Cruise seasons

[kaymak]

We have decided to take the 7 night eastern caribbean cruise for our 10 year anniversary. I am ecstatic about this! We would be going in January or February. My question is this. Since you can get cheaper rates during these times, is it more crowded on these cruises or on the more expensive peak season cruises, or does it always sell out?

 

[roscodog]

I've sailed late January twice, once on the 7-day Western and on the 4-day. Both times the ship was full. I believe the difference from peak season vs off-peak would be the ratio of children. I would guess that school age children would be slightly less during off-peak season.

 

[tvguy]

Disney doesn't release occuancy rates, but basically the industry believes every Disney cruise leaves at capacity.
We cruised New Years' week, so can't answer about how many kids, but there may be only slightly fewer kids since sooooo many people don't think twice about taking their kids out of school for a cruise, especially during off peak time. Also, the growing trend of year round school means traditional school vacation periods may be slowly going away.
I live in an older totally built out area, where in 1976 they opened the first year round high school. Last year it switched to a traditional schedule. But in an area 30 miles south of here where they are building new homes, all the schools are year round. In that district, in any given month, a quarter of the students are on a month long break. Giant pain for parents trying to find child care every 4 months.

 

[TheWog]

We sailed in January and they told us there were, if I remember correctly, 900 or 700 children on board and the ship was full. Sure didn't seem like it whichever number.