Information about RCCL Med Cruise?

[Mcterry]

Hi All! We booked the Greek Isle Disney cruise for 2020 but I am in a bit of sticker shock. I have been doing some research and it looks like RCCL does a similar itinerary for significantly cheaper. I do have concerns, my kids will be 9 and 7 when we go and I worry about there not being many kids or not many younger kids. It looks like the two cruises I am looking at are on the older of the ships, how much is there for kids to do on them? My kids have done Disney cruises twice and we did a carnival one once. The two ships we are considering are:
Rhapsody of the Seas
Explorer of the Seas
Right now they are running a 30% off deal. Is that as good as it gets?
Also, if you've done a Med cruise, what cruise line would you recommend with kids. I might bite the bullet and do Disney still as we love it but just the cruise in an inside state room is over 10K. I can do a shorter Disney cruise out of Galveston (close to where we live) and a Med cruise on a different line for that price.
Thanks for all the info!

 

[mousefan73]

we are booked this summer on the Oasis leaving rome..my kids will be 13 and 14. I cant really help much with Greece tips. But we are not concerned about other kids.. our trip has only one sea day and long port days, so I honestly do not know if my kids will even visit the teen clubs. Also at your ages, your kids are gonna be beat after the heat in greece and seeing so much,, I would think its dinner and bed.

I know our cruise western med does not comparte to greece 2o20. but we book over a year ago and got a great deal, but the deposit was non-refundable and to be honest significant. I would keep the DCL booking and shop around. You got time.

Our Oasis sailing whenI look at the confirmation shows a fare of 2324 per adult minus a discount of 846 so more than 30%.. kids have some additional. in the end we are paying 4250. for 7 nights western med in a balcony. June 13th. BUT we had to pay a deposit of 250.00 per person that was NOT refundable. Sooo we had to take a risk here.

 

[mousefan73]

Also what you mentioned above.. We live in europe and so what we would be paying for a DCL european cruise. We are instead doing the Oasis in June and Fantasy in August. Crazy but those two trips is not much more than a DCL european sailing in a verandah.

 

[bekkio]

My two adult daughters and I did the 12n Mediterranean Greece cruise on Vision of the Seas last summer. We were able to get an aft Jr. Suite with an extended balcony for $7500 - quite a bit of savings over the DCL B2B of Spain, France, Italy and England that we were considering. We used the savings to splurge on private excursions in 5 of the ports, did two ports on our own just wandering around, and then also splurged on the Voom/Deluxe drink package.

We found the service to be just as good as on the Magic, although there was a bit of a learning curve. We spent sea and short port days resting and recharging in our stateroom and balcony, so didn't utilize ship's activities as much as we would have if we were on a DCL ship. We definitely utilized the drink package, and got close to its worth just in bottled water since it was so hot.

I can't speak to the kids' clubs, but there were quite a few kids running around the ship. We didn't see them in the dining room, but there were plenty running around the buffet and the pool deck during the evening.

I would definitely do RCCL again - in fact I have a 2020 Ultimate Russian/Scandinavia cruise already booked. We just cruised very differently than we would using DCL. We treated the ship more like a floating hotel and saved our energy for the ports.

 

[lilsonicfan]

We haven't gone with RCCL but we booked greek isles on NCL (Getaway) actually, due to the extreme sticker shock of DCL. I was seriously considering the RCCL Explorer of the Seas (looked to be a newer ship with more interesting stuff to do for kids than the Rhapsody, plus I really want to start or end in Rome b/c I want to spend some time there). 8 nights for 5 of us in an "ultra spacious oceanview" for the July 12/2020 itinerary would have cost $7,900 CAD, or somewhere around $5,800 USD.... way, way less than DCL in two insides. Ended up with the Getaway because the price was only $1,000 CAD more, for 11 nights instead of 8.

Check out youtube for some videos of the ships. And Cruisecritic for reviews too!