disney, that the staff he ends up with in the kid's programs "never hired on to work with kids" and end up there in addition to their "real on board job".

I would highly reccommend an alaskan cruise, i have never seen anything like the scenery and my kids loved everything we saw. i would however, look into carnival-we pulled into dock with them and i spoke with some of the passenger that had kids my age to see what their experience was like. they agreed that alaskan cruises are def. geared to older passengers (hey-i'm in my early 40's and we were "the kids" on our trip) but said that carnival did a very good job with the kid's programming on the trip. they said it was not the "party ship" atmosphere most people associate with a carnival cruise, more laid back and quiet-but there were things to keep the kids engaged and happy.

p.s. i've read on other boards that hal's service has continued to decline since the 5/04 introduction of "automatic tipping" (the line determines the amount of tipping you should do and automaticly posts it to your room account-if you request to decrease it, eliminate it, or exclude someone: you get multiple phone calls and/or a personal visit to your cabin from the staff to inquire why).