Children & port intensive Med cruise?

[WishingMom]

I'd really like to start planning a Med cruise and was wondering for those of you who took children, how old were they and how did they make out with the excursions. Was it too much for the younger ones? DD will be 8 when I'd like to go and I'm not comfortable leaving her in the kids club while we were off the ship.

Thanks in advance.

 

[o&smom]

We took our son on his first 10 day Med cruise just after he turned 7. He did great! I did try to take him into consideration when planning our port days. I would try to alternate a very intensive day with something a little more laid back. One of the things that we did was to take the train to Monaco and visit the beautiful aquarium there. Jacques Cousteau used to oversee it. There is also a little train that stops right outside that gives you a tour of Monaco/Monte Carlo. Our really big day was an all day Disney excursion in Rome. We just returned from a very port intensive 12 day Iceland and Norway cruise with our son who is now 12 and his sister who just turned 6. We alternated really long days with simpler days again as much ad possible. I warned them in advance that there would be more long days on a bus this cruise because the things we wanted to experience in Iceland were very spread out. We all had a great time! Hope this helps and have an amazing cruise! If you have any more questions, just ask.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

I think 8 is a great age to do it. We haven't done the Med, but we were on the Magic for 20 nights on the B2B Norway/Iceland/Scotland cruises last summer when DS was 7 and did tours at every port including a very long Golden Circle tour in Iceland. We also switched it up as much as we could between intensive tours (like Golden Circle) and shorter less intense tours (like walking around Stavanger and looking at the museums.) And on sea days he simply chilled in the kids club, swam, etc. I think a port intensive cruise is very doable! My DS learned so much on our cruise - definitely an experience he"ll never forget.

 

[WishingMom]

Thank you both for your experiences! Now to wait until the 2018 itineraries are released

 

[aggiedog]

9yo ds had a great time on our Baltic cruise last year. We switched up excursions so it wasn't just all museums, and did a nice mixture of activities so that everyone from him (the youngest) to my parents were very happy with the trip. Some days were long, but he's a good traveler, and he still talks about what a good time he had.